Looking back, this was really one of the first NorCalMod projects — a piece of design-build furniture for a house other than our own.
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(8/29/2011)
This weekend and last, we helped a friend and neighbor, Laura, to build a zebrawood desk. It turned out well, no?
(Lots more pictures after the jump -- and click on the pictures for larger, clearer versions)
Laura wanted something a bit more "industrial-feeling" for her studio space so we tossed a few plans around. Some included iron supports and frames and one of which was for a floating, suspended desk nearly 12 feet long. While it would have worked, the suspension cable would have gotten in the way of working, so we devised a simple center support for the desk itself and carried the cable idea to the shelves above.
When shopping for wood, we initially went in thinking walnut plywood, but Laura fell in love with the zebrawood 3/4in plywood at MacBeath and with three 4X8 sheets in the truck, we headed back.
The desk itself is really simple and made from only two sheets of plywood. It's floating about 2in from the back wall for cables and such to hang down and had to be well reinforced. We opted for a 2-ply 2.25in plywood rail (one rail front and back) which supports the nearly 6 foot expanses well -- each piece is secured to its mate with glue and screws every 8 inches to make a pretty stable beam. Along with the 3/4in top, the face profile of the desk clocks in at 3in. It would have been even more stable with a broader support or even a piece of angle iron, but as-is, it's holding quite well.
The most time consuming part was cutting down the strips to make the supports. a 4X8 sheet of plywood is a hard thing to handle on a smaller-bodied table-saw, but we managed.
The final piece was oiled with Watco Danish Oil, sealed with Minwax Wipe-On Polyurethane (Satin) and finished with Liberon's Black Bison Wax (neutral)... Laura is taking care of that (she ground, stained and sealed their concrete floors, so there's been lots of practice there.)
the shelves above are built in a similar fashion, but fastened to the wall which made the doubled-up plywood rails a bit unnecessary, so we went with 1.75in single ply rails (as opposed to 2.25in double ply for the desk). If the shelf were deeper than its existing 12in, we might have doubled-up the front supports or made them more broad.
The cable that suspends the shelves runs through the center support and is tightened by a small turnbuckle up top. It's a pretty trick set-up as-is, but we even had plans to recess the support itself into the beam above to hide any sort of attachment mechanism -- just a slender cable disappearing into the beam and shelves. As it is, Laura liked the exposde fasteners (like the cable stop pictured below), so we went with the simpler turnbuckle and exposed hardware idea.
The end-game is to have two pieces of cold-rolled steel on the back wall under the first shelf to serve as a magnet board... pictures to come soon.
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