Here is a desk I made for my friend Cody who is the brother I never had my entire life. I will start by saying this entire project, every single piece minus screws to hold the top and drawer pulls on, is Quarter Sawn African Mahogany. I will start with the left cabinet since it is the most complex in the picture.

The four corner posts, all front rails, and the top and bottom rails of the sides, are all 1-1/2" x 1-1/2" octagons, and the two middle rails on the sides, and four rails on the back are all 3/4" thick flat rails. This is for design purposes. Now to describe the drawers some, I opted to use 1/2" thick material for the drawer sides, and decided to try and use a through dovetail joint for the first time as to incorporate a very unique feature into the design. The drawer box sits back in the opening of the cabinet, and from the side the entire drawer side itself with the through dovetail joint is visible from the left or right side, and on the front I did not put an additional drawer front on, because I wanted people to see the through dovetail joint from the front of the desk. Now for drawers slides I did something very different. Because on my drawer bottoms I put them up 3/4" from the bottom edge I had some extra room to work with. So I decided to make a large 3" wide underneath dovetail slide. On the router table I routed out a small rabbet using stops on my fence so I did not go any wider than my drawer slide, and chiseled the corners square. and cut my male end of the dovetail slide which is already set to be rabbeted into the front rail flush to the top, and made it long enough to lay flat on the back rail and screw straight down to hold it in place on the back, then proceeded to cut a large rabbet joint to where the male dovetail section was trimmed back flat all the way until the drawer would stop up against it when visible from the sides. I took my drawer boxes and laid out my measurements of where the female section of the slide would be mounted, and over at the dado blade I set the blade and fence to cut out a section of the bottom back of the drawer box for the male end of the slide to pass through with no interference. The female part of my hardwood dovetail slide was dadoed into the front of the drawer box, and rabbeted into the back of the drawer box, and also glued to the drawer bottom itself for added stability. I know some of my methods may cause some controversy but it is all design features. Unless you have your head right at the level of the drawers on the side you will not even see the drawer slides and it will appear that the drawers are floating in mid air. Of course what good is a custom solid wood desk if you put metal hardware on it, so I took a left over piece of mahogany I had and cut it into thirds so I had three blocks. Then over to the table saw where I set the saw blade and fence twice to cut a rabbet half the thickness of my drawer pull, and just behind the point on the edge of the drawer pull. I then took some cut off strips I saved from when I started working on the project a month earlier and they were the perfect thickness to where I glued them cross grain to the rabbet joint on the bottom of the drawer pulls to strengthen the stems when it is attached to the drawer itself which is one of several ways to make a wooden pull, but I didn't want to go all the way through the middle and have end grain showing in the middle of the drawer pull which would be tacky out of the same wood in my opinion. I then pre drilled my holes for where my pulls would be mounted, and countersunk the holes from the inside of the drawer. Then over at the drill press I pre drilled my holes in my blanks for the pulls and then over at the band saw I cut them out. I really is a bunch of angles to form a pull, everyone in the shop thought it was cool looking so I decided to go with it.

Now onto the right cabinet. I wanted this to be functional to where it could be used as a computer desk for a tower, or for some storage, and since I was already using the open design it was just perfect. The rails and posts are all identical sized to the left cabinet out of octagons and the flat rails. Now for the bottom where a tower could rest on, looking from the front you could see the flow go up vertically, go up and back at a 45 degree angle, then go back horizontally. Well the bottom shelf there is not fixed in position because of how I arranged it to be in there. The shelf sits in a 3/8" x 3/8" rabbet, and using 7/8" material after I had sanded it down through a wide belt sander, I routed a chamfer on all four sides of that bottom shelf to meet at a point with the horizontal top edge of the bottom front rail. This means that from going back horizontally it would go up and back again at a 45 degree angle and meet the surface of the shelf. Quite a lengthy explanation for the shelf, but it was part of the design features. Now for this desk to function for a computer tower, or for shelves I needed a system that could me removed easily if need be. So since I already have the flat horizontal rails in the middle of the cabinet, which is why the left cabinet matches this, is so I could cut two rails to run left to right with a section cut out 1/8" wider than the side rails themselves so they would not stick, and then cut out a long rectangular section for a piece to run front to back as a shelf perpendicular to the rails I just made. When cutting that shelf I measured the inside between the front and rear posts and subtracted 1/8" and counter sunk screws from underneath the rails running left to right and flushed the rails to the ends of the shelf itself, and ta da two removable shelves made for a desk.

Now for the top, there was much debate over how large to make the desktop and I settled on 1" thick, 24" wide, and 60" long, which is a good thing because there is still room for a rolling desk chair to easily slide in between the cabinets. Since on the entire cabinet construction I worked with so many 45 degree angles I decided to give it one more go and measured three inches in, and three inches back from the front corners and drew my chamfer line and cut it with the jig saw. I did decide to not put a chamfer profile on the top and just dub the edge so it was not sharp, and I really liked the design of keeping it that way and sanding the end grain to 220 grit while the rest of the top was sanded to 180 grit so the end grain would look cleaner with no saw or sanding marks left.

Now for finishing, the two open cabinets, bottom shelf, two removable shelves, three pulls and three drawer boxes all received two coats of Valspar precat vinyl lacquer sanding sealer, followed by two coats of a Valspar precat 60 sheen semi-gloss lacquer. The top of the desk received the two coats of the Valspar precat vinyl lacquer sanding sealer, followed by four coats of the Valspar precat 60 sheen semi-gloss lacquer.

I delivered this last night at my friends house, but earlier in the morning he messaged me saying he didn't have a ride home from work (about 20 miles from his home) so I had to gently wrap the top in soft clean blankets and wrap that together in a tarp, band the tarp, then secure it with tie downs in the bed of my truck so it didn't move around since it wouldn't fit in the back seat of my dodge dakota. And I had to place the two cabinets in my back seat and cover them with my sleeping bag which is the only thing I had left big enough to cover them so they were not seen. So I pick up my friend with my back seats full and a top securely wrapped in the bed of my truck, and took my friend to his house in which he immediately left there to go get his hair cut. That gave me the perfect opportunity with enough time to set this up in his bedroom. When he got home I had the door to his room downstairs in his house closed. So I blindfolded him outside the door and then led him in. I had my tarp laying over the top so it would not be visible until I unveiled it. So when I told him to remove the blindfold I pulled off the tarp at the same time in one smooth sweep and watched as his jaw almost hit the floor with a loud bang.

So with it all said and done, A very special, unique and accepting person I consider to be the brother I never had my entire life, received a gift with all the creativity my passion for woodworking could muster for me to show my brother how much he means to me.