My daughter and her fiance wanted a desk to fit a specific spot in their apartment. He drew up a decent set of plans to work from. I decided to make it from ash, so I picked up a bunch of 8/4 and 4/4 lumber. Cut the support pieces to length, flattened one face, jointed one side and cut pairs from the same piece.

Flattened one face, jointed one edge on the rest of the 8/4 stuff and ripped strips 1-3/4 wide. Will rotate each strip 90 deg to bring the quarter sawn side to the face in the usual way and glue together to make the top. Hoping to have the top be about 1-1/2 thick by the time its done. We’ll see how close I get. Some of those strips warped pretty good when I ripped them out. It’s a fairly large top at 68x32.

 

That’s going to make a great desk!

Thanks for taking us along for the ride, look forward for updates.

I’ve laid out all the strips to orient growth ring direction, numbered each one and indicated top side for how they will be in the desk top. Mating pairs have neen jointed and glued, now each pair is being jointed and glued to it’s mating pairs. I’ve divided the top in half and once each half is complete I can determine if I need to make another strip to get the width I want.2 of the strips are lap jointed from shorter pieces.I currently have a 1” wide strip for the middle, but after jointing all of them I think I’m going to fall a little short of the 32” I’m looking for. I’ll likely need to make another one a little wider. 

NICE JOB ZACK!!!!!!

Great start Zack. I'm here for the journey. Looking forward to following the build.

These are the plans he drew up. I’m making the top a little thicker than the drawing, It’s a freestanding top and I want to make sure it stays flat. I figured about 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 inch thick and turning the quarter sawn grain to the surface will let that top hold itself flat for a lifetime. I’ll use mortise and tenon joints for all the supports make the main supports a little thicker and add a gusset at the bottom to support that heavy top.

Nice drawing!

Yeah, I was pretty impressed. Clean and plenty of detail.

Spent a few hours sharpening my jointer iron, now back to knocking it dull again.

Sweet! I love me some Ash. Can't wait to see this happen! 

Nice work!

Last set of 4 in the clamps. 
Jointing first set of 8

Steady as she goes...coming along.

Jointed, ready for glue.

Lot of crispy curly shavings. You getting a hamster or gerbil?😅

Had a couple of hamsters when my daughter was a kid. Now I just got one of these. She’s not much bigger than a hamster.

Came up shorter than I expected. Had enough cutoff pieces to splice up one more strip. Had to pick up another plank and rip 3 more from it. Should have plenty now. Got one half in the clamps and the other half ready.

That's gonna have some weight to it!

Coming along Zack. You're going to need help moving that around.

You know that’s right. We’re going to have fun moving it to their 3rd floor apartment.