Old School Desk-Completion Photos

 Hi Everyone,

Well here it is:

Discussion

This turned out to be a tougher project than I thought it would be. The finish, even though it was worn out and damaged, was really tenacious and I finally wound up sanding most of it. The drawers were especially difficult. But eventually I got most of the old finish off and the new finish in place.

The interesting thing about this is the variety of woods that were used to make the desk. I saw black walnut on the top (matching walnut veneer at that), poplar, white oak, beech, plywood, maple, and whatever the frame was made out of so the color of the stain wasn't uniform. I made up for that by staining it several times to get some uniformity. The drawers and the frame match but the top doesn't. I do like the walnut top so I left that alone.

We also strengthened the frame with new screws and we tightened all the older existing screws so it's a little more steady and no so wobbly.

And to give it a more contemporary look I bought new cup-style handles in black for the drawers and I'm pleased with that. My husband screwed those on for me and I'm grateful for his help.

The General Finishes products worked very well. The stain helped to cover up a lot of damage that I couldn't sand off and most of the dents and dings are invisible. I plan to get several more colors of their gel stain in stock for future projects. I have an old, smallish wooden set of drawers that I got at a garage sale a couple of years ago. Next spring I'll re-finish this to match the desk and use it as a printer stand.

Unfortunately I never found a stamp or a plate from the manufacturer so I have no idea who built this. I suspect these were turned out by the thousands over the years and it's easy to find them on ebay and elsewhere on the internet. 

So it's time to put all the stuff we had in the desk back into the drawers and call it a day. 

Oh, and cats wanted me to show you this photo:

I'm not sure what the next project is-ah yes, I need to finish mailing holiday cards! 

This year has been a tough year for everyone no matter where you are so let me wish all of you here a better 2021. Thanks for hanging around the woodshop with me and I'll see you all next year.

Best Always,
VW

Henri le Chat Noir Dies

 Hello Friends,

Henri le Chat Noir, the cat who was the star of a series of short videos about his ongoing ennui and relations with other cats, has passed away. I've been a big fan of his over the years and always had lots of laughs over his videos.

My condolences to Will Braden, aka The Thieving Filmmaker. 

Henri, you'll be sorely missed.

Today's Facebook announcement: https://www.facebook.com/henrilechatnoir/posts/225789765574284

VW

Old School Desk, continued: Working on the Drawers

 Hi Everyone,

Well I hope everyone here in the US had a good holiday and everyone else in the world had a good week.

Ok, back to the desk.

I finished the desk top and now it's time to get the drawer faces cleaned up and finished. I took the smallest drawer first and worked on that. Here's today's photos:



Here's the desk top:

Here is the face of the drawer and you can see it's beat up like the rest of the desk. I wanted to replace the handles on the drawer and it looked like these just screwed on. It turned out that it was glued and screwed on and it didn't readily come off:

So I gave it a sharp rap with a mallet and a chisel and it came off. Fortunately the glue was dry enough that it came off without damaging the wood underneath. And the whole face, handle and all was finished at the same time:

This is what the handle looks like: 

The drawers were also made out of beech, some kind of laminated panel, and an unknown hardwood:

So I started scraping and sanding and this is what it looks like. I don't really have a good way to clamp the drawers down so I couldn't scrap the surface firmly:

This is a photo of the new and the old handles side by side:

And this is what the drawer front looks like with a single coat of stain gel on it. It's still a mess. The unstained part that the handle covered up is still visible so I'll have to give it another coat of stain later on:

I'm going to use that one drawer to experiment on before I do the rest of them. 
Stay tuned,

VW