Desk Build Day 1

Now that I have most of my materials, design and some time, I headed over to Tim’s shop to get building learning. I was excited to get to work, but we spent the next hour or so getting his shop area clean. After cleaning, we got to work.

We deciding to build the cabinet first. So, step one was to rough cut of the oak plywood that will be used for the sides and shelf’s down to more manageable sizes that could be cut in the shop. No room for cross cutting a 4′ X 8′ sheet where the saw is now. Not an issue for this project since there is scrap on the end of the board, so there is a little room to play.

Here is the layout for the desk pieces:

 

This was used more for a guide then the actual cut layout. Since there is ample space on the right end, each rough cut was for the longest piece. The first rough cut was made ~1/2" more then the 29" needed for the first shelf, and it was the full 48". This shifted the edges of the next two boards over to 29 1/2". Then the next rough cut was made at 29 1/2". Now we had three boards that were much more manageable. Here is a shot of Tim making the first rough cut with a circular saw:

Now with the rough cut pieces, we used the table saw to cut them to the actual size. This could also be done with a circular saw if you did not have access to a table saw, but special care would need to be taken to setup a straight edge to run the saw against to help in making a straight cut. Here, Tim is utting the desk side from the first rough cut piece. This is the cut that sets the height, so the table saw is set to  30":

Since the rough cut was at 29 1/2", the desk side needed to be trimmed to 28 1/2":

And here is the final sheet:

After everything was cut to size, we then cut a rabbet on both cabinet side panels. This rabbet is so the 1/4" oak plywood back panel of the cabinet will sit flush, and will hide the edge of the plywood. Unfortunately, I do not have a good shot of the rabbet, but think of it as a notch. It can almost be seen on the left side in the above picture. It was cut 1/4" deep by 3/8" wide. My next post will continue Day 1 and detail the planning of the rough oak down to ~3/4" thick.