Plywood Desk In Progress [Archive] - Colorado AR-15 Shooters Club Discussion Forums

JohnnyEgo

11-16-2019, 19:08

There is fine furniture, hand-crafted with traditional techniques, and invested with the blood, sweat, and dare I say soul of the craftsman who labors to transform natural materials into works of fine art. This is not that. It is a plywood desk. It exists at the four way intersection of my time, my wallet, my hatred of particle board furniture, and my son's desire to have a desk, painted black, some time before Christmas.
For some, math brings joy. For others, it is just tedious, soul crushing work. My son falls into the later group, as did I at his age. So this was a good opportunity to work with him on how to measure in fractions, do some basic area calculations to consider what could be made from a sheet of plywood, and manage a budget. These practical applications seem a lot more interesting to him than the more conceptual approach favored by his educators. He did pretty good with his budget of $100. We spent $86 on two sheets of cheap Ecuadorian Sandeply and two 8' long 1x2s, and the balance of his budget on knobs and hinges. I have agreed to subsidize another $20 in paint, and I happened to already have a giant pile of random rock maple offcuts in the scrap bin from which to make runners.
We have been chipping away at the desk for a few hours each day now for a week. Here is the story of the desk so far:

It all starts with a 4x8 sheet of Ecuadorian import ply. First cut establishes the table top and sides.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk10.JPG

This stuff sucks. It was in his budget, and since this is going to be painted black, I refused to give up any of my BB of FAS grade material to it. But I probably should have, because this stuff drives me nuts to work with. Big plies of softwood and outright filler, with tons of voids all through it.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk03.JPG

Anyways, now was also a good time to route a dado (groove) along the backsides of the cabinet carcass, so that I'd know everything would line up perfectly when I assembled it.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk01.JPG

With the work requiring a fair bit of reach out of the way, I let my son do all the cross-cutting. The tracks were clamped to the pieces being cut, and the ergonomics of this saw are such that little fingers are kept well out of the way of spinning blades. Even so, VincentEgo demonstrated some solid handling skills that made Dad give him 1 3/4 thumbs up, the maximum I've been able to give anybody since I learned why you don't use a fence and a miter gauge at the same time, the hard way.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk02.JPG

Thus ended Day 1.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk11.JPG

thedave1164

11-16-2019, 20:59

nice!

Great-Kazoo

11-16-2019, 21:07

well the upside of lower quality materials is. As he ages, he will come to appreciate the Buy Once, Cry Once motto.

Bailey Guns

11-17-2019, 08:03

What a great project.

StagLefty

11-17-2019, 08:42

Well done Dad !!!

To Bear Arms

11-17-2019, 09:17

I throughly enjoy reading and seeing everything you build Johnnyego! Good job.

JohnnyEgo

11-17-2019, 09:27

Thanks for the early kind words, everyone.

I filled all the large edge voids I found with wood glue and sawdust, so by the time we are done, this should be fairly stout. But the effort and frustration was not worth the money saved over just using cabinet grade ply in the first place. I can't say 'lesson learned', because I made the same mistake three years ago and swore I wouldn't repeat it, but here we are again.

Day 2 was all about pocket holes. Pocket holes are great when speed is important. I like to back up mechanical fastenings with glue, because screws can loosen over time. But I also like to pull things back apart and pre-finish the insides, and pocket screws work really well for that.

Pocket hole drilling.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk08.JPG

So many pocket holes.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk04.JPG

"You were right, Daddy. This Ecudorian Plywood sucks!"
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk05.JPG

Anyways, pocket holes drilled and screws applied, we were able to do an initial assembly of the pedestals and top, to get something vaguely resembling a desk:
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk12.JPG

https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk13.JPG

Thus ended Day 2.

Great-Kazoo

11-17-2019, 09:32

Hummer

11-17-2019, 10:10

Nice work, Dad! I sure appreciate all that my father taught me about building, plumbing and working with tools. It instilled a "figure it out and git-er-done" work ethic that's served me well.

