construction of the desk

we began the desk by carving the legs. as the autocad design for the legs was slightly too complicated and time consuming we decided to change the design slightly. we then used 4x4 pine to make the legs. this was done on the lathe by Dan and myself. due to the size of the wood it was quite time consuming however we acomplished the design that we hoped for. the legs were the sanded on the lathe and stained with dark oak wood stain.













we ran into complicaions as the autocad sizes were not quite correct this left our desk legs considerably shorter than planned. to correct this we added leg extensions. blocks of the same size pine were cut to size. i drilled holes into the top of the pine and we hammered some 13mm dowel into the holes. we then lined the dowel up on the top of the legs and drilled a further two holes in each. once placed together, the extensions were complete and we sanded the tops to make them level and smooth.







the top of the desk was a simple rectangle of MDF screwed to the top of the legs. the desk was extremely flimsy at first so we strengthened it with braces, like the ones used to join the flats of the set. they were nailed onto the desk, using the air nailer, flush with the edges of the table, between each of the legs. we then used angled pieces of pine to strengthen these braces. the second job of the braces was to hold the mounting around the desk. these were pieces of pre-cut 6mm MDF that we attached to the braces, flush with the top of the desk. we used blocks of 18mm MDF to strengthen the corners between mountings.





when everything was attached we then marked on the design of the mount and cut it with the jigsaw. to make the top of the desk look more sturdy we cut a piece of 18mm MDF 2cm bigger than the original tabletop and glued it on. after it was in place we used the hand router to round the edges. we then varnished the mounting and tabletop. Nuria pre-cut some rectangles of 18mm MDF which i then glued together with a hot glue gun, this created the boxes that nuria glued onto the top/back of the desk. smaller pieces of 2mm MDF were then stuck onto the front of the boxes to create draws. i used dome headed brass pins to make draw handles. the mount that we were going to put on the back of the desk did not look of good enough quality so we decided against using it. the whole desk was then given a coat of wood stain varnish and placed into the study by the window.

construction of the bookcase

The bookcase which was to be placed in the study area of the set was assigned to myself, Dan and Nuria. The original design as shown previously with a cardboard model, was to build a bookcase to put into the alcove of the room. However, to save time and wood we decided to make the alcove itself the bookcase. We began by constructing five shelves made from 12mm MDF. three shelves were used for the actual bookcase shelving. two were used for the top of the bookcase and the bottom of the shelving unit. at first we used small blocks to hold up the shelves at the sides and back. however this did not look right and we rectified it by putting braces onto the shelves themselves this both made the shelves stronger and hid the blocks that held them up.










once these were in place we made the front of the bookcase. this was a piece of 12mm MDF that we screwed onto blocks already placed in the wall. The doors were made from the same MDF however we used a jigsaw to cut out the middle, this left us a door frame that we screwed onto the shelves. as the bookcase is fake we decided that we would make fake doors and place books inside before inserting glass (acrylic) into the doors.









the bookcase was then painted and hand grained. for the drawers at the bottom of the unit we used 6mm MDF and used the overhead router to round the edges. these were then painted in the same way as the rest of the bookcase. the drawers were then nailed to the front of the bookcase and doorhandles put on. to finish the doors we put acrylic on the back of the opening. we ran into a couple of problems with this however. first of all we could not source the correct size of acrylic due to a company moving. because of this we had to add two small pieces of acrylic to the top and bottom of the two doors. we covered up the joins with beading that starts the lattice pattern. the other problem that we ran into was the adhesive that we used. at first we tried 'no more nails' but it didnt seem to stick very well or quick enough so we finally used a hot glue gun. we filled the bookcase with books and small knick-knacks the doors were then screwed onto the front of the bookcase and the lattice was finished. a coat of glaze was then painted onto the woodwork.

saturday's finding.

japanese plates in a charity shop. didnt buy as there were only 2 but got a picture as the detail and guilding is nice

japanese plates journal entry 2

the second set of japanese plates is yet to be completed but here is the progress so far. the set will contain a geisha, a samurai and an old japanese man. the picture of the geisha is just drawn on paper and will be put onto a plate next. the samurai is the plate i have just finished due to the intricate detail in the armour i drew it in marker as i am not steady with a bruch however outlines can be added in paint later for a bolder finish. the translation on the samurai plate means 'Bushido' which is way of the warrior.