Writing Desk – Moving to Mahogany

I’ll get back to my recounting of WW18thC 2018 tomorrow, but for today I wanted to pick up the thread of the project to interpret an early 19th century mahogany writing desk.

With the full-size prototype built in southern yellow pine from my pile of bench-building stock it was time to move on to the real thing in mahogany.

But first I had to break my hip and lose more than half a year of shop time.  One of my favorite jokes of all time involves a Calvinist who trips and breaks his ankle.  “Finally,” he says, “I am glad to get that over with.”  There’s nothing like some predestination humor to get the day started right.

As I wrote many moons ago I wanted to not only build the early-19th century desk with period appropriate technology, using power equipment only for “apprentice work,” I also wanted to use the best vintage lumber I could find.  Casting my net as widely as possible among my circle of woodworking friends I was able to acquire small amounts of spectacular sweitenia from more than a half dozen sources.   No single source was enough to accomplish the project, but en toto I obtained enough to build several desks, which I eventually will in hopes there are clients out there who want one.

The most difficult piece to find was the single slab of 30″x 20″ 5/4 mahogany for the desk top.  Three stalwart friends responded and soon I was getting quizzical looks from Rich the UPS driver as he pulled up with securely swathed slabs of wood.  You can get a sense of the scale as I believe that is my #8 in the frame.

Perhaps the most surprising source for lumber was the orthopedic surgeon who repaired my hip.  As we were meeting for my final “turn me loose” appointment he asked me what I was working on, and I told him about this desk project.  Although I knew he was a decorative turner I had not known he was an enthusiastic furniture maker in years past, and he told me he had a storage unit filled with vintage lumber he had acquired over the years.  A couple months later we got our calendars to intersect and I went to meet him there, and wound up buying all the mahogany he had.  He told me that this stash could be traced back to pre-WWI sources and based on the quality of the lumber I believe it.  Similar stories accompanied the rest of the acquisitions as the lineage of mahogany inventories lives on in perpetuity, it seems.

Since the writing box of the desk was veneered, having just the right board for for making those veneers was crucial.  Fortunately that was one piece I had in-hand already, having acquired it perhaps forty years earlier at an estate sale for a woodworker who had no end of fabulous lumber.  Alas I did not have the money to buy more than a few pieces, and this was one of them.  I was saving it for just the right project, and this was it.  This dense, hard, and spectacular Cuban mahogany was nothing but delightful to work with.

Ditto the flame veneers needed for the outside surfaces of the legs.  I cannot even recall when I bought four slabs of crotch lumber, but they too were waiting for just the right project.

The structure of the desk was simple enough and I soon had all the pieces cut and ready for fitting assembling.  But before final assembly could happen I needed to address all the hand-cut curvilinear moldings on the edges of the legs.

Stay tuned.