New Project Finished and Delivered Finally

Bob Gibson

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Location
Merrimack, New Hampshire
One on my daughters has asked me to build an office desk for her husband. He is a insurance adjuster and spends quite a bit of time in his home office. He is also a pretty big guy. 6' 5" tall and about 260 pounds. So needless to say I'm going to have to make it taller than normal and the space between the pedestals wider than normal. with a baby expected any day now she wants a desk that will hide his tower and printer to keep it from curious little hands. She found something she liked made by Norm. http://www.symionic.com/newyankee/index.php?id=53#ecwid:mode=product&product=7916598 I'll adapt it a bit to fit her needs as well as make it look a bit more early American or Shaker I'm thinking about building it from ash mostly because of the cost of the wood. Everything that I've built for them in the past has been either maple, walnut or cherry but saving myself over $100 in the cost of lumber has me almost convinced to give it a try. I buy all my lumber from these folks http://www.neforestproducts.com/ and usually get a small discount or some free wood because I always bring coffee and donuts :D Question for you folks. Is ash a decent choice? how does it mill and finish? It looks a bit like oak to me and oak doesn't really fit into the style of her house. Maybe I should dip into the Social Security a bit and go for the maple :dunno:
 
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Ive been using alot of ash lately.
I think it takes finish great, easy to mill and sands well.

My only issue is I find now and then I have a bit of tear out when I use the router. Its not a frequent problem, and it could be me and my feed rate.

I like ash. Its cheap so if I make an error, I dont worry about remaking a piece.
 
Ash is a nice wood to work. As far as I know, it takes finish well and is reasonably strong. The desk looks like it has plywood panels. Will you be able to find ash plywood in the necessary thickness?
 
Bob stick to ash. If you darken it with a walnut stain it will look great. Save the $$. Thats my vote :) Looking forward to seeing the build.

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I haven't done any flatwork with ash, but I've turned quite a bit of it. It's reasonably easy to work, takes colors (dyes) well, and finishes nicely.
 
Ash is a nice wood to work. As far as I know, it takes finish well and is reasonably strong. The desk looks like it has plywood panels. Will you be able to find ash plywood in the necessary thickness?


He built his out of heartwood pine Ken. The panels are not plywood they are glue ups planed down to 3/8"

I was looking at some reclaimed pine boards from an old factory in Manchester, NH but they wanted about $7 bf. :eek:

Maybe I should pick up a piece of ash and try some different finishes on it :dunno:
 
Finally finished the Ash computer desk :headbang: I don't believe how long it took me to make this. My back was so bad I could only spend 10 to 20 minutes a day in the shop for a few months and sometimes I didn't even venture into the shop for a week or so.

Anyway, it's been feeling much better the past few weeks so I kicked it into overdrive and got it done. My daughter and her husband are thrilled:D

It's all ash. The left side is made to look like drawers but it's hinged. There are 3 pretty useless drawers and a pullout for the tower to sit on. The right side also has fake drawers and pulls out to hold his printer plus some space for paper storage.

The top was made 3/4" thick but the desk was so large the top looked strange. I added 3/8" fillers about 3" wide around the ends, sides and middle. I think it looks much better at about 1 1/8" think instead of 3/4".

Hi is a big guy and didn't want to hit his legs on a center drawer so I eliminated it. I think it looks unbalanced with nothing in the middle so today i made a narrow piece designed like the bottom trim and will bring that over and install it this week.

Nothing fancy with the finish. Just Minwax Early American stain and 4 coats of semi-gloss poly. It's a bit shiny for my liking but they love it.

Like Allen, I look at it and see a bunch of small errors that really bug me. But I'm sure my daughter will turn a blind eye to them.

Also, I made up a simple jig to make sure I got the drawer pulls in the right position.

Wasn't inexpensive to build. I figure with the lumber, plywood ( the drawer sides, top and bottom of the cases and the tower and printer stand is the only plywood) , drawer slides, pulls, finish, and a couple of new router bits it cost between $530-$575 to build it.

A few pics:

100_4216.jpg100_4217.jpg100_4218.jpg100_4219.jpg100_4230.jpg
 
I really like working with ash Larry. It works a lot like oak but in my opinion has more interesting grain features. The main reason I used it here was cost. It was 1/3rd the cost of maple or cherry. I still prefer maple and cherry.

The picture of the top shows what appears to be a glue line. Interesting, it doesn't show up just looking at the top and it took stain just like the rest of the top. Beats the heck out of me :dunno::huh:
 
Bob, Great job on the desk, like the color too.

Did you happen to put any vents in for the computer? I had a friend that had a roll-top desk with similar storage for the tower. The cpu was overheated unless the door was left open. Will depend on the computer, but he was able to put two small vents in top and bottom of the back side to draw air in and let hot air out.
 
Bob, Great job on the desk, like the color too.

Did you happen to put any vents in for the computer? I had a friend that had a roll-top desk with similar storage for the tower. The cpu was overheated unless the door was left open. Will depend on the computer, but he was able to put two small vents in top and bottom of the back side to draw air in and let hot air out.


The design was for a totally open back. I thought that too much dust and stuff would get inside so I put backs on each side but left a 4" open strip the width of the back in the middle of each pedestal for ventilation.

I was also concerned about him having a tower forever. I would think that he would replace it sometime in the future with a laptop:dunno: So I made the inside drawers and tower shelf removable so that I could put in 2 or 3 real drawers someday.
 
Well done Bob you now in the running with Allen on production output. :) The desk came out wonderful with Ash. It looks like Oak with the stain you used. I like the color a lot and i also like the shine. :)

Clever move on making the insert for the tower removable. One thing is for sure, you cannot buy a desk like this of solid wood for the cost you made it and to have it custom to boot. Bet the customer is happy happy happy.
 
Awesome job, I love how you made the desk adaptable for future growth, because that actually was one of my first thoughts "He still uses a desktop?" Although I must admit, I still have one in my basement that I keep running constantly as a back up. Anyway, I really like the drawer aspect to this table.
 
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