Rainer’s Sewing Desk

Greetings from Europe! For the regular TWW-Readers all over the world, here I want to show you a project from good old Europe. From Austria to be precise.

This desk I built for my wife and it’s meant to be a sewing desk. It’s made from beech, out from rough lumber. The design is a mixture of traditional styles you don’t see very often in these modern times in furniture stores, except maybe as cheap imitations made somewhere in China out of “wood” durable as pressed paper. Originals you only find in historical buildings or if you had the luck to inherit it from past generations. Sure, you can order it from a professional cabinet maker, but not for reasonable prices I guess. A long story short: I like this style and so does my wife and it was attractive to build.

All the joints are classic, traditional wood joints: mainly mortise and tenon joints, dovetails, and sliding dovetails. Some of them I made with hand tools only, others with additional machinery help. The finish is two layers of oil and a final coat of wax, rubbed in by hand. If you are interested in the process of making the desk, you can find a bunch of pictures on my website. Although the text is in German–again, I’m Austrian– there are so many pictures you’re sure to get an impression.