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Child's Computer Desk, Page Two
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Here's one of the legs roughed out.
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Since I didn't have a pattern bit long enough to make the cut in one pass I needed two bits (a top and bottom bearing bit) and two passes to complete the cut. I used the template and a top bearing pattern bit to make the first pass. Then I removed the template and flipped the piece over and used a bottom bearing pattern bit to finish the cut. Here I'm using the OF2200 with the table widener base.
I was called away from the project as I finished gluing up one set of legs, so only one set was ready to go. Having parts of a project get out of order is one thing I generally try to avoid. I ended up using two router so I didn't have to keep changing the bits out when I was ready to work on the second set.
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Here it is routed to final shape. One thing to caution you about is be careful when routing curves like this because you can get some chipping. I took it slow and chipping was very minimal.
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Okay, I said I made some mistakes along the way in this project. Well, here's one of them. I allowed the router to tip while pattern routing. That cut into the piece so I needed to make a repair. A little Bondo to the rescue.
Since I had the Bondo out I decided to go over the knot holes and any other blemishes. I don't think I would have bothered doing it otherwise. So, in this a mistake ended up improving the project.
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One more step on the legs and that's rounding over the edges. I used the OF 1010 with table widener and a 3/8" round over bit. I had to take off the chip catcher in order to rout the inside area where the leg meets the stretcher. The chips were flying then but the dust collection was exceptional with the rest of the routing with the catcher installed.
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I worked on the top next. It's an oval shape and you need a number of layout marks to draw an oval. I used the Festool/Stabila level to help with the layout. On the top of this level there is a centerline and rulers on each side. The measurements go out from the center making layouts from centerpoints a breeze. Here's a great webpage I found that helped with the layout, Oval Layout Calculator.
I got sort of busy so I don't have pictures of shaping of the oval. I followed pretty much procedure as I used on the legs. I made a template, traced it, then roughed out the shape and finished it off by pattern routing the final shape.
Here's another confession, I made a mistake here too. When I made the SketchUp model I based the scale of the desk with the impression I had a wider piece of plywood for the top than I really did. The piece I had was about 4" too narrow. I looked at changing the dimensions of the oval but it looked out of scale with the legs. So I decided to keep the dimensions pretty close to the originals and have a flat spot in the back of the oval.
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I used iron on edge banding and trimmed it up with the MFK 700. The MFK worked beautifully on the oval. You can see the flat spot on the back side of the oval in this picture.
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Next is the small shelf for the monitor. I needed to both rip and crosscut this pieces but instead of taking the time to setup the fence and guide rail on my MFT I use Qwas dogs and Qwas rail dogs.
With the holes in the MFT top all being perfectly cut on a CNC machine it's like having a built-in square on your MFT table. I placed the Qwas dogs down to act as a fence and attached the rail dogs in the clamp groove on the bottom of my guide rail, then drop the dogs in the holes. This made a perfectly square cut without any hassle. This was a big time saver in my project since I needed all of the table space of my MFT but still had to make crosscuts. Setting up the fence/guide rail and squaring then up several times during this project would been very time consuming. With the Qwas products it only took seconds.
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After cutting the piece to size I rounded off the corners with the jigsaw. This piece is something else I was a little disappointing with. It's not the best looking piece of birch ply but it's what I had laying around.
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I'm trimming the edge banding, again, the MFK 700 shines here. I used a Festool sanding block with 180 grit Brilliant 2 to finish off the edge band.
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