A top to roll.

        Post 6



          Hello..... Interwebs!
 
          Roll top desk. Just saying that make you think Antique, and that is the exact reaction that I wanted. Now as I said before I never made a roll top desk before and had no clue where to begin with it. However I remembered one that my aunt Lisa use to have in her kitchen. When I was a kid I was fascinated with it and how it worked. Sounds kind of funny now being older because well there really is nothing to it. But either way I remember that the strips of wood that made up the tambour were connected together by a piece of canvas. The "tambour" is the part of the desk that slides up and down. So that's where I should start with a piece of canvas. Problem was I didn't have any canvas. I began ransacking my house for a piece of cloth like material that would not stretch at all. This went on for hours every piece of cloth I found was somewhat stretchy. Then I found it a pillowcase that I no longer used it was good size and did not stretch at all.

          This cloth was my starting point I cut it open and laid it out flat, trying to find how big I was going to make this tambour. Finally I decided that it didn.t need to be much bigger than the room needed for a keyboard and mouse pad. I began routing strips of wood and cutting them off with the table saw. I used a piece of 1x6 and just kept going till it was gone. Then I use just regular wood glue to glue it to the fabric and let it sit overnight.

       Now I don't have pictures for all the steps I made for this part manly because it was done before I started this Blog. But after I let that set up over nigh I cut nice and square and Had to make the two sides with the rails. the way I did this was purely guessing at the radius I thought would work and holding the tambour to it to see if it would roll nicely. Luckily for me it only took me one try. Not impressive at all I know but still didn't waste any time on it. After that I use a 3/4" plunge cut router bit and set the fence on my router to 1" with the plunge depth of 3/8".




         The top and bottom rails were cut to get about 1/8" leeway for the tambour to not bind on the way up and down.

     
        After it was all put together I wired up four 5mm red LED's to go under the tambour. I kept the red to match the LED's in the monitor seeing how this is going to be one piece. This is where the keyboard and mouse will slide out of on drawer slides. The keyboard and mouse are going to be projects for the future.

 
       Thats about all there was to the rolltop desk portion of the project. I wish I had a little more to explain or show for it, but that part was pretty self explanatory. the legs and the rest of the bottom to the desk will be more of a project then the desk itself so stay tuned for that. there is some cool stuff I'm doing with the legs.

       Either way thanks for reading and hope you liked my blogging still trying to get used to typing these things out every day.

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