The economy materials in your desk reminds me of a walnut desk made by my wife's grandfather. I moved it recently and realized that beyond the walnut drawer facing were drawer panels and slides made from pine wood fruit boxes, all nailed together.

In your photos I'm most impressed with the insulated garage door and the tidy cleanliness of the wood shop area. [Beer]

Irving

11-17-2019, 11:14

I LOVE making my kid do things, especially when she doesn't want to.

JohnnyEgo

11-17-2019, 11:53

Ironically enough, he was mad at me because I kept asking him to face me and smile for the photographs. He genuinely seems to enjoy helping me in the shop, although his attention span for it pegs out at about 30 - 40 minutes.

On the other hand, he really didn't want to go hiking Devil's Backbone with the rest of his scout pack yesterday, but I totally made him do it anyways. And he let everybody in a quarter mile radius know he didn't want to do it the entire trip. Every time he asked me 'Why did we have to do this, Daddy?", I told him it's because suffering builds character.

Irving

11-17-2019, 12:03

That's the way to do it. My daughter needed metal shavings for her Halloween costume. I made most of them, but I made her operate the brass trimmer for a while to get the brass shavings. I recently bought her the book "Do Hard Things" as suggested by Cstone, but none of us have read it yet.

Gman

11-17-2019, 12:38

Reading is hard. [Coffee]

Erni

11-17-2019, 12:40

You should do the hard things.

To Bear Arms

11-17-2019, 17:50

The amount of very nice tooling you have in the shop I am surprised you don't have a pocket hole cutter table. They make for quick work of cutting the pockets.

ChickNorris

11-17-2019, 18:31

I'm rather fond of Kreg tools, myself.

JohnnyEgo

11-17-2019, 20:55

The amount of very nice tooling you have in the shop I am surprised you don't have a pocket hole cutter table. They make for quick work of cutting the pockets.

The Kreg Foreman is fairly inexpensive for what it is, and I've thought about it a couple of times. But I am actually moving away from pocket holes and towards traditional jointery in my furniture work these days. I still love pocket holes for face frames, utility items, and stuff I need done in days instead of 6-8 weeks, but I don't really do enough of that work to justify the space the Foreman or some other dedicated cutter table takes up. I will probably replace my 1st gen K5 with the new Kreg system with the self-adjusting clamp in the near future, as mine is starting to wear out, and that self adjusting clamp seems way more convenient than always fiddling with the lock nut when changing stock thicknesses.

JohnnyEgo

11-18-2019, 09:16

Day 3 was scout night. Not a lot of time to put into the desk. But a good opportunity to sand and pre-finish the insides of the pedestals.

Sanded to 180 grit, and then two coats of shellac.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk15.JPG

After scouts, I cut a couple runners out of some rock maple scrap, and glued them in.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk16.JPG

Day 4 was another two hours in the shop, because of school work and guitar practice. I cut up the 1x2s into 1/2" strips to face-trim the plywood. The beauty of knowing this thing is going to be wearing two coats of Rustoleum black enamel means I didn't have to be too concerned about the surface, other than being flat. So we face nailed the trim with a brad nailer while the glue dried, and moved on.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk24.JPG

I cut the trim slightly oversized. Normally I'd route it flush with a bearing bit, but in this case, I wanted my son to do it, and I won't let him near the router, so we used hand planes. They made quick work of it, although they did grab the super thin veneer of the ply in a couple places. Yay paint!
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk25.JPG

My son was having a little difficulty working the big #5 plane, so I busted out my old Craftsman block plane. My father gave it to me for Christmas in the early 90s, and it is the embodiment of 1990s mass production. I am not sure what the blade is, exactly. Fairly thin, fairly light weight, and it may have been stamped. It takes forever to put an edge on it. But oddly enough, once you get an edge on there, it stays for a while. I used it once, right out of the package, to flatten the seams of a glue-up. Wasn't impressed. Couple decades later, I learned how to sharpen well, and sharpened it up on a whim. Was so pleased I now reach for it all the time, primarily because I will use it on things like planing plywood end grain, and not feel bad about it at all. In another year or two, I will teach my son how to sharpen, and pass it down to him with all it's 1990s glory.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk26.JPG

Irving

11-18-2019, 09:55

I love using hand planes.

