As we talked through the project, I got to know the customer pretty well. It just so happens that he’s a wood turner, and has made some incredible bowls out of very exotic woods. He described some of the wood he’s collected over the years, and I was blown away (nerdy, I know).

Well, to make a long story short, he’s paying for most of this commission with some chunks of cocobolo burl. For those who aren’t woodworkers, a burl is a tumor-like growth that protrudes off the side of a tree trunk. It’s one of my favorite woodworking metaphors: every so often (1 in 100 trees?) some huge stress hits the tree (injury, virus, even a wasp sting) and the tree reacts by growing this big round goober around it.  The wood from a burl is generally considered to be some of the most beautiful stuff out there. So, out of suffering comes beauty.

For whatever reason, cocobolo trees don’t grow burls very often. Since cocobolo is a somewhat rare wood to begin with, this makes cocobolo burl crazy-rare. And I now have my grubby hands on some of it.

What will it become? I don’t know yet. Pens, for sure. Maybe some knife handles. Maybe a small bowl or two. That’s half the fun, planning the Making. It doesn’t look like much yet, in its rough form. But trust me, this stuff is gonna be gorgeous!

Twenty pounds of cocobolo burl

Oh and one final thing… My wife wanted me to state for the record that I don’t generally work for wood. She prefers to be able to feed our kids, and reminded me that greenbacks are the wampum of this age.

anigre desk with ebony pulls and steel base

Second, as stated above, this piece was a real collaboration. While I was responsible for the overall design, the construction was done by three different artisans. Steve Jenkins (my mentor) and I did the woodworking over the course of several long weeks. He is hyper-focused on getting the details right, which is a wonderful thing in an intricate desk like this. I learn a dozen new things every time I work with Steve. I also enlisted the help of Gary McFarland, a master metalworker in Wimberley, who made the custom steel base for the table.

quartersawn fiddleback anigre desk top in reverse diamond pattern

Sliding laptop/keyboard tray with soft detents

back view of anigre desk

front view of anigre desk

drawer close-up of anigre desk

Here’s an awful video taken with my cell phone:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en0LDnUl48g&feature=youtu.be

This desk was photographed at my church, Bent Tree Bible Fellowship. Photos taken by the amazing April Ashton, who can be found at www.aprilashton.com.

If you are interested in pricing or want more information about the desk, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Here’s the link to the article: http://southeast.bearingsguide.com/2012/11/02/restoring-american-craftsmanship/

BTW, Bearings Guide is a seriously cool magazine, their plug of me notwithstanding. Subscription is free. You should check them out.

U.S. Hardwood Exports Hit 72-Month High:

May’s hardwood lumber export data totaled 121.4 million board feet, the highest level in 72 months and the fifth highest monthly total ever. China shipments set a record. 

This is good news for hardwood sellers, I guess. And it might indicate that the global economy is improving. Hardwood is used to make stuff, after all. And if factories are making stuff, then it’s likely that people are buying stuff.  But I’ve got to admit, this headline makes me sad. Here are a few of the reasons:

1) Hardwood is a renewable resource. You plant a tree, it grows, you cut it down, you plant another. BUT it is a very slow process, taking 30 years or more to have a nice, mature tree with some real size to it. Interestingly, a farm’s value prior to the industrial revolution had very little to do with the crops it grew or its overall acreage. It was all about its trees. Crops, back then, were principally for feeding the family. Wood was what gave your land its value, since it was the principle medium in which goods were manufactured.

2) 120 MILLION board feet of wood was exported from the U.S. to foreign countries (mostly China) in a single month. For perspective, you could put one-inch-thick flooring over 4 SQUARE MILES with that amount of wood. And that’s just one month’s worth of exports.  I’m ballparking here, but I suspect 4 square miles would be a footprint about the size of the commercial center of either Houston or Dallas’s true downtowns. Bottom line: it’s a lot of freaking wood.

3) I placed a ‘huge’ order of wood two weeks ago, buying 400 board feet of walnut from my favorite hardwood supplier. When I got that wood, I treated it like the precious stuff it is. I went over each board, trying to maximize the yield and beauty of what I’ve received. I work very hard not to waste material, not only out of a sense of environmental stewardship, but also because it makes financial sense for a small woodworking business to be careful with their materials. I wonder, though, how I’d feel if I received 40,000 board feet of wood. Would I care so much? Would I take the time to go through the wood? Or would I say, “time is money,” and burn through the pile.

