David's
Compact Computer Desk

The top plate of this desk is the over sized, very visible part that sits on the very top of the whole structure.  I made up the blank previously by gluing together two pieces of a single board that had nice straight grain along one side so the joint would be easy to hide.

Our first step is to sand the ugly away and leave a good smooth flat plate to work with.  This sanding is done with the wide drum sander and many, many light passes that will remove any curvature in the blank instead of mashing it flat like taking fewer, heavy passes would.

Then I joint one edge smooth, square and straight and trim the blank to width in two passes, jointed edge against the rip fence.  The first removes all but 1/8" of the waste.  The second, light, pass takes it to finished width and reduces the chance of burning the wood (cherry is prone to this) on this final clean-up pass.

I mount the big cross-cut sled to trim the ends to length and square.  I trim both ends to be sure they're both straight and square to both long edges.

With that done I check to see how well I did by confirming that the width and length are correct and by measuring across the diagonals to see if the panel is perfectly rectangular.  It is.

Now we begin shaping the top plate.  First I lay-out the cuts to be made in pencil on the plate.  The under-side edges on the sides and front get a 30° bevel to reduce the visual "bulk" of this plate.  I mount the proper router bit, set the height and depth of cut and run the panel through vertically.

The first pass takes off about half of the waste, I'll take two more passes to remove the rest.

I set the fence to leave 1/16" of wood on the second pass, then make the final pass as a clean-up pass -- again, to remove any burn marks and prevent more by taking a very light final cut.

Then I swap out the beveling bit for a round-over and dress the top edges and the lower back edge.  It will have a much shorter overhang in the back, allowing the desk to sit against a wall, so it gets a slightly different treatment.

That completes the shaping of the top.  Now I set it in place, measure the overhangs and check to be sure it turned out right.  Looks good, AND it even lays nice and flat on top of the cabinet.

The final step is to apply cherry wood filler to the end grain and sand all surfaces to 220 grit.  I'll set this part aside until the casework can be glued together.

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