Bombe Slant Front Desk

[Peter Tremblay]

Hello all, (March 28th, 2012)

It was not too long ago that I realized that I wanted to tackle my personal "mount everest" as a woodworker.  I felt and still feel that now is the perfect time to challenge myself to the hardest project that I can think of.  It just so happens that it is also a project that I really have wanted to make for myself since I first saw its graceful and alluring curves.

So this past week I started making myself a Bombe Secretary.  I am using air dried black walnut and popular as a secondary wood.

This 12/4 thick 23" wide and about 52" long slab...

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and these (similar sizes) will be the case sides, the serpentine drawer fronts, and the four boston style ball and claw feet.

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that caused so much saw dust and tears...  (it was emotionally difficult to take a huge slab of such beauty and turn most of it into dust.  I ended up with about 150 gallons of dust from all the milling of these case sides and a fair bit of other 8/4, 5/4 and 4/4 walnut)



They wanted to bow so I clamped them to stop the cupping.

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I will go back and reconstruct, as best and I'm able, the posts from my first Bombe Secretary thread which began in 2012.

My hope is to be able to put this into one thread now that I've rescued my photos from a file sharing site that no longer is willing to share.

This will take some time.  Thanks for your patience and for following along.

[Big Dave]

I am really looking forward to watching the rest of this, Peter!
 

[Duane N]

Looking forward to seeing the progress.  I too would have teared up cutting up such a large piece of Walnut but in the end it's going to worth it.

[srv52761]

Hello all, (March 28th, 2012)

I will go back and reconstruct, as best and I'm able, the posts from my first Bombe Secretary thread which began in 2012.

My hope is to be able to put this into one thread now that I've rescued my photos from a file sharing site that no longer is willing to share.

This will take some time.  Thanks for your patience and for following along.

This, Chris J's Unisaw thread, and....rats!!.. senior moment- can't rember whose cross-cut sled thread are probably my favorite threads of all time.

[Peter Tremblay]

This, Chris J's Unisaw thread, and....rats!!.. senior moment- can't rember whose cross-cut sled thread are probably my favorite threads of all time.

Thank you!

More updates are on the way.

[Gary G™]

Marzluf cross-cut sled?

https://forums.woodnet.net/showthread.php?tid=2780468

[Peter Tremblay]

Continued.

Here is just a small amount of the sawdust that was created after taking two 12/4 slabs down to about 1" thick on the tablesaw. 

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I used a Jack plane to work across the grain, where I could, to flatted out the milling marks from the table saw

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I absolutely love the color and grain of this wood.  It is nothing short of magical.

After some work with a sander and after removing the ends, which were not milled. We have this.  

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The sides need to remain in clamps so that they don't bow out.

[Peter Tremblay]

Update,

I have been able to save my old pictures but trying to go back and reedit the old post is just too much work and takes too long.

So I'm going to just post a few pictures and re-narrate the process.  Feel free to ask questions if I miss something or you're curious.

One of the last things that I did the first week of this project, while I was at Dave's shop, was to cut the rough shape for the ball and claw feet.  This was out of 12/4 stock and I tried to orient the grain so that the "thumb" of the claw was the closest to the center of the tree.  In other words the growth rings run the same 'direction' as the front of the ball.

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I also cut some dovetails.  I remember well that the floor of this carcass went together right off of the saw and with no gaps.

No pictures of the dovetails being cut.

Here I am cleaning up the front curve of the carcass after I cut it on the bandsaw.

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This brings us to the end of the first week at Dave's shop, where this all began.

The next steps were done in my shop when I was living in Connecticut.

[Peter Tremblay]

When I got back to Connecticut, after a week at Dave's shop, I went to get the secondary wood for the project.

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Then I began working on the dovetails for the top of the carcass.

There was an error in marking the pins so I went back and covered things with blue tape and tried again.

It worked very well.

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Here are the finished dovetails for the top of the desk.

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There are some gaps so I'll need to shim them when the time for the glue up comes. 

The glue up for the top won't be till very near the conclusion of the project.

Also, you see the groves in the carcass sides for the drawer dividers.  Dave has a picture of me cutting those but we did that on the table saw with a dado stack.

[Peter Tremblay]

The next step was to scratch the distinctive beads into the case sides.

Step one was to practice on some scrap.

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The Veritas beader is fantastic!

Then I scratched the beads in the the sides of each case.

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These beads are not applied as in other furniture design but rather the bead is scratched and then the side of the case is relieved.  A shoulder plane works well for some of this but the rest needs to be carved away with chisels and small scrapers.  It is very important to be cautions and not damage the bead.[attachment=8405]

For the drawer dividers a bead is scratched on the top and bottom and then the middle is relieved.

A router plane is very useful here.

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What planes and chisels can't get too easily needs to be done with small scrapers.