Mukta’s Lotus Desk

TEXT AND PHOTOS BY PETER ROBERT PRESNELL

This piece was commissioned by a lady from India who now resides in Napa, California, and prefers to write letters by hand. She explained that her favorite relaxed position was sitting on the floor, whether writing by hand or working on her lap top computer. So, she wondered, would it be possible to fashion a low desk that she could use while sitting in a lotus position. I was trying to envision a desk with short legs when it dawned on me: She was asking for a coffee table with pencil and paper drawers! She had seen the Greene & Greene-style end tables that I’d submitted to Woodwork magazine [Issue #105, June 2007] and requested that the design incorporate a similar top, especially the wings. She was also very drawn to the lacewood/mahogany combination with rosewood details that I’d used in that furniture. Here’s how I built Mukta’s Lotus Desk.

PLANS AND PATTERNS

MUKTA’S LOTUS DESK

DESK DETAILS

THE LEGS

     After making full-scale drawings of the legs and corbels, I adhered the paper patterns to 1/4″ hardboard and converted the paper to solid patterns. The hardboard patterns were in turn used to trace the shapes onto the mahogany leg blanks (1-1/8″ × 3-1/2″ × 14-7/8″) and the corbel blanks (1″ × 3-1/4″ × 8-3/8″), which were bandsawn to within 1/8″ of the line. The blanks were actually cut longer than the final length listed above to accommodate the screws used to secure the hard patterns to the leg and corbel blanks, then cut to final length after shaping. Their shapes were refined with a flush trim bit on the router table (1). The edges were softened with a 1/8″ roundover bit. The corbels and legs were slotted for #10 biscuits.

     Next, I cut out and refined the leg aprons, and routed mortises (5/16″ × 2-3/8″ × 3/4″ deep) in each end of the aprons and in the legs [see drawings]. I glued and clamped these assemblies and set them aside, leaving off the corbels until later.

THE TOP

     The top is composed of 5/8″-thick, 7-ply maple for the substrate with a 1/8″-thick lamination of book-matched lacewood on the top surface and 1/8″ mahogany on the bottom. I resawed the mahogany and lacewood veneers approximately 3/16″ thick and edge-glued them into single panels. To aid in this glue-up, I made some slotted 1×2 clamping boards to protect the outer edges of the veneers and provide uniform clamping pressure. Heavy cauls were added to insure flatness (2).

     I found the only successful way to clean up and smooth the lacewood panels without tear-out, or at least minimizing tear-out, was to use my smoothing plane set up with a 50° York frog, and the blade set to make shavings of less than .001″ (3). The panels were then sealed with several coats of Zinsser Bulls Eye^® shellac on the side that would be glued to the plywood substrate (4). I coated both sides of the plywood at the same time. Once the pores were thoroughly sealed on both the veneers and the plywood, I brushed on Weldwood contact cement to all mating surfaces. (I’m referring to the solvent based cement, not the waterborne version which does not seem to deliver the same tac strength.) It required several touch-up coats before the glaze was consistent on all lamination surfaces. The veneer panels were pressed down onto the plywood with the aid of a veneer roller (5).

     To digress for a moment, there is a certain amount of “negative press” concerning the use of contact cement for high quality furniture laminations. However, my experience with this adhesive has been a positive one. I have used the technique for more than 30 years, and I’ve been able to periodically observe and monitor many pieces of my work where resawn veneer laminations were put down with contact cement; I have never encountered delamination in any of the pieces I’ve built in that time. I think that the resistance to its use has more to do with prejudice than actual evidence, realizing of course that the technique employed has much to do with the success of any method.

     I have found that the less porous the surfaces to be bonded, the better the results. The use of shellac to seal the pores is a step I’ve added to the otherwise excellent instructions printed on the can. The instructions point out, for instance, that a minimum of 25 lbs. per square inch of pressure should be applied, starting at the center and working out to the edges. It explains that this is the equivalent of 75 lbs. of pressure when applied with a 3″ J-roller which can be readily achieved if the bonded surface is worked on a waist-high workbench—a procedure I follow whenever I use contact cement.

     However, no matter who is documenting how and why they build a certain way, it should never be taken as necessarily the best or the only way. If I ever saw any of my work delaminate, I’d change camps in a minute. Do what you believe in.

     Once cured, I planed and sanded the top and bottom veneer surfaces, then trimmed off the front and back edges, leaving the top 19-1/4″ wide but several inches overlong until after the front and back mahogany moldings had been applied (6). I then ran a light 1/16″ chamfer along the mating edges of the top and the front and back mahogany moldings.

THE WINGS

     I first used this shape a couple of decades ago, intending to try out the technique on one particular piece of work, never realizing how many clients would ask for it once they saw the work or pictures of it. Since then it has almost become an unintended signature shape for me. I find the form graceful and rewarding to execute.

     Once I have made a full-scale drawing of the cross-section, successful completion depends a great deal upon the sequence of cuts. See the photos (7-10) for the sequence I follow. Once the machining of the wing profile was complete, I set about the refining process. First, I sanded off the saw marks left on the concave surface of the wing, taking it down with progressively finer grits of sandpaper wrapped around a 3″ drum attachment from my oscillating spindle sander, finishing off with 220-grit.

     The final shaping of the convex surfaces was accomplished with hand planes (11). I look forward to hand planing sessions on every project. It presents the opportunity to slow down and smell the wood, listen to the pleasing hiss of a curl being lifted and watch a refined shape gradually appear. I don’t sand off the little facets left by the plane blade because I think it’s pleasant to discover them with your fingers.

