Might have seen this one taking up space in the space a couple of weeks ago! I’ve moved flats recently and wanted to upgrade to a nice standing desk. With access to the Space and a desire to get into woodworking, I decided to get a frame and make a tabletop for it. Here’s a few photos of the process, and some of the lessons learned:
Decided on using beech as it was the cheapest hardwood I could find (sourced from SL Hardwoods in Croydon, they were very professional), and purchased it PAR. I was hesitant because my internet research leading up to the project had me believing that beech wouldn’t look very good, but I have to say after doing this project that that’s a load of BS, it looks great and has a lovely pattern.
Getting the wood to the space. Next time I think I’ll just eat the shipping cost:
Checked the boards for defects and such, and organized them how I wanted them. One of the boards had a split, so I cut out a bow-tie from a piece of contrasting scrap and chiseled the hole for it to prevent that from splitting further. Shout out to @giles for showing me how to sharpen the chisels! I cut some strips from my spare board to pad out the width to my desired final dimensions (thank you @giles and @joeatkin2 for help with that) . I also used the biscuit joiner to help align the boards for glue-up :
And here’s the glue-up. Thanks to @PReardon for help. So nice that we have so many clamps! Got good advice to use cauls, used uni-strut scrap from Arch 2 (they’re by the clamps in the corner now, thanks @joeatkin2!). I did notice the cauls bending a bit, could have been due over-tightening of the screws? I figure I would’ve encountered this with wood cauls anyways, but let me know if that isn’t really the case:
Cutting the ends square, this would’ve been such a pain on a normal table saw:
Didn’t take a picture of this part, but then chamfered all of the edges. While doing so, I screwed up one of the corners. @joeatkins2 gave me the idea of cutting it out and using a contrasting wood to cover it, which I liked. So I made a little jig with the biscuit joiner (would not have felt comfortable with the table saw spline jig on something this big):
Didn’t take any pictures of the long, painful process of sanding, or making the clamps to hold the table to the frame, but here’s the underside of the table after installing the threaded inserts:
And here’s the final table installed on the frame, with some detail shots:
And as an added bonus, cable management featuring some thingiverse-sourced 3d printed parts:
Again, big thanks to @giles, @joeatkin2, @preardon, and @ryanf for all of their help and tips along the way.