4) In celebrating how much wood we are exporting, we are also celebrating how many jobs we are outsourcing. It only costs about $600 (yep, six hundred bucks) to ship a 40-foot Conex shipping container full of American hardwood from the U.S. to China. This is because China exports such a vast quantity of finished goods via container to the U.S. that there are a heck of a lot of empty containers sitting idle on our shores. Rather than shipping those empty containers back to China, shipping companies are happy to get something (anything) loaded up in them so they can make a little money on the return trip.

In essence, then, shipping costs are negligible. So these containers full of precious hardwood get dumped on foreign shores, where a bajillion semi-skilled laborers create the furniture that will subsequently be shipped back to the U.S. for sale at pretty much every furniture store in the country. Generally, this furniture looks good and is poorly constructed. But U.S. consumers are ok with that because it is comparatively inexpensive. And that, dear readers, is how the furniture game is played. If you want to verify this, go to a large furniture store near you. Ask to see a dresser that was made in America. If they have one, ask to see a second one. I’ll bet you a nickel they won’t be able to do it.

By now you are saying, ‘Gee thanks for the encouraging post, John.’ And if I were a preacher or an infomercial writer, I’d quickly turn a corner and provide you with the solution, which is to buy what I’m selling. I’m not going to do that, mostly because that’s just not my style. But I am legitimately encouraged by a couple of trends that I believe are just starting to emerge:

1) There is a growing segment of Americans  who are regaining an interest in well-made goods. Typically, these people are starting to reject fast-food consumerism (cheap, plentiful, and immediate gratification) and are instead becoming more intentional about what they buy. This requires some degree of work. You sometimes have to wait, or research, or save your money before making a purchase. But I think there’s a growing trend here, and I’m pleased to see it. Selfishly, my livelihood depends on it.

2) Manufacturing parity is coming, I think. There will come a point (5 years, I believe), where manufacturing will return to the U.S. It will have to be leaner (smaller, non-unionized) and make use of technology (automation) in order to be competitive in the global space. But I believe that we will once again see American (furniture) manufacturers have a spot in the marketplace. The pendulum is just starting to swing in this direction, with operational efficiency and skilled labor supply being key drivers. I look forward to seeing this happen, because a balanced economy is one that has a full-range of commercial enterprises. When an economy is skewed heavily towards ‘white collar’ commerce, the imbalance creates instability.

Click here to view the embedded video.

1) A budget

2) A desire for a clean, contemporary piece and

3) A suggestion that I really challenge myself technically

This might seem silly, but I’ve never seen a jewelry box before. I normally make big, custom furniture, not little boxes. And my personal jewelry consists of a wedding ring that I never take off and an heirloom watch that I never wear. My wife, bless her, isn’t a big wearer of bling either. So on many fronts, this was a bold step that I made over the course of, ummm, 5 months. Kind of like getting into the cold swimming pool one toe at a time.

To start with, I want to talk about what the jewelry box is made out of. I used 2 of the woods that are generally considered to be among the most expensive in the world: Ancient Kauri and Gabon (Gabbon/Gabboon) Ebony. The majority of the box is comprised of Ancient Kauri, and it is REALLY extraordinary stuff. The wood comes from huge trees in New Zealand that fell and were buried in a peat bog at least 52,000 years ago. I say 52,000 years because the lab in Louisiana that carbon dated the particular wood in this box said that the carbon dating process is only accurate to 52,000 years. So all we know is this wood is OLDER than that. The peat bog provided an anoxic environment, so the wood was perfectly preserved. It didn’t fossilize or rot; it just lay there, waiting to be dug up by some industrious New Zealanders.

If any of this sounds familiar, there was an episode on the History Channel about it (Modern Marvels: episode ‘The Lumberyard’). Hopefully, this link will stay active for a while. The whole show is a fascinating explanation of my chosen medium, but the segment on kauri is at the 40:45 mark:

Click here to view the embedded video.

For the ecologically conscious among us, Ancient Kauri is LEED certified as a reclaimed wood. Similarly, the ebony pulls were harvested from the only sustainable ebony operation in the world (in West Africa).