Erni

11-18-2019, 10:02

Something very satisfying about a block plane. Just picked up a duplicate of a stanley because it was new in box and $8 at Restore. Have an old wood one, an arking one and a stanley with tiny replacable blades.
But sadly I need to kearn to sharpen them.

Nice job dad!

JohnnyEgo

11-19-2019, 01:10

So day 5, we cut a bunch of drawer parts.

https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk22.JPG

https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk23.JPG

And then my son went to bed and I recut every one of them out of Baltic Birch after reaching my absolute limit with this excremental Ecuadorian ply.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk34.JPG

https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk35.JPG

Which in light of Erni's recent post asking about materials for a 3D printer stand, gives me the opportunity to rant for the benefit of anyone new to the many variations of plywood:

Two pieces of plywood of the same thickness, approximately .40 inches and marketed as 1/2" ply. The top one is the Ecuadorian Sandeply, and the bottom is the Baltic Birch. The top piece consists of 5 layers laminated together. Two paper-thin veneers, two layers of some sort of combo of softwood and filler, and a center ply of indeterminant origin, but probably pine. The Baltic Birch on the bottom consists of 13 layers of all Baltic Birch, all the same size. Some of them are ugly. The two faces are nice, and considerably thicker than the Sandeply face veneers.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk45.JPG

If you aren't routing grooves in it, and you don't sand through the paper thin veneers, the Sandeply is good enough for things like the carcass construction of the pedestals. But it was a nightmare when it came time to route anything in it. Like the drawer runner grooves, for instance.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk48.JPG

The Baltic Birch veneer exposed when I routed this dado is ugly. But it's all one piece and consistent in character.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk47.JPG

The Sandeply, on the other hand, is fill of fun voids between the cruddy softwood plies and whatever binder they used to fill it.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk46.JPG

It also would not hold a clean routed edge. Every piece had some sort of nasty little surprise.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk49.JPG

So moral of the story is if you are going to butt joint everything and then use a pair of metal drawer slides, the cheap ply will do the job. But if you are going to route anything, you definitely want to spring for something better than the cheap stuff at Home Depot.

buffalobo

11-19-2019, 08:22

When using the cheapo PIA plywood, I run dados/rabbets on table saw with stack dado.

Great project, minions love learning with dad.

Gman

11-19-2019, 09:06

Quality matters and you rarely get something for nothing.

JohnnyEgo

11-20-2019, 00:19

When using the cheapo PIA plywood, I run dados/rabbets on table saw with stack dado.

Great project, minions love learning with dad.

Yeah, I got lazy in not wanting to change my dado blade and cartridge back and forth. Should have, though. More on that in a subsequent post when I complain about the router being the most dangerous tool in my shop, and probably the fact that no project I've ever worked on can truly be considered complete until I've bled all over it.

But until then, Day 6:

The very easy way to make drawers would have been to simply butt-joint all the boards together with glue, and possibly pocket screws, and then stick a false front on it. But we designed this around the idea that we would use every inch of the 4x8 sheet, and while I secretly replaced half of it with better ply, I wanted to keep the math illusion going. So I decided to go with a lock miter over other options, mostly to maintain some degree of uniformity while also not using any extra wood. The only problem is that it is a fiddly joint that requires an annoying degree of precision to be effective.

