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/2019P.../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/2019P.../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/2019P.../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/2019P.../vindesk02.JPG
Thus ended Day 1.
https://www.johnnyego.com/wood/2019P.../vindesk11.JPG
