Red Oak is Tough Stuff...

Over the holidays, I made my first piece of wooden furniture: A red oak corner desk for my room. I learned quite a few things along the way, destroyed a few drill bits, and now have polyurethane drops on my junker shoes.

A few lessons I can share:

• Smoking drill bits are bad
• Red Oak is hard!
• Measuring twice sometimes doesn't work
• Eyeballing sometimes does
• Everyone should own a miter box.

Here is the beasty, somewhat from start to finish.






A few problems did crop up - one of the legs is not straight by 5-10 degrees, and the mitered joints on the runners are not all flush. But all in all, I am satisfied considering this is my first real woodworking project.