Pine Lap Desk

I've begun work on a small lap desk out of pine. Because of my lack of space (I'd love to build a nice writing desk with drawers and pigeon holes) the best solution seemed to be repurpose myself into a desk with a few pieces of wood. I originally looked at Christian Becksvoort's article in Fine Woodworking, but made several modifications... It has no inkwell drawer, while I admire the interesting construction involved with his drawer stop, it's overly complex and I don't like it. Furthur, I don't plan on using dip ink anytime soon (not that I haven't, used to take class notes with a dip pen). I also adjusted the dimensions to a certain style of notebook I like and made a compartment for writing supplies.

The dovetail layout for this piece was a bit tricky. I had chosen the slope of the top beforehand at an angle that felt comfortable for an work surface on the lap, this means that the likelihood of having a layout match up, front to back, was pretty low. after some fuddling, I got pretty close, but on the second one I plan to define the slope based on tail multiples rather than a given angle. Cutting them is a cakewalk, it took me all of one and a half hours, considering I hadn't cut a dovetail in months that is pretty good for me.
 

 Mock-up with the lid on, I still need to acquire some QS Easter White Pine for the bottom.
 

Overhead shot showing the dadoed divider.

This is the part I'm most proud of, the breadboard lid. All the stock in this project is 3/8" thick, so the breadboard tenon is 1/8" thick by 3/8" long and the breadboard itself is 1 1/8" wide. I'm really happy how it turned out. The breadboards themselves are QS sycamore that I got from a fallen tree in a park right up the street. I slabbed some of it and this is the first bit I've gotten to use!