The photo on the left shows a Shaker-inspired, leather-topped, cherry desk in its final stages of completion. The top is frame and panel; leather will be glued to a 3/4 inch plywood substrate. The drawers are traditionally made, guided by runners and kickers, hand-cut dovetails front and rear. (See photo below.)
With the exception of the frame for the top and the drawer front, the finish is multiple coats of shellac, rubbed down between coats. Because the top frame and the drawer fronts will be subject to quite a lot of wear and some soiling (skin oil deposits), after the shellac was applied I coated those components with several coats of shop-made wipe-on poly. Other desks I finished that way have held up for several years of heavy use.
The frame and panel desk top, with the leather being trimmed to fit (by Carole, whose bowls and boxes are displayed in earlier blog posts), is shown in the photos below.
There are few things I enjoy more than seeing a project like this through to completion. My daughter is picking the desk up this coming Friday. My hope is that she will enjoy it for a long, long time.
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