Design: I designed this project from scratch. My goal was contemporary, clean, maybe a little Japanese.  The lines on it are subtle, but I assure you that almost nothing on this project is square. The sides cant in at 5 degrees. The curved drawer fronts cant back at 5 degrees. The top is beveled in at 5 degrees. My goal was to create a subtle thin-ness causing the eye to travel up from bottom to top. I spent approximately 30 hours on the design.

Initial design using Sketchup

The design started with a curved box front. I then added the subtle tapers on the front and the sides. I then spent way to long figuring out the right way to build what I’d designed.

Construction: Because almost nothing is square, this proved to be the most complicated construction I’ve ever made. The front of the box is curved. I did this using a technique called ‘bent lamination.’ I took two, 1” thick pieces of ancient kauri. Then I used my bandsaw and resawed the pieces into roughly 1/8 inch thick, 12 inch wide strips. I kept the pieces in order, put glue between each piece, placed that stack of laminations on a form created for that purpose, put all that crap in a huge vaccum bag, and used a vaccum press to ‘pull’ the laminations to the form. After the glue cured, we had a large, bent piece of wood. I then cut strips off of that to make the drawer fronts.

Here’s the box front in the vacuum press:

Here’s what the bent laminations look like after they were finished:

Dry fit of box carcass

The back of the box is Black Cherry from Pennsylvania.

The drawers were the toughest part of this project. The drawer sides are made of Tiger Maple and were cut at compound angles, angling in 5 degrees and back 5 degrees. Then I had to get that joined to a curved drawer front. The 3 drawers took about 50 hours to make, with one ‘oh @#$%, starting over’ thrown in. The rest of the project took about 70 labor hours, so you get a sense about the challenge of the drawers.

The inevitable, "OH @#$%," moment

I finished the box with 2 coats of shellac and 5 coats of General Finishes high gloss Polyacryllic.

spraying the box

I ‘flocked’ the thing with Aggie maroon. Flocking is a process where you basically paint the surface with maroon paint, then take a hand pump and pump little velvet fibers all over the paint. It cures and you’ve been velvetized.

At some point, this thing got totally out of hand and just became a labor of love. I talked with my mentor and a couple other professional woodworkers, and there was general agreement that making a little box like this is at least as time consuming as making a big box such as a chest of drawers, because all the joinery is still there, only in miniature.

Kauri Jewelry box

For those of you who are intrigued by this ancient kauri, I’m pleased to announce that LoneStar Artisans will have 2 new artisans joining our team soon. They will be turning extremely high end writing pens made from ancient kauri, Texas mesquite, and a figured wood to be named later. Supply of the kauri pens will be limited (and they will be expensive). Stay tuned!

Finally, here’s a little Youtube video I created on my iphone. Sorry about the quality:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Without further ado:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m trained in marketing. I understand why marketers do what they do (because it works). If I can create an emotional bond between you and the product or service I have to offer, you are FAR more likely to buy it.

I’m mentioning all of this because marketing is an ongoing struggle for me. I own a business. I make products. I’m hoping to provide for my family through the sale of those products, so I really, really want you to buy my products. I believe they are extremely good and well-made products. In fact, I believe that what I make is some of the best stuff out there.

Was that compelling for you? I doubt it.  I don’t want to be manipulative, though, even though I know that is effective. This quandary is captured brilliantly in a clip from ‘The Invention of Lying.’ The premise of the movie is that the hero (Ricky Gervais) lives in a society that is incapable of telling anything but the absolute truth. In one scene, he lies down in bed and watches the following ‘advertisement’ for Coke:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The opposite of that advertisement, for me, is a famous commercial from 1975. I absolutely LOVE this ad, mostly because it is riotously unsubtle:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I can almost see the marketers sitting around the Chrysler conference table, laying out the vision. “Can we get Ricardo to really roll those “R’s?” I want Corrrrrdoba and Corrrrrrinthian to sound like the purring of a cat!” By almost all accounts, this was an extremely crappy car. But Ricardo pimped it with a 70’s savoir-faire that was rivaled only by the likes of Billy Dee Williams (Colt 45, anyone?). And the car sold! It doesn’t matter that there’s no such thing as ‘Corinthian’ leather. People instantly believed in Corinthian leather and, more importantly, wanted it.

