This was the first piece of fine furniture I’ve made in 15 or 20 years.   I recently recovered my garage from my son and his motorcycles and I wanted a project that would test all my rusty tools and skills.  But my wife wanted a simple mission style desk, more a writing table than a desk.    So I added small things to the simple desk:  I angled the legs and joined them to the table skirt via a sliding dovetail.   I added two small drawers into the rounded apron and added slight curves to the table top and backstop.   Also, I hand cut the dovetails. 

I joined four boards for the top and hand planed them.   I had to sharpening the smoothing planes, cabinet scrapers and chisels for the first time in years.

This desk would be used for my wife’s notebook computer so I added a removable backstop.   It rested about 3/8” off the desk to kept the cords from sliding down behind the desk.  I also added a hidden shelf to hold the power transformer and cords

I used quarter sawn and figured white oak.   I was planning to finish it with a mission style stain but we liked the natural oak so left it that way.  It seems the Mission style morphed into an Arts & Craft style.   What do you think?

There was one error.   I cut the drawer fronts from either end of the front apron so they would closely match the grain around the drawers.  I then build the drawers up-side-down.   The result is the wavy pattern’s angle is reversed on the drawers.

 

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