https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk40.JPG

I've always found lock miters to be better in theory than in my actual execution, but I have picked up a few good tips here on how to do a better job. One of the most useful has been to carpet tape a piece of MDF to ride the fence and support the material, particularly when all but a very thin 45? outer edge gets routed away.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk41.JPG

Drawer face gets routed flat on the table, drawer sides get routed vertically.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk42.JPG

Not bad for a first try. Only issue is that the drawer side miter is fractionally taller than the face miter. Should be an easy adjustment. One in which I will spend the next two hours and convert all of my remaining stock to scrap trying to perfect. Only to end up back where I started.

https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk44.JPG

The good news is that the punch list is getting much smaller. Pretty much just final trim for the table top and pedestals, possibly a stretcher between the pedestals, and then disassembly, final sand and paint. Depending on how much time I get in the next two days, would like to have it in primer by Saturday.

newracer

11-20-2019, 00:34

Love it!!!! He might not understand now but he will cherish what you teach him later.

JohnnyEgo

11-24-2019, 14:10

Got a lot of work done in a few concentrated hours between yesterday and this morning, but unfortunately I haven't had time to move the pics over to my website. So as a placeholder, I give you a cautionary tale as alluded to in my prior post about bleeding on things:

I was doing something that was both risky and repetitive a couple nights ago, which was climb cutting the sides of some drawer dadoes by shimming the fence so I wouldn't have to adjust it. I was tired and grumpy and should have taken a break, but instead I said "I'll just plow through this last batch." I was running the boards through with a gripper, which is a plastic pad with some grippy material, designed to keep hands well away from sharp cutting things moving at high speed. But I put it down for a moment to do something else, and didn't pick it back up. Was pushing a piece through with my bare hand when it caught, shot forward, and I drove my pinky into the 3/4" bit.

I cut the top half of my left thumb off about 18 years ago, when I learned why one doesn't use a fence and a miter gauge at the same time, so I have some experience in these things. Grabbed my pinky tight with good pressure and went running into the house. Wife was making spaghetti, ironically enough. I shouted "something bad happened, turn the water to cold, quick."

She said, "I'm cooking. Go use the other bathroom."
I said, "I just cut my (four tine'd eating utensil)ing hand. Turn on the sink!"
She said, "Not until you apologize for yelling and swearing!"
I held my blood-covered hand up and said "I am (synonym for procreation)ing bleeding, turn on the (one reason for an MPAA 'R' rating)ing sink!"
She said "You will bleed out before I turn on that sink if you don't apologize right now."
So I apologized, and she turned on the sink.

Anyways, I am 'fortunate' with respect to the fact that it looks like mostly superficial damage. Ate a couple chunks of flesh, bled everywhere, but I still have full movement. I sealed it up with some super glue and a couple of bandaids, and I am back in action. But if anyone can learn a lesson from my bad choices, I'd recommend not doing risky things, not getting sloppy over time if you choose to do them anyways, and not yelling at your wife, even when you are bleeding. This is also why I keep my son far away from the router table, which I believe to be the most dangerous tool in my shop.

This is why I keep a bottle of super glue (Cyano-Acrylate) in my first aid kit in the shop. Instant stitches.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk50.JPG

Irving

11-24-2019, 15:13

I'd still be bleeding. I know that much.

To Bear Arms

11-24-2019, 19:28

Looks pretty good for a super glue stitch! Glad it is not to bad.

Many years ago I worked in a custom cabinet shop, myself and another guy was working late on personal projects. He was building his kitchen cabinets out of ash, I was building a computer corner desk system.
When you work in a cabinet shop, you know what all the "normal sounds" all the tooling makes, like you know when you hear a kick back on a table saw, or the sound of a shaper kicking back, the sound of a blade hitting a nail or rock.