     Notice that I have left a small land, a 3/16″ flat spot at the point where the arc of the undersurface meets the outer edge of the wing. When laying out the profile I engineered the cross sectional shape in such a way as to make sure that land fell at the center of the 7/8″ thickness, which is also the thickness of the top. This assures that end-to-end clamping pressure will not try to force the wing to buckle. Before gluing on the wings, I planed a 1/16″ chamfer along both mating edges of the top and wing, yielding a 1/8″ shadow line when glued together. A nearly full-length 1/4″ × 5/8″ deep mortise was routed, using a slot cutter, into both the wing and panel edge to accept the pieced together full-length tenon. A larger 3/8″ × 4″ long slot was milled into the center to accept a thicker tenon for added support (12, 13).

     With all of the top glue-ups complete, I marked out and routed a 9/16″ deep slot, 7-1/8″ long, with a 3/8″ mortise bit, along the edge where the wing meets the edge of the top, then squared up the ends with a chisel (14). Then I made the four rosewood inserts (my wife refers to them as “do-dads”) that would ultimately slide into the mortises, adding a great deal of strength to the joint between the wing and the top lamination as well as visual appeal. I left these out, finishing them separately, installing them after all finishing was complete so the finish would not build up in the corners and crevices around the do-dads (15, 16).

THE DRAWERS

     I built the drawers and drawer hangers next so that I could set up the three-drawer assembly under the tabletop and use it to determine exactly where the leg structure should connect to the underside. For the drawers, I chose 1/2″ mahogany sides and 3/4″ thick lacewood faces with fully captured 1/4″ fir plywood drawer bottoms. Finger joints seemed appropriate for the corner joinery. After several test cuts using cut-offs from the drawer blanks, I milled the joints using a shop-built finger joint sled that rides in the miter slots of my tablesaw. The notches were cut using a 3/8″ stack of dado blades (17, 18). It had already been decided that there would be no drawer pulls, since they would detract from an otherwise clean design. Instead, opening the drawer is accomplished by reaching under the drawer and pulling from the bottom edge of the drawer face. To keep it finger friendly, I routed a 3/16″ roundover on the inside bottom of the drawer faces.

     Since the drawers can be accessed from either side of the table, I needed a mechanism that would register the center point of their travel. Before assembling the drawers I notched the top edge of one side of each drawer to receive a rosewood “ramp.” I made a pattern, which I screwed to a 1/2″-thick rosewood blank, and used a 3/8″ diameter flush trim bit chucked in my router table to trace the shape onto the rosewood (19). Then I cut three flat springs of rock maple (1/16″ × 5/8″ × 3″ long) and cut a radial section from 3/8″ beech and epoxied 5/8″ lengths of it to the end of the maple springs (20, 21). The rosewood ramps were parted from the blank, then glued into the 3/16″ × 4″ notches in the drawer sides (22).

     The drawers were glued up and when cured the finger joints were flush trimmed with chisel and plane (23). The drawer sides were grooved 1/4″ deep and 3/8″ wide to accept the drawer slides, accomplished with the same dado stack used to cut the finger joints. I made a pencil holder for the center drawer by coving a mahogany blank (1-1/4″ × 2-1/4″ × 11-1/4″) with the same tablesaw technique used for the wings.

     Next I made the drawer hangers (two outer and two center) from rosewood and mahogany, and glued them together. I countersunk four holes in each to receive solid brass #8 × 1-1/2″ screws, thus allowing 5/8″ penetration into the 7/8″ thick top. When these were complete I fit them into the drawer sides and aligned them on the underside of the top (24). Once satisfied with the symmetry of their placement, I first clamped, then screwed down the drawer hanger assemblies without glue.

     Now the top edge of the leg/apron assemblies were slotted for biscuits (six #10 biscuits laid edge-to-edge) by laying the inside face of each assembly down on a flat surface and using that surface as the reference for the bottom of the biscuit jointer. Then I used the outside edge of the drawer hanger assembly, still screwed to the top, as a fence to locate the biscuit slotting into the top (25).

     The leg assemblies were then glued and clamped to the underside of the top, taking care that they were mounted perpendicular to the table. This in itself would not be a strong enough joint to take sheer loads (like dragging the table from one end), so additional bracing is accomplished with the corbels. I drilled a 1/2″ diameter hole 5/8″ deep in the top of each corbel. Then, using a center point in the hole (with dry biscuits in place for alignment to the leg), I created a dimple in the underside of the top and used this to drill a corresponding hole 5/8″ deep (26). The corbels were glued and clamped in position.

     Now began the process of fine-tuning the fit of the drawers on their slides by light sanding of the rosewood hanger edges, and by refining the thickness of the hangers with a card scraper. Once the drawers slid easily from end to end, I marked out the locations of the centering mechanism’s maple flat spring, routing three slots (1/8″ deep by 4″ long) with a 5/8″ diameter mortise bit. Into these slots were screwed the flat 1/16″ springs (on their 1/16″ thick islands), so as to align the quarter round shape with the cove in the top of the drawer ramps (27).

FINISHING

     After final fine sanding and inspection, I removed the drawer hangers and centering mechanisms and sprayed a coat of lacquer-based sanding sealer on the entire table with a three-stage HVLP unit, and very suddenly all of that somewhat bland-looking wood came alive (28). The following day I sanded most of it off (there went the glory), and blew it clean with compressed air (29). But the glory returned after three coats of nitrocellulose satin lacquer, rubbed out with fine Scotch-Brite^® between coats. After several days of curing, a final coat of Liberon Black Bison wax added depth and richness (30). Although I lacquered the outside of the drawers, I used two coats of Zinsser Bulls Eye^® shellac on the interiors, and rubbed them out smooth. This has been a very rewarding project.

Peter Robert Presnell is a furnituremaker located in Kneeland, California.