A new desktop

An oh so Vsalon addition to my office …

Pre-Covid, my home office was used a few hours a day but rarely all day. A few months into Covid, my neck was hurting incredibly. The old desk was an Ikea dining room table with a keyboard tray. To help get all the ergonomics right, I bought a standing desk base and mounted the Ikea table top to the base unit. While functional, it was a little small and not the prettiest. A friend decided to become a wood worker. He purchased saws and things and offered to make me a table top. I went to a local lumber yard to pick up some inexpensive wood. Upon arrival, they were out. Bait and Switch? Idk. While there, I walked the aisles and fell in love with a Brazilian wood called Sapele.

Like learning any craft, there were many mistakes. Every step took 10x as long as it might. He read books, he read blogs, and he watched youtube. We met on Sunday mornings to ride bikes and talk about learning a new skill and all he had learned during the week. Along the way, there were frustrations and needing to take a week or month away from the project. There were family events and work distractions. All of which extended the project.

2 years later, I helped my friend unload a beautiful table top. Once here, it sat for another month while we got over colds and travel etc. Attaching the standing desk base, the keyboard trays, the wire holders, etc etc to the table top took over 20 screws all with pilot holes. To ensure I didn’t drill right through 2 years of work, there was a brief trip to Rockler to pick up a drill guide.

The result is nice. May I keep it clean for at least another 24 hrs before the coffee starts spilling, ink drops, or lunch makes an unrecoverable mess :).


Attachment 122088

That’s gorgeous. You have significantly more patience than I do.

Thanks. Per the patience, I’m a long time potter and craft enthusiast. There is certainly a process to learning a new skill. When dropping off the wood, I was probably more aware of what was about to happen than my friend. Also, I understood some of the project was me encouraging / sponsoring my friend’s craft interest.

Learning a new skill like this, every new idea and technique gets screwed up the first time. It takes 5 or 10 or sometimes 100 tries to get decent at something. I knew a good amount of wood would end up as shavings, slivers, dented, gauged, and basically not usable for the table top. I actually bought 2 x the amount of wood required to make the table top knowing all the mistakes that were coming. To his credit, he still has a few pieces of wood left over, but certainly plenty was used up in the learning process. Did I think it would take 2 years? Yeah, ok no, that was beyond any WAG considered at the start of the process.

Something I didn’t mention, walking around the lumber yard, there was another wood that really caught my eye. Zebrawood is 4 x more expensive than the Sapele (what I got) which was already 2 x more expensive than what I planned to acquire. I joked with my friend that if he ever gets good at wood working, we should redo the project with Zebrawood. We agreed he needs to complete about 20 more tables / table tops before anyone is springing for the Z.

Similar deal, but with Tiger Maple. Luckily I just needed a top, and was setting it on top of an existing bench (coffee bench). I'm envious of wood workers. Because of the process and because of the woods available. This Tiger Maple I have is just nuts to look at in the sun.

Right angles, wood grain, saws, planes and joinery.

Fine Carpentry

https://youtu.be/3WBaiWnu53o

Carpentry

https://youtu.be/IPHTo5eJm-o

"Right angles, wood grain, saws, planes and joinery."


And 1000s of hours experience working with the tools and materials.....