I was working on a radial arm saw and the other guy (who is 6'7") was running a 3/4" dado blade on our large 15hp table saw. He was making a valance and was dadoing the back side out.
So you drop the valance down on the dado blade, push it through, then turn the saw off before you get to the end of the board. You do this so when you look at the ends of the valance you dont see the dado cut, anyways he is dropping his ash valance board down on the dado when I heard the table saw kick, I immediately look over at him and saw him flinging his arm through the air, which included a rainbow arch of blood, (remember, this dude is 6'7" and has gorilla arms) I shut my saw off, run over to him and grab his hand to look at the damage. He had dadoed the palm of his hand off. I ran to the spray room where we had nice cotton lint less rags to shove in his wound. I ended up shoving like 4 rags in his hand, It was disgusting, just chewed up hand everywhere. The saw had chunks of meat and flesh packed all up in the dust collector, dado blade cover, everywhere!

They ended up having to fold his hand together like a taco and sew it shut, because of the amount of material he lost. He went through years of rehab and to this day is still on desk duty and does not have full use of his hand.
Anyways, super glue would not have worked for this guy.

JohnnyEgo

11-25-2019, 01:20

TBA - Sounds pretty terrible. I ran the top half of my left thumb, just above the knuckle, through a table saw on Christmas Eve in 2003, resulting in a new classic holiday story in my family for the season. Part of the reason I now own a flesh-sensing saw. Or at least staple sensing, because it found one in my dado stack and fired off. Scared the hell out of me, and pissed me off to be out of an $80 cartridge and need three teeth soldered back on the blade, but it still sounds cheaper than having a taco hand for the rest of my life.
-
So a recap of a few stolen hours through the course of the week:

Put a round-over on most of the exterior surfaces.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk27.JPG
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk28.JPG

Then started to trim everything out. The last 20% of all my projects always seems to take up 80% of the build time, and this was no exception. Anyways, rather than measure, I tend to fit my trim to the actual carcass. First, I mark the rough length:
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk58.JPG

Close, but not close enough.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk59.JPG

So I move to the shooting board, where I start trimming a few thousandths at a time with my #5 1/2 jack plane.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk60.JPG

This lets me fit the piece fairly well, and minimizes cutting it just a hair too short, which I have done plenty of times before. This is good enough that a little bit of filling and sanding should clean it up nicely:
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk61.JPG

But I still need clearance between the stile and the top of the drawer. This is where the playing cards come in. Normally, I'd use only one to space out the drawers, but I feel like a coat of primer and two coats of paint might eat into that space pretty quick, so I am using two cards as the standard for this one.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk62.JPG

So off to the vice to plane down the bottom of the trim piece a couple of passes:
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk63.JPG

And we have the right clearance:
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk64.JPG

Will try to get the weekend's work up tomorrow, which features a little bit more of my shop helper. And maybe a short discourse on sharpening plane blades, since I did that this evening as well.

buffalobo

11-25-2019, 09:29

Signs hung in the break room and shop of first cab shop I worked in. The guy who ran the shop was older than Noah, scarred, gnarled and grisly, was more than happy to show new guys the results of lapses in safety or judgement. He had approx 7 1/2 fingers.

Never put your hands where you can't see them. - molder men, multi function machine operators

Watch your hands, they are doing the work. - operators on hand fed machines

Glad the knick was minor.

Full disclosure - SawStop is the bomb. 3 stitches instead of 2 missing fingers.

JohnnyEgo

11-25-2019, 13:07

One of several lessons I tried to impart to my son on this project is working within a budget. And while I secretly blew through that budget when I swapped out half the sheet of Ecuadorian Sandeply for a half sheet of Baltic Birch, he doesn't know that. Which brings us to today's post about improvising. We had talked about putting wheels on the desk, but that would cost an additional $20 on top of his $120 budget. He has a little cash savings that he has been building up to buy the new Pokemon game. So I told him if he really wanted the wheels, he could come off his own savings for them. In life, when you go over budget on a job or a contract, it often comes out of your end. He thought about it, and decided he'd rather have the game now than the wheels now. Fair enough. Enter the 'free' 2x4 from the wood pile

