Building an Executive Desk With Copper Ring

I Built a Desk From Scratch, and Here’s How It Went

I’ve been working on this walnut desk for a while now, and I finally got it done from start to finish. If you want the full breakdown, I did a whole series on it, something like seven or eight videos. But here’s the overview of how the whole thing came together.

This desk was designed for a client in Colorado Springs who needed custom furniture. The desk has a live edge on the guest side and a clean, squared-off edge on the business side. The first thing I had to do was pick which part of the walnut slab had the best live edge. I settled on the side that was wider on one end and curved back out on the other. Once I figured that out, I marked it at 66 inches and made my cut.

From there, I flattened the slab using a router sled. The workbench is a torsion box, so it’s nice and flat, and with the slab shimmed in place, the sled just rides along and levels everything out. After that, it was a matter of cleaning up the lines the router left, getting the seam tight, and gluing the two pieces together. I was careful with the live edge; I didn’t want to dent or scratch it with clamps, so I used glue blocks and CA glue to pull the seam together instead.

Once the top was glued up, I inlaid some bow ties along a small crack in the slab. Purely decorative, but it looks good. I did that whole process with just a mallet and chisel, no router.

For the panels, I resawed my own shop-sawn veneers rather than buying them. I wanted to control the thickness and keep everything matching. After getting the veneer sorted, I moved on to cutting all the joinery: mortises, tenons, dados, the whole thing. I always try to cut my tenons a little snug so I can sneak up on the fit with a shoulder plane. Once I had all the main structure cut and test-fitted, I marked everything so it all went back together the same way.

One of my favorite details on this desk is the copper and walnut grid that runs across the front panels and drawer fronts. I ripped thin walnut strips, cut half-lap joints in them, and then cut the copper to fit in between. Running copper through the table saw is a little sketchy; it chatters, so I taped it to a piece of hardboard and cut it face down. Then I added a patina to each piece by hand before sealing them up in a fume chamber for a couple of hours to bring out the colors.

I also built a segmented ring out of walnut and cherry as a medallion piece. That one gave me some grief; disaster struck near the end when it split along some of the seams. I was ready to throw the whole thing out, but I managed to save it with some epoxy and a few headless pins in the right spots.

The drawer boxes were built from the same boards as the veneered drawer bottoms, so the grain and color all match up. For the drawer pulls, I came up with an integrated handle that’s routed right into the top rail of each drawer front. The concept was borrowed from The Wood Whisperer; he did something similar on his executive desk, and I liked it enough to run with it.

I also made a couple of accessories to go with the desk: a file shuttle that can slide back and forth in the file drawer depending on how full it is, and a pencil tray to keep the small stuff organized.

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