This picture is a cross section of the middle piece of the desk. Visible are pieces of conduit that the electrical and information lines ran through as the desk was assembled on site. Also visible is the angle of the facade that faces visitors as they enter. The facing that wraps around the front of that curved piece is actually a curved trapezoid; had to work a few equations around to figure out those pieces. If you look really closely, you can see the holes in the end that would recieve dowels to help with alignment during assembly.
Here, you can see the exposed conduits again as well as the skeletal structure of most of the desk. It's built very much the same way that an airplane wing is built with spars and ribs(though I doubt it would fly very well). Actually, we used the same idea on the reception desk shown a few posts back; if I recall correctly, my friend Justin worked that out on the first desk.
With this picture, you get a view of the back side of the desk where work should take place. Here you can see the pulls and drawer faces among other things. Everything has a matching bevel on it (by matching, I mean same degree of angle) to try to draw the whole desk together.
A fun project overall, it was a great test to see if I could take some crazy lunchtime idea on a scrap of paper all the way to finish. That's how a lot of pieces start out. I'll say, "Hey Harry, what if we put an angle on the facade?" Then he'll say, "How are you going to wrap that around a curve?" We'll sit there for a minute and then one of us is bound to say, "We'll cross that bridge when we get there." For some pieces that works. For others, the design has to be worked out to a higher degree before some work can start.
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2 comments:
Very nice. I like the fact the desk top shows the wood. The other reception desk had the pink top - not a good look in my opinion.
I'm trying to figure out the wood working terms. Is the angle of the facade made with the facing?
Pretty much. I'm going to elaborate more than necessary to answer your question to clear up a couple of things I feel I didn't explain very well in the post.
The facing that I refer to is 3/4" plywood on the straight parts and two layers of 1/4" plywood on the curved section. I call the whole front of the desk a facade because it is essentially hollow due to the ribbing seen in the third picture.
If you look closely at the ribs(the vertical pieces behind the facing) you can see they have an angle on them that makes the face of the desk angle back. Onto them, is fastened the facing mentioned above which when finished become the entire facade.
To avoid further confusion, I'm not including the glass or upper portions of the desk when I say facade.
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