Cut into four pieces, planed and jointed, and glued together into two pieces:
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk29.JPG

Gave each piece a 15 degree bevel on the ends:
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk30.JPG

Marked them to round the corners with the belt sander:
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk31.JPG
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk32.JPG

Finish with a mild round-over, and we have two 'free' table legs:
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk33.JPG

Then we have final trim. Ripped one of the 1/2s into a couple lengths of 5/8" strips.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk65.JPG

Fit them to the table top as with the drawer trim:
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk66.JPG
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk67.JPG

Wouldn't normally go with 5/8" edge banding, but the extra thickness lets me put down a kid-friendly corner radius on the top:
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk68.JPG

iego

11-25-2019, 21:53

Wow JohnnyEgo, I'm so impressed. To be so good at a "trade" or skill, is something to behold, and your posts are fantastic, fun and informative.

One thought I had, is that you should have the whole Scout Troop over some time and give them too a bit of your knowledge, fun, enthusiasm, etc. (and, ask them to sand things, a task I never fully understood, or appreciated, from my Dad. :)

Very special, and your son is very lucky to have you as a Dad.

-John

JohnnyEgo

11-25-2019, 23:24

Thanks for the kind words. I am the dad my son got; gloriously flawed, but doing the best I can give him an entirely different set of issues than I got from my dad, just like my dad did for me, in the tradition of dads from time immemorial.

I hosted a toolbox building party for his Cub Scout den last year. No greater expression of faith does a parent have for their child than holding the nail while the kid holds the hammer.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2018Projects/toolbox/cubscoutbuilder16.JPG

Last part of the actual build, speaking of sanding:

The veneer on this ply is paper thin. To minimize the risk of my son sanding through it, I drew light pencil lines across it and told him to move on the moment they were erased.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk69.JPG
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk70.JPG

He had a pretty good eye for the high spots.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk72.JPG

And final mock assembly:
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk73.JPG
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk74.JPG

Finally have a desk. Because it is 20 degrees and a blizzard at the moment, I probably won't break it down for paint until it warms up a little bit later in the week. But overall, looks like a desk, works like a desk, and taught some important lessons on budgeting, measuring, and calculating areas in the process. It was simple and fairly fast to knock out, while still being within my boy's skill level such that he really could feel like a part of the process.

iego

11-26-2019, 00:28

Yes, for sure. I think you underestimate the value of what you are teaching your son, and I don't doubt that I will see him as President or something, some day.

Really cool, JohnnyEgo,

-John

Frac

11-26-2019, 10:23

But I still need clearance between the stile and the top of the drawer. This is where the playing cards come in. Normally, I'd use only one to space out the drawers, but I feel like a coat of primer and two coats of paint might eat into that space pretty quick, so I am using two cards as the standard for this one.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk62.JPG

Love the playing card trick! Did you mean rails instead of stiles?

I always enjoy these build threads of yours! I spent my high school and early college years learning cabinet making from Dad. Your posts bring back great memories!

JohnnyEgo

01-17-2020, 19:01

So this has been finished up for a little while now, but for completion's sake, I'll stick up a few more pictures of the finished product.

Two coats of primer and a little bit of filler to smooth out some minor dings and depressions.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk75.JPG

Two coats of Rustoleum black enamel. This stuff dries pretty well in the cold, and is fairly tough, though not necessarily very hard even when fully cured. Will require a writing pad on the top of the desk, and had I really thought about it, I probably would have laminated the top instead of painting it. But it is very easy to touch up and should hold up to middle-school level abuse reasonably well.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk77.JPG

Drawers slide smooth under load, and don't droop even when pulled out all the way to the last two inches of travel.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk80.JPG

Plenty of room to sort Pokemon cards, do homework, read about Pokemon on the internet, store Pokemon, and sit and think about Pokemon:
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019Projects/vindesk/vindesk82.JPG