Projects

Lap Desk

I did this project a few years ago as an item for my son to give to his boss at Christmastime.

The design is my own, as you can probably tell ;-) I made it large enough to hold 8-1/2” X 11” paper (almost A4, Jeff) along with pens/pencils and a small shelf for envelopes. It’s made of Honduran mahogany resawn on my neanderbuddy (cheap benchtop bandsaw) to 3/8”. It won’t make cuts deeper than ~4” so after smoothing with my Type 11 #7 I edged glue 3 pieces to get the 12” wide panels (rough size) I needed. And that’s the only power tool used in the contruction. The corners are handcut dovetails. The back trim, top rest and pen/paper holder designs were all “eyeballed” and trimmed to fit with coping saw, Guntershave, 60-1/2 and #271 router. The same goes for the interior parts seen in the next shot.

Those bright dots are the too-long hinge screws that I had to file back after inserting. As to the carving, it says “Helen’s Garden”. That’s the name of the restaurant in Baltimore (Canton, actually) where my son was working at the time. It’s named after the mother of one of the owners. To get the correct fonts, I enlarged their business card until I had a good size, stuck it to the stock with some spray adhesive and started carving. The next shot is of the carving in progress.

After I glued the carving to the inside of the lid, I brushed and wiped on a spit coat of 1# super blond shellac. I very lightly ran a card scraper over it to smooth it down and then put on 3 or 4 coats of garnet shellac. Rubbed out with a white 3M synthetic pad and paste wax, finished up with a final wax job after a couple of days rest for the finish to cure.

The recipient said that he liked this laptop better than his electron-burning one.