Kristy has been wanting a bigger computer desk for her office for some time, so she bought a set of steel legs online.
We picked up some 3/4″ cherry boards that would make a good surface.
One side was planed already, so I just needed to get the mill lines out of the other side.
I cut the boards down to about 4 foot. There are some ant holes in the center of the left boards, but they are pretty small. I talked with Kristy about filling them, but she seems ok with it.
I usually dowel join pieces like this. I bought the “JointMate” tool a couple years ago to do the dowel joinery, but I don’t use it as suggested. The pieces I use are the drill bit, the “tenon centers”, and the “self-centering post”.
First, I used some blocks to clamp the board vertically to make it easier to do the dowel holes. I don’t have a bench clamp, but this works fine and is a good hack.
At this stage, I use the bit like a punch and use the post tool to mark the middle of the edge, which is an efficient method to find the center.
The dowel kit comes with drill stops but the allen screws stripped out almost immediately and are worthless now. The alternative is painters tape and it works great to indicate how far too drill. I always go a little over halfway of the dowel so that you are not forced to drill deeper during glue-up.
Drilling it.
At this point all of the dowel holes have been drilled on one board. When you have more sections, this becomes more complicated, but 2 boards is pretty quick work.
Next, I set up a straight 2×4 to keep the ends aligned and put the boards on some pipe clamps.
Now that everything is ready, I insert the “tenon centers” in the holes of the first board and squeeze them together with the pipe clamps. I need to get more “tenon centers” so I don’t have to move them down the board. It just take longer. I found a 3D model online for the tenon centers and I plan on printing some soon.
Here is a shot of the indention they make. Now I just need to drill the holes on the other board.
I dry fit the boards with the dowels to ensure I didn’t mess up. I didn’t.
Glue up and clamp with the pipe clamps.
I clamped some blocks on the ends to make sure the surface doesn’t bow at the join.
Glue intermission. I hope to get back to this in the same day, but I don’t want to hurry the glue. We’ll see.