So long 2017

Yeah, turns out even a holiday week is not enough time for me to wrap up a big project. Not having time off of work didn't really help though, so I don't feel too bad. Still, I'm happy with where things are at. If I don't look too closely at the glued up desktop things looked pretty good. But I need something I can set a PC on and work off of without noticing bumps or rough sections, so there's a lot of finishing work to be done here.

I can move it all as one big piece, so that's probably a good sign.

Which is why I picked up the power planer. My in-laws did something very nice for me the other week; on top of a pizza steel for Christmas they also bought me a saw as a "thank you" for helping with the kitchen over the summer. Unfortunately, they bought me a saw I already had, which is how I ended up with a $98 store credit at HD. After some internal debate, I ended up realizing a hand plane would really help if I wanted to try a desktop build, but store credit can't be used online, and they don't have any hand planes in store anymore. So I went with the power option, which was cheaper so I could grab some extra clamps to help with this too. Not my first choice, but it turned out to be a real time saver. Some of those glue joints were WAY off.

Hooray, new tool un-boxing.

Like anything other project, I want things to look as nice as possible, but I also realize I don't know what I'm doing so I'm used to fixing mistakes. The planer was really easy to figure out though, and as much of a pain it was to constantly have to empty the collection bag, it did a good job cleaning up some of the bigger bumps. My block plane was enough to really clean things up, plus get rid of some mistakes I made with the power tool, and after an hour or so the first side was looking good. 

If you squint it looks pretty good.

Quite a collection of shavings.

The other side went pretty much the same way, and after sanding that side too I was feeling pretty good about where I was at. When I flipped things over to sand what I considered the top, I realized some of my gaps probably had to get filled just to make things a little more presentable. So after one more trip to the store, the gaps were filled and I was waiting to sand again. 

Whoops. Thankfully nothing like this to fix in the middle of the block.

The more I filled the more I found to fix.

Wood filler dried, things are looking pretty good at this point. It might not be counter top quality butcher block, but for $30 in materials I'm thinking I've got a nice desk coming together.

I was thinking about how to finish this, and at this point I'm kind of stumped. I've got some natural stain and enough poly left that would probably work, but the idea of spending night after night getting this finished doesn't really appeal to me right now. At least not as much as having a few drinks and saying goodbye to this weird, strange year.