Generally, marketing and advertising is more subtle now. A great example is this 2012 commercial for York Peppermint Patties:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I didn’t catch it the first time. It was the lip-biting that finally made it clear. SEX! Eating a York Peppermint Patty is like having sex! Your pupils dilate (or… un-dilate, whatever), the hair on your arm stands out, you gasp, you bite your lip, your fingers clench uncontrollably… my goodness! That’s quite an experience! Who wouldn’t want that??? Interestingly, there’s a 2010 version of the same commercial that’s a tad more subtle. I guess the brain trust wanted to provoke a more visceral reaction from their viewership.  Incidentally, men, any time you watch TV and see a woman brushing a strand of hair behind her ear or biting her bottom lip, you are being prompted sexually.  I don’t know why those two actions elicit responses, but they do. And marketers know it.

Ok, I’ve wandered far afield. Let’s move away from the sexual hotbed of candy bars and back to the comparative safety of wood furniture.  I’m about to make two little Youtube videos, mostly for marketing purposes. In the first, I’m going to compare end-grain cutting boards to other types of cutting boards (plastic, face grain wood, and the dreaded bamboo). I’m going to try to explain why end grain boards are better. The challenge will be explaining why they are better without resorting to marketing silliness (“if you care about the safety and health of your family, you will buy what I am selling!”) When in doubt, I’m going to stick to features rather than benefits. Implicit in this strategy is my core belief that benefits are manipulative at best and deceitful at worst. So if I give in on that, call me out on it!

In the second video, I’m going to try to provide a narrative of how I build end-grain cutting boards. It will probably be more illustrative than instructive, because an extremely detailed instruction of woodworking technique would put most readers to sleep. But I’ve been commissioned to make 2 custom cutting boards, one by a famous knife-maker and one by a customer who owns and wants to preserve the edge on his extremely expensive knife.  So I’m going to document the steps of those projects, in the hopes that people (you) will be impressed by the time and effort that goes into these suckers and decide they (you) want one for themselves (yourself).

So, friends and neighbors, brace yourselves! Don’t be lulled by the siren song of soft, classical music. Ignore the brie, the leather furniture, the elegant, smiling people, the champagne. Instead, I humbly offer you sweat and sawdust. I desperately want that to be enough.

So, I started hunting and presenting options. We looked at mesquite and walnut and maple and cherry. Ultimately, the client decided on cherry. As I have mentioned previously, some of the prettiest cherry in the world grows in northwest Pennsylvania. I made a call to Dan Terbovich at Horizon Wood Products in that neck of the woods (literally). Dan was awesome, and went above and beyond in helping me find the perfect pair of boards. He wrapped them up like precious cargo and shipped them to me here in Texas.

Apprentice evaluating the raw lumber

Even in rough form, you can see that the boards have crazy figure. “Figure,” by the way, refers to an unusual grain pattern in wood.  This grain pattern is a sort of optical illusion that is variously described as “shimmery,” “iridescent,” “three-dimensional,” or “movement.” It’s really pretty, really rare, and really expensive. For the two of you who want to learn more about this, you can do a google or a google image search of ‘chatoyancy.’  As a final thought on this, you’ll notice that I use figured woods A LOT on my commissions. The reason for this is simple… figured woods are awesome! Any schmuck can go buy a mass-manufactured desk out of inexpensive, boring, whatever-wood. If I’m going to craft something by hand, why not use the best possible materials? It’s sort of a ‘go big or go home,’ or ‘life’s too short to drink cheap beer,’ philosophy.

But I digress… back to the build.

Next step, cutting these, beautiful, pristine boards into desk-sized pieces. I cried a little while doing this.

First cuts. My decrepit Skillsaw proved unequal to the task, and died in a cloud of noxious smoke.

Rough-milled boards, with one ‘straight line rip’ cut on each board

These boards were a bit over 2 inches thick when I got them. They were also 22 inches-24 inches wide. When you start with really wide slabs like these, it is pretty rare that they stay flat. They tend to warp or cup or bow or twist or do something wonky. In this case, the boards had a slight ‘twist’ before I cut them. It was a pretty tame thing, kind of like this. Once I cut them to rough size, however, some serious inner tensions let loose and they turned into Boards Gone Wild (uncensored version). The little twist turned into a frenetic, out of control twist. In lumber, twist is where two diagonal corners of a board curl/warp downward and the two other diagonal corners of the board curl upwards. If your goal is to get a flat board (which it generally is in woodworking), then twist is the last thing you want to see.

