Live Edge Black Walnut Corner office desk build.

I will be posting and doing a complete explanation of how I built my corner office desk.

Well, like most of us know by this point covid-19 has taken a toll around the world and we have felt it affects. Due to this we have the opportunity to work from home, well some of us. My wife was one of the lucky one that was sent home to work from home. So for this we were put in a predicament because we really didn’t have a specific space that she could from. Nor did she have a windows computer to work either. We had a MacBook pro but it was a little older by this point, I want to say that its about over 5 yrs if not older by now. So that led me down the path of researching and buying part to build one, which I will go into much more detail in another blog post.

In this one I wanted to show and explain my process in making a live edge black walnut corner desk. When I was thinking about wanting to make on for my wife I knew right away that I wanted to use a hardwood and not really a softwood. Then from there you have several choices like ash, hickory, hard maple, spalted maple, cherry, black cherry, red oak, white oak, black walnut, and from there you have exotics. But I had a few pieces of some live edge black walnut slabs and they were large pieces of black walnut. Also in typical kc exotic woodworks style I was wanting to create some that had more than just black walnut. My slabs that I had where 5 pieces ranging from 3ft to 6ft in length and they were also averaging about 20in in width. They also had a few knots that needed some epoxy filling and from large checking here and there but overall beautiful slabs that where going to make a beautiful desk. For the legs my wife didn’t want the same black walnut throughout. She was wanting something different and some that would make it look more unique. I had quite a bit of stock of wenge, zebrawood, spalted maple, white oak, hard maple, purple heart, bloodwood, and hackberry. She decided to go with the purple heart for the legs because the like how the wood takes on a deep purple and it is also a very hard and dense wood that can handle the weight of the desk once assembled.

So back to the live edge black walnut, I had one long and several various length. I ended up taking 2 shorty live edge slabs, and I was going to merge them together with a piece of figured maple, and that way I would another long live edge slab to match the first one. I cut about a 22in piece that measured about 10in in width and 2in. in thickness. I then marked where I was going to join the maple to the black walnut with something called a domino jointer from festool. Now if you never heard of this machine it’s not biggie because I haven’t heard of it either until about a few years ago when I was at my local specialty lumber yard. They showed it to me and showed me how it worked. Ideally this is a specialty tool that really only has one purpose, but it used solid hardwood pieces that are made anywhere from birch to mahogany depending on the use of the piece that you are working on. It is really a great tool that really adds a lot of strength to the joint and the pretty much make it almost impossible to break. So I put about 4 dominoes to each side of the maple piece and marked all the places where this was going to get attached to the live edge black walnut. Now at this point I also need to let you know that the piece of maple that I am using is not a live edge piece of wood. It was a dimensional lumber that I was using and so after I drilled the holes I proceeded to fill it with titebond 3 wood glue. Titebond 3 is a really great glue to work with and really most titebond glue is great. I like titebond 3 because it’s waterproof and it’s the strongest after it sets.

So after I glue the slabs together now the intense process of cutting and shaping the dimensional lumber to look like a live edge piece so that it looks natural. I used my Japanese double saw and tried cutting at rough angle that matches the live edges on both sides. After that I used my plush saw to get as close to the actual shape of the edge on the hardwood, making sure to leave enough room for mistakes or anything like that. After that I got a rough file or you can use a rasp and start to shape it. I used the to edges of the live edge and drew a straigt line in between them, and after that I used my imagination as to how edge follows the curves and the angle of the edges on the live edges. After I was done with that, I started with my sander with a thick shaping pad that will keep me from taking too much wood off when I start sanding at the lower grits. I started off with 40 grit sandpaper then moved up to 60, and after 15 or so minutes moved up to 80 grit, and by the time I got to the 120 it was really starting to look it was part of the edge. It is looking really good and the angles are pretty spot on. Then after that I rinse and repeated on the opposite side of the live edge slab.

Here at Kansas city exotic woodworks we like to make fine furniture that flows together, looks natural and beautiful. So as I sat for a bit trying to figure out on joining these 2 large and long walnut slabs together, I had to come to the conclusion that I would need to just take off a few inches of material of the original long live edge slab, and cut it in a way that it sits plush with the adjoining slab. After I got that figured out I marked my spots as to where my dominoes where going to get cut out, inserted, and glued. After that like most live edge things it wasn’t entirely plush in the section on the inside corner of the desk. Now I know what you are saying why didn’t I just cut it square, then put a cross cut so that it sit going across? Well to be honest the slab originally already had large flare out on the side I was working on and the curved was lending it self really well on how things were coming with. So I filled the space with some chill diamond fast set epoxy, and I added some black formica powder into it so that it looked like black purlesque. And also I poured it down the line where I had sawed and glued together to make the 90 degree angle.

After that part was done, I started to work on the legs, and I went ahead to figure out how much purple heartwood I would need to make this project look good. I decided to go with a tried and trued shape of a retangle with some purple heart cut for the inside at 45 degree so that it can have cross bracing across the rectangle. The sad part I was running into was that the purple heart as hard and desnse as it is, it doesn’t really like to get some screws put in it. It tends to crack somewhat easily even after pilot holes were drilled in. After they are all assembled which 2 were made, and a C brace was made for the inside the right angle that the desk has that goes to the nearest corner of the desk to the wall. Oh I also predilled and inserted some screw nut inserts made out of stainless steel so that when I screw on the legs the srews grab onto the steel and not the wood. I’ve seen other wood workers use lag bolts, or variations of some big bolts straight into the wood and it tight at first but if you ever needed to unscrew the legs and then put them back on it wont be as tight the second time around and create a wobble that I don’t like. And also the nut inserts come in both stainless steel or brass, I prefer the stainless steel for the strength the brass at time have presented me with problems because when inserting into hardwood they seem to just break, this probably because of the fibers are too tough for it as I am torqueing it down.