David's
Compact Computer Desk

The first step in making the cubby assembly is to gather together the stock I have set aside for this purpose.  Some was thicker stock that I resawed, some is resawn stock left over from previous projects, some is thicker stock that I've planed down to approximate thickness.

Starting with the largest pieces needed, I cut the up the pieces large enough to get full parts from one board.  Then I start working my way down the list from largest to smallest and match up boards, cut them to width and piece together the blanks I'll need for all of the cubby parts.  I have to keep in mind that I want the grain running the same direction in ALL of the parts so I won't have problems with parts popping loose because of expansion and contraction, which can happen if, for example, the vertical side panels have their grain running vertically and the small shelves have their grain running front to back.  The mis-matched grain would cause the glue to fail in time.  If all the parts have their grain running side to side (vertically in vertical parts) then the entire unit will expand and contract front to back as a unit and it will not stress the glue joints.

With all the parts cut, jointed, and labeled I'm working on getting blanks glued and clamped.  After about an hour in the clamps I can remove them and glue up another set, but I'll leave all the blanks to sit overnight so the glue can develop good strength before I start machining them into parts.

Once all the blanks are glued up I use the table saw to trim them to finished size, making sure they come out square, then sand them smooth and to finished thickness on the wide drum sander.

RATS!  While sanding these parts on the drum sander my mind started reviewing things I'd done and it stuck on the fact that the paper shelves looked short.  They were designed to be 10½" wide - but standard printer and notebook paper is 11" long, so standard paper won't fit on these paper shelves!  Not sure why I didn't catch that before, but I didn't.  If I were a cussing man, I'd be doing it now.

So, before I go any further I have to make up three new paper shelf blanks that will be long enough to hold printer paper.  I'll have to compensate for the added length here by re-cutting the smaller shelves narrower.  But first I need three new shelves at a rough length of 12".

OK, back on track.  The next task is to set up the table saw with a dado head configured to cut the 3/8" dadoes in the vertical panels into which the various shelves will fit.  I use my scrap piece to test the width and depth of cut and adjust them until they're perfect.  In this case "perfect" is just a smidge too tight because I will be doing one more round of sanding before assembly - this time by hand, but the final round will remove just a little more wood and I don't want the fit to be too lose when I get to the glue-up of this sub-assembly.

I begin cutting the dadoes by making the ones on the ends of each vertical panel -- which technically would make them rabbets because they are on the very edge.

Prior to cutting anything, I've laid out all the cuts to be made in pencil on each face of each panel.  The two middle dividers will have dadoes on both faces, and it's important to keep in mind the orientation of each panel so I don't accidentally cut one set upside down or something.  Having those laid-out in a clearly visible manner helps a lot.  Also, as I cut each dado or set of dadoes, I make sure to cut both panels one after the other so the cuts are exactly in the same places.

When this is done I can stack all four vertical panels together, line up the outer edges and hold them with clamps, if I've done my job properly, the grooves for the shelves will line up exactly -- front AND back -- and make nice neat little square holes.  BINGO!

In order to get nice smooth, even, and identical curves on the cut-outs of the paper shelves I whip up a quickie jig that holds the shelf blank, serves as a template for drawing the curve so I can bandsaw away most of the waste, then using a piloted flush trim bit in the router table I use the jig as a routing template to finish the curves.

The end result are very nice curves that are so smooth they need only finish sanding to be completed.

Now I do some dry fitting to test the fit of all the parts.  Here I assemble enough of the cubby to get an accurate width measurement to be absolutely sure it will slip into the desk case... having it come up 1/8" too wide when the time comes to mount it would be devastating!  We're good though.

Then I begin gluing and clamping the two outer assemblies, making sure they come out nice and square.  To draw this one up good and tight while the glue dried took a lot of clamps.

The final step is to install the three paper shelves between the two outer assemblies and clamp them up until the glue sets.  I'll go ahead and finish this assembly before mounting it to the interior of the desk because getting a proper level of finish into the back of those narrow envelope shelves would be murder otherwise.  The cubby does not get glued into the desk, just mounted with screws, so the finish will not interfere with joinery.  Plus, that opens the possibility that should the desk ever be put to some other use and a different arrangement of shelves were desired, this one could be removed and replaced with a new one.

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