So, I moped about it while I sanded the natural edges of the slab with a sanding flap-wheel.

sanding the natural edges with flap wheel

edges sanded

Then, I remembered a woodworking jig that was featured in Fine Woodworking a couple months ago. Some of you might be familiar with Nick Offerman, an actor on Parks and Recreation.  Here’s a clip of Dave Letterman gently mocking the article and the jig that I subsequently used on this project (UPDATE 2/2013– CBS took the video down, darn them. Here’s a link to it in Fine Woodworking, but the video itself is dead there too: http://www.finewoodworking.com/item/41363/fine-woodworking-on-the-david-letterman-show)

Click here to view the embedded video.

I guess what I do is kind of dorky, if Dave’s perma-smirk is any indication. C’est la vie.

Ok, so here’s my version of the “Super Kick-Ass Offerman Leveling Jig:”

How to make one face of a really twisted board flat.

close-up of router leveling jig

About 1,000 back and forth passes later, I had flattened one face of each board. Here’s where the twist went:

Mound o’ sawdust

flattened board

After I got one face of each board flat using the jig, I then flattened the opposite faces on my 37 inch drum sander. Then, I jointed the two edges and glued up the boards:

Next steps, sanding. 30 minutes of drum sanding, 30 minutes of belt sanding, 2 hours of sanding through the grits (80, 120, 150, 180) with my Rotex sander. After all this sanding, the figure is really starting to emerge. The boards have gone from 2 1/8 inches thick in the rough to a final thickness of just under 1 1/4 inches thick. That is some really expensive sawdust, by the way. My neighbor is a meat-smoking fanatic, so he jumped on the chance to get 40 pounds of premium cherry sawdust.

desk top after sanding

Last steps of the project are finishing. I called a woodworker I really admire (Dave Diaman @ http://www.diamanwoodcrafters.com/) and asked his opinion on a ‘finishing schedule.’ My goals with this (and with most projects) are not to ‘stain’ the wood, but to let the wood speak and do its thing as naturally as possible. For this project, I wiped on one coat of General Finishes Seal-a-Cell, then sprayed on a coat of thinned dewaxed shellac, then sprayed 4 coats of General Finishes water-based PolyAcrylic. I scuff-sanded between each coat with 600 grit and with a very fine 3M pad.

After wiping on the first coat of Seal-a-Cell, I put the desk top out in the sun for a day of ‘sunbathing.’ One of the things I love about cherry is it darkens over time, with about 70% of the darkening happening in the first year. So I gave it a day out in the sun to jump-start the process. The desk seemed to enjoy itself, and asked for a little Steve Miller Band, a little frisbee, and a few beers.

Sunbathing

Then, back into the gloomy shop for some spraying.

Darth Sprayer

Spraying topcoat.

inspecting top coat

close-up of wet finish

I use a low-angle, ‘raking’ light source to inspect the surface. Here, you can see that the sprayed surface has a little texture to it. This levels out as it dries and results in a clear, smooth surface. On my next project, I’m going to increase the air pressure (PSI) on my spray gun slightly to see if it lessens this wet, ‘orange peel’ effect.

I routed some notches in the underside of the desk top to receive the tops of the client’s iron base. With that, the project was complete.

And finally, here’s the finished project:

Back to the narrative… Boxes are now out of the clamps, so it’s time to make drawer dividers.

Tapping the drawer divider home

You might remember in our last post that there was a ‘blow-out’ on the dovetail that required repair. This forced me to re-think my drawer dividers, and use pocket hole screws on the lower dividers in order to avoid the risk of more damage. Here’s a close-up of the repaired dovetail:

close-up of repair

After repairing and installing the drawer dividers, I created base molding using solid walnut and a cove and bead router bit. I flipped the pedestals upside down and carefully mitered each piece, then glued and nailed them home:

Base molding (at top of image)

Next, I installed four adjustable ‘leveling feet’ in each pedestal. Ok, there’s a lot going on in this next picture so I’ll describe it a bit. As is generally the case, the secrets to this piece of furniture are revealed only when you look at it from the bottom (or the inside) of the case. Here, the joinery is revealed, so you can see whether corners were cut or whether it was done ‘right.’ I took this picture to show one of the eight ‘leveling feet’ that I put under the pedestals, which can be used if the desk is on an irregular or non-level floor. But the picture shows a whole lotta stuff. This photo shows:

1) Lots of solid walnut. Walnut plywood is used on the side panel, but I prefer not to use plywood unless the project really calls for it.

