Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)
I build a bed from beech lumber to my daughter (se separate project).She obvious liked the result, because she asked me if I could build a solid beech desktop for her as well.I must admit that my initial thought was to find a free composit tabletop on Finn (the Norwegian version of Craigslist) and just cut that to shape.However, I thought it was nice that she appriciate the look and feel of real wood – so I went at it.The top is made from two slaps cut into three 17cm wide and 4.5cm thick boards. I got them to right size on the jointer/thicknesser and used biscuits to align the edges during glueup.When jointing the edges I took care to run them the opposite way through the jointer so that the joints should be straight – I did however get some wave in both joints causing the top to bot be flat after the glueup.So them it was at it and I fot the top fairly flat usong just hand planes and some snding afterwards.
This is the first time I have flattened a top using hand planes, and it worked quite well.After sanding the top up to 180 sandpaper I finished it with some boiled linseed oil. Have to note that I'm not quite happy with the result, there are some bleach marks.
Next time I will probably do a layer og gel stain before adding the oil finish.The desk top is shaped to the wall and rests on two runners attached to the wall on each side.
The fastning betwen the runners and the table top allow for the top to expand or contract as humidity changes and the wood expand or constract.