Project in the Making..

A co-worker of mine had asked me if I would be interested in making a "Command Center" desk for his church. Currently they are using a folding table to set all their equipment on. As you can see below not much room to lay a pencil down.

After visiting the church and seeing what the parameters were to work around, I started my design process. Google "Sketchup" was my choice of design software. Really great stuff for being a free item.

Below is the design I came up with. A few of the qualifications required were. #1 Bring up the height to meet the height of the Railing in balcony. #2 Provide a secure way to lockup and keep someone from adjusting knobs. #3 Keep small foot print as possible and provide easy access to the components.

Overall View

 

Opened View

 

Front View

 

ISO View

 

Materials I'm using is "Red Oak" The large panels are 3/4" red oak plywood. The remaining trim components are red oak from the local saw mill. One of the biggest challenges was to make the "Roll Top" (or Tambour) feature. This was my biggest issue of the whole project. Pictures below shows that I was able to achieve the first part. That is shaping the Tambour cross pieces. I purchased the Tambour Router Bit set from Eagle America.com. I was very pleased with the results.

My next step is to cut the length, saw a step on each end and drill holes for cable. I'm very excited to see how this turns out.

The track that the tambour will run in are one of the other challenge parts. To make the track I made a full size layout of track shape, cutout pattern and glued to a piece of Masonite (hard board as some say) and band saw cut the shape. With carpet tape I attached the pattern on my lumber and routed the 3/8" wide slot. I routed both Right and Left hand pieces and used a trim router. I had only one slight mishap but who will see it?

 

Routed track

 

Below are some other pictures showing what I have put together as far as the overall build.

 

Main build

 

 

MORE TO FOLLOW....