Popular Woodworking 2007-12 № 166, страница 14

Arts & Mysteries

BY ADAM CHERUBINI

The Standing Desk, Finished

Built with traditional joinery and tools, this year-long project looks at home in an 18th-century shop.

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his is the last article in my year-long series on building a standing desk for my shop. In this article I'll show the various activities required to finish this piece. For me, finishing encompasses all the work that takes place after the structure is complete. So we'll look at making mouldings, application of paint and film finishes, and the attachment of hardware.

Function of Mouldings

Mouldings serve important aesthetic functions. They punctuate design elements, ease transitions and describe the structure. Convex mouldings indicate mass. Base mouldings bulge under the weight of the structure above. Your eye rolls around the convex moulding, tracing its outline.

Concave mouldings blend suspended surfaces. Crown mouldings are usually concave. The eye slides along the concave moulding moving from one surface to another.

Making a Bolection

You can use "generic" hollow- and round-soled moulding planes to make just about any shape of moulding you desire. I used my hollows and rounds to make the bolection profile for my base mould. The bolection profile is comprised of three basic shapes, the half-round astragal, a fillet or flat spot, and a concave shape called a cove.

Exterior Finish

There was considerably more painted furniture in the 18th century than the surviving examples would lead us to believe. Documentary evidence tells us some furniture was painted to look like more expensive woods. This lesser-quality furniture simply hasn't survived to our time. We also know that many maple pieces, today appearing to have natural

New design, traditional techniques. Built with traditional joinery and period hand tools, this standing desk looks like it would be at home in the 18th century. But this desk is no copy. I've never seen anything quite like it. Using the techniques I covered in this year's Arts & Mysteries column, you can build authentic furniture without even a picture for inspiration.

24 ■ Popular Woodworking December 2007

photos by theauthor