Several years ago, before I'd heard of Sauder, the wife and I toured one of their factories in Ohio. They call it Sauder Woodworking and refer to their factory laborers as wood workers. I kept my peace. 

20 minutes ago, Gene Howe said:

I kept my peace.

Does your tongue still hurt Gene?

At one time the company was actually a woodworking enterprise, as I understand it. Things changed, but the name didn't.

Both my sisters love their Sauder entertainment centers. They are a successful commercial enterprise. But, woodworkers? Maybe not. 

4 hours ago, Gene Howe said:

I kept my peace.

She put you in the trunk on the way home again didn't she?

 Fred, are you planning selves for the desk?

No, it's going to be strictly a table type affair. The frame with a top (and a keyboard shelf in the drawer hole) is all it will be.

On 10/12/2019 at 12:44 PM, Fred W. Hargis Jr said:

OK, I was chasing those hinges Lew linked above and came up with something else. It's this one

and the installation could be made to work and do exactly what I want. It's a little deep to install into a 3/4" rail, but I can glue some extra wood to the back of the rail to accommodate it.

 

 

Welllll, poopie. I did order those hinges, and they showed up yesterday (from S.D., Ca. to western OH in 3 days!) But I now realize I need a way to drill 30mm holes ( 1 3/16") and I don't have one. So now I'm waiting on a bit. I believe I can make them work.

Your going to do a much better job than I did on my daughters. I was making my daughters when she was on high school and made it with flip keyboard and finished it before I bought the hardware. No longer used(she’s 28 now) and I hide the flip down so good I can’t find it...it is somewhere.....

On 10/16/2019 at 12:00 PM, Fred W. Hargis Jr said:

So now I'm waiting on a bit. I believe I can make them work.

 Has the bit arrived yet?

Yeah, and it is a piece of crap. It's a Chinese (Woodstock) rband, the only one I could get quickly in the size I needed. That said, the hole is supposed to be 30MM which is slightly smaller than the 1 3/16" size I have and despite the crappy quality of the bit, I think I can get the 4 holes out of it I need. I did some tests, but with the nice weather I haven't had any time in the shop. The yard work is keeping me busy. It's supposed to rain today, I may get to fitting the parts tomorrow. (Thanks for asking).

What makes the quality bad?

The cutting edges are very rough, and the overall machining is second rate. It's also a full 1/32" undersized, and I thought it was HSS, it's actually just carbon steel.

Mount the top with those floating figure 8 connectors and it should work fine.

Realy nice design and craftmanship.  

48 minutes ago, Fred W. Hargis Jr said:

The cutting edges are very rough, and the overall machining is second rate. It's also a full 1/32" undersized, and I thought it was HSS, it's actually just carbon steel.

Sometimes a  bit can be a bit undersized but sometimes drill presses can have a lot of wobble. Sometimes this works out and sometimes it dont...

 

Just many years of happy and many I was totally pissed...

 

Won't really know till ya try it...let's us know

OK, I've done a test with the drill bit and those hinges. Couple of things, the drill bit actually cuts holes 1/32" undersize...but that's still a fairly sloppy fit with a 30 MM hinge. I think it will still work. I fastened to test boards together with the hinges and the results weren't spectacular (I learned a lot). First the hinges didn't come with screws, but I did have a supply of #6x 3/4" flatheads I keep on hand for hinges. They seemed to fit just fine. The hinge requires 2 different depth holes. The one you see in the plywood is supposed to be 3mm deep, the other side is 12MM deep. When I do that, the drawer front (the solid oak piece on the left) isn't flush with the bottom of the tray (the plywood). So I drilled the ply wood hole another 1/8" deeper and they lined up. These hinges aren't perfect but they'll work for the basement desk....I'll choose a different set (they make some that are larger and use the same depth hole on both pieces. One other thing, the screws on the drawer front piece are actually angled into the wood, it's really hard to get the hinge properly aligned with the set up, the screw kept trying to pull the hinge out of place. I don't know if you can see the misalignment in the bottom most hinge in the pic, but it out of alignment enough to make the flaps close very tightly.

On 10/12/2019 at 5:23 PM, Gene Howe said:

Several years ago, before I'd heard of Sauder, the wife and I toured one of their factories in Ohio. They call it Sauder Woodworking and refer to their factory laborers as wood workers. I kept my peace. 

I only live about 15 miles from Archbold, Ohio where Sauders is.

They also make church pews, caskets and many other furniture besides desk.

19 hours ago, Michael Thuman said:

Mount the top with those floating figure 8 connectors and it should work fine.

Realy nice design and craftmanship.  

Yeah, that's the plan. I keep some of those and some of the Z connectors on hand.

Success! If you've followed my hinge saga for the drop down drawer front I've got everything figured out. To get the effect of the drawer front being 1/8" lower than the tray, I need to use 1/2" material for the tray and 3/4" material for the drawer front (OK, 12mm for the tray and 16MM for the front). Next the 1 3/16" forstner wasn't working, the hole is far to sloppy for the hinges (too big), soo I wound up buying a Fisch 30 MM bit. This one is Austrian, and the quality difference versus the Chinese bit (1 3/16" is considerable...it's also HSS. Then setting the DP fence precisely 8.5mm from the edge of the work pieces was a PITA, these hinges require a little more precision than typical for woodworking. But after all that you can see my test pieces (notice the several test holes) open/close the way i want for the desk. I probably have to put this on hold for some yard work at the moment, but I'm leaviung the DP set up for when I can get back to this, and maybe get the thing ready for finishing.

 

9 hours ago, Fred W. Hargis Jr said:

I need to use 1/2" material for the tray and 3/4" material for the drawer front

I ran into something like this when building this hidden cabinet.  Was limited on how thick the door could be and remain flush with the wall.  Don't remember the measurements but I do recall I couldn't use my original plan.