Walnut desk

ennisa

Just finished a walnut and white oak desk for a friend. He was helping to build it as he wanted to be involved and I have to say I enjoyed the time together with somebody else in the woodshop. At the end of it though I just wanted to get the damn thing finished and out of the door. All in all it took about 3 months working every second saturday or so for 4-5 hours.

Sorry for the grainy pics, they were taken with a phone camera and less than ideal lighting!

aerosol

Love that walnut Ennisa,what finish did you use?

SpitfireIV

Very nice! I assume they were walnut planks that you used, what size were they and what method did you use to join them?

ennisa

The finish is several coats of a 1 pound cut of amber shellac and then a couple of coats of a mix i use of 1/3 clear poly, 1/3 white spirit and 1/3 boiled linseed oil, i wipe that on and the same with the shellac so there are no brush marks to deal with. It's sanded between coats and then it got a couple of coats of wax. The legs I just put on a couple of coats of the poly/white spirit/ linseed oil mix.

The top is about €70 worth of 1" black walnut but we bought about €90 worth in total so i have some left over for little projects. It really is gorgeous wood, deep dark with a great lustre when it is planed and oiled. Unfortunatley we did get some planks with quite a lot of sapwood in them and that is a creamy, poplar, like colour that is not so nice but when it is oiled it wasn't too bad. You couldn't tell from the rough cut boards that it was under there so it can be a bit of pot luck unless you bring a block plane or something with you and they let you plane the boards a bit to see what you are getting but I don't really see then letting you do that! Each plank was between 7" and 9" wide and I think they were about 7' long (originally they were 13' boards that had to be cut down to fit in the car. The finished top is about 2 foot deep and 5 feet long.

Each plank was milled square and to thickness by hand as I did not have the planar/thicknesser at the time. They were glued up two at a time and then using dowels registered from the top to try and keep the top surfaces as flat as possible, which did not work as well as I would have hoped, so there was still a lot of planing that needed to be done after the glue up to flatten it. The underside of the top is not so pretty

So for about €70 of walnut and €30 worth of white oak. All the rest was time, learning and sweat. I can still only see the flaws in it but over time hopefully I will start to see it as one of my first successful projects. I was never happy with the way the top was attached to the legs. Thick dowel was morticed into the underside and then passed through holes in the legs and then they were pegged with dowels (like a tusk tenon with dowels) It is not strong enough and has never worked properly. It does not help that I could not get the underside and the tops of the legs perfectly flat so there is a little play between them. If I do something similar again then I will need to figure out a better way to attach the legs to the top.

Thank you for the kind words.

SpitfireIV

I likes walnut me , my first venture with walnut was a flintlock pistol stock (see my pic folder in my profile), ever since then I've had a fondness for it. Lovely smell from it when its being worked, the dust is feckin' toxic though!!

I've a couple of project starting soon that I want to include some walnut in, maybe with some ash also or white oak, like your table I want to get some constrasting colors, but, something thats 'Irish' at the same time, so maybe the ash would be a better option?

Personally I've never yet gone to a timber yard, bought a rough plank and brought it home to cut and plane it myself, so thats gonna have to change, and soon too! :P.

Just out of interest, when you have the rough blocks/lenghts cut out I assume you had to leave them indoors to climatise for a week or more? Did you get any warpage or cupping on them after they were cut rough?

I think any piece that we make we can see the flaws, unfortunatley thats how it is, but its only because we are aware of them. Your average joe, or a client might not be aware of them (unless its something blatently ovious! ) they'll just see the piece for what it is, something beautiful and if you hit them with the 'wow factor' as I call it, then they cant see beyond that .

Actually, I'll be critical now (I hate having to!) its not the table itself, but your mates wiring! lol, bloody hell he needs to sort that out if he wants the table to stand out all the more. I'd nearly secure those two routers (or whatever they are) to the underside of the table top.

ennisa

HA! Yeah his wiring is awful but he was moving house at the time and they just ended up there. Or at least that was the story that he told me!