2) Sliding dovetails to join the modesty panel to the pedestals

3) Tongue and groove joinery (just to the right of the metal ‘foot’)

4) Cope and stick joinery for the raised panels (bottom center/right of the picture)

5) Walnut base molding is mitered (upper right of the tongue and groove). There is an imperfection here, as my miter is not perfect. I filled the hairline with a small amount of walnut wood putty. I glued and nailed the molding to the base.

leveling feet, secrets revealed

Time to make some drawers. (Get your filthy paws off my silky drawhs)

wide maple board for the file cabinetmore maple for the drawers

drawer parts milled

drawer dovetails cut and rough-fit

good dry-fit (no glue yet)

dovetail detritus

Ok, confession time. Drawers are a real challenge for me. Doing them properly takes a LOT of time, and it is kind of thankless time. I’m skipping about 10 steps of the drawer-building process in this narrative, mostly because it’s not very interesting. But there’s rabbet-cutting, rounding over, sanding, finishing, fitting, etc. And everything (both the case and the drawer) has to be square and true, or the drawer won’t fit and slide properly. I’ve lost a lot of hair making drawers. That said, I’m not going to cut corners on them. Most furniture makers these days just make their drawers out of cheap plywood, and use a nail gun to quickly nail the parts together in a ‘butt joint’. Open a drawer in your kitchen (or in a piece of your store-bought furniture) and tell me if that’s what you see. It probably will be.  That is a sign of bad craftsmanship, in my opinion. It is fast and easy, but it is not built to last.

Unfortunately, I missed the mark on FOUR (4) drawers. Two were a hair too wide; two were a hair too long. I didn’t realize this until they’d been glued up and putting them in the case was like fitting a size 12 foot in a size 4 shoe. So here they are, my ‘Island of Misfit… Drawers.’

Time to join the Charlie in the Box on the Island of Misfit Drawers

drawer fronts cut

I spent a lot of time testing out different looks for the drawer pulls. I sketched and cut and played around with different looks. Ultimately, I took some inspiration from a ‘Greene and Greene’ style, and chose to use mesquite inset with walnut.

test profiles for drawer pulls

Drawer pulls: rough profiles

Drawer pulls: template for curves

Drawer pulls: curves cut on bandsaw

drawer pulls with finish

The client asked for a ‘pencil drawer,’ so I made one. This drawer is extremely wide and quite shallow, so I reinforced it with internal dividers. Of everything I made on this project, I am least satisfied with this result. Because of the shallowness of the drawer, there are only 2 full dovetails providing mechanical strength. But if I had made the drawer ‘taller,’ it would bump into the client’s knees. I’m not sure how I would have handled it differently if I were doing it over, but it’s bugging me like a sore tooth.

Center drawer

The ‘modesty panel’ is the piece that connects the two pedestals of the desk. I made it out of A1 walnut plywood for dimensional stability. I also made the design decision for this piece to be a ‘knock-down’ using pocket hole screws. The final desk is huge and extremely heavy. By using screws here, I am allowing the possibility of dismantling the desk into 4 major pieces (top, 2 pedestals, modesty panel) in the future for easier moving and/or ingress/egress through narrow doorways. So this panel is ‘seated’ into each pedestal with sliding dovetails, then locked into place using pocket hole screws. Does anyone care about this but me? Probably not. But I felt it was the ‘right’ way to do it.

modesty panel

installing 100 lbs, ball-bearing drawer slides

finishing drawer fronts

installing drawer fronts and pulls

final assembly

Many people have asked me about the ‘secret compartment.’ I confess I spent way too much time researching, thinking, plotting, and scheming about it. When I presented the desk to the client, he spent a few minutes trying to find the compartment before giving up and asking me to show it to him. He seemed really pleased with the result. Rather than describing all of the design process in detail, I thought it would be easier just to show it in pictures. So here’s an image of the compartment:

Secret compartment

And here’s a close-up of how it works mechanically:

Hope that helps. And finally, here are the pictures of the finished desk: