Popular Woodworking 2000-10 № 117, страница 40

Two simple tricks make cutting and gluing this desk a real snap.

This is an original design by Armand Sussman, an amateur furniture maker living in Pennsylvania. The design creates an illusion of wood twisting and turning. By using contrasting woods, an endless stripe is created, adding movement to this piece. The glass top serves as a work surface, but it doesn't obscure the base. The numerous lap joints (called "step-miters" by Mr. Sussman) have been worked into a novel Greek key design on the ends of the desk, which is built using cherry and walnut.

The desk is constructed by laminating strips of wood together. By making some of the layers shorter than others, you make the joints for attaching that lamination to another. As a result, all of the materials for this project must be machined precisely. Any variances will show up as gaps in the joints after final assembly.

Tricks to Dead-on Components

There are two tricks to make sure your pieces are all the right size and won't slide around when you glue them up. First, when cutting out the pieces for this desk, I found it easier to cut them grouped by letters, such as A1, A2, A3. A1 is the longest piece, A2 is 1V2" shorter, and A3 is 3" shorter than A1. Because all of the desk's components are stepped like this, I came up with a quick way to make these

by Jim Stack

Jim Stack is acquisitions editor for Popular Woodworking Books. This desk is one of 15 designs that will appear in the forthcoming book "Fast Furniture" (Popular Woodworking Books) which will be available in January 2001.