Now that the top was at a reasonable state and the edges were fairly square, it's time to move onto the next step - installing the edging. Because the reclaimed wood was glued on top of a piece of pine, you could see the two different woods, which I didn't want. I wanted to showcase the old/reclaimed barnwood.
I started by cutting strips to size and gluing up one edge plus some overhang.
(Above: I cut some thin strips for the edging)
(Above: I started out gluing one piece of edging down)
The reason I glued the first edges with an overhang is so I could flush-trim the overhang to provide an even edge for the rest of the glue-up.
(Above: Flush-trimmed the excess)
It was slow progress, because I had to wait for glue to dry after gluing down one piece of edging at a time, trimming excess, making sure things fit, trimming more when needed, and so on.
(Above: You can never have enough clamps)
(Above: Trimming more pieces to fit)
Once that was finished, I then had to trim more 'overhang' - I actually could have made an easier setup for my router, but I was being lazy and doing it the dangerous way.
(Above: One word - unsafe.)
Doing it the dangerous way left me with mediocre results, but I'd be doing more sanding so I was okay with this for now. In the future, I'll do it the right way.
Once all the edging was on and routed flat, I realized I didn't like how 'thick' the edging looked, so I grabbed a power planer (since my Fathers' power planer was no longer functional) - and thicknessed the edging a bit.
(Above: Reasonable results for a 'budget' tool)
(Above: I made sure I clamped on a chip-out board for the end grain)
Now that I had the edging thicknessed, this was a good opportunity to give it a 1/8"th roundover to break the hard edge. Sure, I could have used one of my many planes, but I needed to practice my router skills, since it's a tool I use very infrequently.
The roundover turned out okay, the bit dug in a bit too much in spots, mostly due to the uneven surface of the wood. (I'm calling the uneven surface a 'feature' now.)
The edging wood I used was severely cupped, bowed, and even twisted. I mitigated as much of that as I could by cutting the boards to thinner strips, but you can't always get it all. I planed what I could a swell, but I didn't notice that the mating edges were not square. Oops. So that left a small gap between the desk and the edging on the underside of the desk.
Epoxy to the rescue. Aaaaaand since the top of the desk still had some minor imperfections, I filled those with epoxy too. This time I sprung for better epoxy, instead of those tiny $5-8 tubes that have maybe 0.5oz of epoxy in them.
That's all for this round. What I have left on my plate is as follows:
- Finish sanding of the top and bottom
- Apply dutch oil
- Apply stain
- Apply many layers of polyurethane clear coat
- Install bolt inserts
- Build the pipe frame
Stay tuned for more, we're almost done!