Child's Computer Desk, Page Three

I decided to mount the monitor shelf with Domino tenons. First, I laid out the locations of the mortises on the bottom side of the shelf. The setup I used to correctly index the Domino was the Qwas dogs to hold the piece and the rail dogs in a short MFS profile. The profiles acted a straight edge or guide to index the Domino at a perfect right angle to the back of the piece. I transferred the center marks of mortises from the work piece to the blue painter's tape on the MFS profile. Then I aligned the center line on Domino's base with my pencil lines on the tape and just like that I've got perfectly placed mortises in the field of my work piece.

Here's a shot of the mortises. This technique makes it really easy to cut mortises when you aren't indexing the Domino off the edge of the work piece. You could substitute the MFS profile with a guide rail, using the back edge of the rail to index the Domino. That's how I used to do this except I used the MFT fence and guide rail mounted on the table. I like using the MFS profile a little better because it doesn't have the foam grip tape that the guide rails have. This makes it easier to slide the work piece under the profile to fine tune the alignment. This technique could be used on the side panels of a bookcase to attach the shelves or any other time you need to cut mortises in the middle of your piece.

Same process on the desk top but with a longer MFS profile. I used painter's tape to draw to layout lines since the piece already had finish on it and the lines would be visible.

After the mortises are cut, pull off the tape and the layout lines are gone. I like doing this because I've gotten into trouble in the past with small light pencil lines and with a piece this far along it would be a shame to ruin it now.

Here is the monitor shelf on the top.

I'm drilling a hole in the bottom of the legs for leveling feet in this picture. I used a doweling jig and 3/8" drill bit. If you closely you'll see the new imperial Centrotec drill bit set, I'm loving imperial sized the hole with my T15.

The whole leg assembly and top are held together by pocket screws. I attached long stretchers to legs to make the assembly able to stand up, that made it easier to prime. With two coats of Zinsser shellac primer that I tinted to help prevent any knot holes from bleeding through will give the piece some color. Then I drilled the rest of the pocket holes.

With the top attached the desk is finished. The construction time on this project was only a few hours but with the laminating of the legs, clamping time for the legs assemblies and drying time for the primer and polyurethane it stretched out over a weekend (Friday night through Sunday morning). For me, the beauty of this project was a design that took advantage of the relatively simple construction techniques to maximize visual appeal. Sure, I made a few mistakes along the way. Over coming your mistakes is part of building almost every project. The project turned out fine and I had a good time so I'd call this one a success.

Here's a link to the SketchUp model in the Google 3D Warehouse.