Antique Desk Rebuild

I found this cool old desk made with quartersawn oak down at the local antique shop. Eddie, the owner of the shop, wanted to make room for some dining room tables he had coming in, so I got it for a pretty good deal. (If you're in the Bend area, I highly recommend you check it out- Iron Horse Antiques.) When I bought it, it had a black rubber inset top, which at some point a previous owner had covered with cheap ungodly red carpet. In order to widen the desk's leg area for comfort, and to get rid of the carpet, the top needed to be redone.

 Step one: removing the old plywood base from the top.

 Back in the study, here I'm building back up the top in layers. The plywood is not yet attached.

Cold but sunny. milling up the quartersawn oak edging.

 I swear this corner lined up before I applied the glue!

 Johnny Utah doesn't get it. I think he wants me to feed him or throw the frisbee or something.

After one coat of dye, to bring out the quartersawn "ray" pattern.

 Applying stain to the dyed oak. Or was it the other way around?

 Board too short? not anymore! Since I widened the desk, this footrest board that sits on the bottom of the cabinet was several inches too short. It only has to hold my feet up, so I came up with this idea to make it long enough to reach all the way across the bottom again. A minor detail that you'll never see, but added a ton of time...

Mixing hyde glue and watered down Titebond created a gooey mess. I don't recommend it, unless you like to turn your woodwork into chemistry experiments- that you subsequently have to scrape off by hand. Stick to one or the other.

My roll-top converted into a finishing station, mid project. What a mess!

After scraping off the gooey mess and resanding, we're finally getting around to gluing the top in preparation for LEATHER! Yeeee-haw!

 The leather on, stretched, rolled and in process of trimming.

Knowledge is POWER. All those woodworking books being used to hold down the leather while the glue dries under it.

Pocket door at Mom and Dad's place

Hello out there in internet land! As usual, it's been WAY to long between posts. Actually, I've been pretty busy with school, so the blog has been idle for quite some time. I have a few projects I've done since then, but nothing too crazy. Here's what mom and dad's living room lookes like this week:

 Pepa helping buff the new wax finish. She's one hard working chicken, especially with all the international travel she's done lately!  It turned out way cheaper to order a door from Jerry's than to build it myself, plus, I didn't really have a whole lot of time. It came unfinished, so I decided to use one of the oldest finishes around: oil, shellac, and wax. The linseed oil goes on pretty easy with just a rag, then excess wiped off with a dry rag to achieve an even application. Normally, you should let the oil cure before moving on, but following instructions from Fine Woodworking's Finishing Guide ($9.99 well spent) the shellac is applied immediately after the oil in this circumstance, giving it a bit of surface lube.

 After several coats of amber shellac, I then finished with a clear wax finish applied with #0000 steel wool. The steel wool helps to even the shellac out as it applies the wax, giving a kind of wetsanding effect as the wax goes on. It was a real bugger to get into the corners. Using a new clean rag, it's buffing time. Just like you'd buff shoe polish, it takes a lot of elbow grease to make the wax really shine. When I go back in a few days, I'll take a special rotary brush that fits into a cordless drill, and do a high speed final buffing.

More to follow!

I hope to have pictures of my antique desk upgrade, more of the chicken coop, some pictures of mom and dad's kitchen remodel, and some other tinkering I've done since June. So stay tuned!