Desk and chair set

So, I made an "antique" writing desk and office chair for my doll house, which was made a lot easier by the fact that I finally caved and bought a dremel tool.

All of the items I made are made out of basswood. It's a bit more dense than balsa, which means I can cut it with an Xacto knife if need be, but can't just be snapped in half or smooshed down like balsa.

Anyway, I made the chair first using a couple pieces of basswood and some small round dowels. And then I sanded the shit out of it. I'm petty sure I breathed in a pound of sawdust when I was curving the side of the chair. The bottom part, the legs (leg? I dunno) I had to carve out notches to jam those squiggly bits into to make it all fancy.

After I made both parts, I decided I wanted the sea to spin. I mean, you can't have an office chair that doesn't spin. That just ain't right!

Anyway, so I had to figure out how to get the seat of the chair to spin without ball bearings. I drilled a hole where I felt the middle of the seat was as well as a hole into the top part of the legs. I don't have pictures of this part because I was trying to figure out how to do it, you know, while doing it. I carved part of the top of the seat out to accommodate something to keep the legs on while allowing the seat to spin. I stuck a dowel in there and glued it all together. I also spun the seat during the drying to make sure it didn't get glued down.

Next was to make the cushion!

This part was a little difficult since I needed the cushion to sit somewhere specifically. I scrounged around in my fabric and I picked the best one that wasn't too weird for an office chair seat. I would have preferred something a bit more... antique looking, but I think the fabric I chose looks good. I cut the foam down to just under a quarter of an inch thick and glued it to a very thin piece of basswood. I then glued the chair fabric around it to make the chair pillow. I haven't glued the pillow down yet but whatever.

Then came the desk.

I did a lot of research online to try and figure out what I wanted to do. And by research I mean looking at a bunch of pictures of antique writing desks.

I'll admit, there were a lot that I really liked, but would be impossible for me to do. I mean, I'm good, but I'm not that good. The ones I liked had curvy bits and lots of drawers. Upon closer inspection I knew that I wouldn't be able to scale most of them down and have it look nice and work the way I wanted it to. So I found a desk that I felt would actually work and started making my pieces.

The original design I was going to do was going to involve some spindles I originally purchased for my stairs and realized they wouldn't work for the stairs. Then I realized that they wouldn't work for the stairs either so I just have them now.

ANYWAY.

There are some off gaps in the different parts of the desk, but honestly that's okay. I intend to carve the legs of it a bit more in order to make it more decorative, but I don't have the dremel bits for it yet so I will leave it for now.