Desk Build Day 2

On build day 1, we cut all of the plywood pieces for the cabinet and desk side, and planed the rough lumber down to just sligtly more then 3/4". First step today was the enjoyable task of sanding all the plywood using a belt sander and orbital sander.

If you do not have a belt sander and/or an orbital sander, you could do this by hand, or skip. If you skip, your final finish will not be as nice, but it will still be good. Tim just purchased a nice little vacuum hold down, so I put it to use in holding the plywood down to the work bench. It worked perfectly.

Here is the hold down:

Just apply an air source, and you have vacuum on both sides of the clamp. It is just cool.

So, with the piece of plywood held down, I started to sand using the belt sander. The technique used was to go with the grain to the end, and then pull the sander back. Basically, making two passes, and then moving over just slighltly less then the width of the sander.

When sanding with the belt sander was complete, the step was repeated, but this time with an orbital sander. This was repeated for each peice of plywood, which amounted to allot of work. But it does make a difference in the "smoothness" of the wood.

After sanding all of the plywood, we began to cut the Oak for the front frame for the cabinet, which I will detail in my next post.