How I Made My Butcher Block Desk // First Time Makes

Описание: In the second episode of First Time Makes, I make some more furniture for my room: a desk! If you would like me to make you custom furniture; please visit for more details!

I wanted a large L shaped desk, and butcher block seemed like the best design for the top.

If you have any questions let me know down in the comments!

0:00 - Getting Started
0:23 - Inspiration
0:42 - Cutting Pieces Down to Size
1:24 - What Kind of Wood is This?
2:21 - First Dry Assembly
2:58 - Glue Baby Glue
5:08 - Finishing the Tops
6:56 - Starting the Legs
8:46 - Final Sanding and Finish
9:33 - Final Assembly
10:14 - Finished Product!
10:43 - Closing Ceremonies and Finale

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Charles Josephs

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My next piece of furniture that I wanted to make for my room was a desk. I knew I wanted an L style desk so I could fit my computer, consoles, and monitor on one side; and my piano on the other. I went back to the same website I found my bed at to find inspiration for the desk. Once I had a design in mind, I went to Fusion 360 to quickly model it up (and make some design changes: you’ll notice I added an extra bar across the bottom of the legs. This addition was two fold: for extra support and I think it adds to the moderness of the desk.

I used 7 different types of wood in this build: Sapele, Goncalo, Zebra Wood, Birch, Purple Heart, Jatoba for the top; and red oak for the legs and supports. Each piece was cut down to 1”x16” x (what I thought was also an inch because its called four quarter, but turned out to be around .82”). This was done on the table saw and the chop saw. Once all of these pieces were sliced I laid out and then glued up each piece in place to make a pseudo-random butcher block design. I took effort to not put similar colors near each other but it happened once or twice and you can barely notice. I did this for both the 2’ section and the 4’ section. Each part of the desktop is 2’ deep. Using more clamps than I own, a lot of parchment paper, and glue, I waited for each desktop to dry overnight.

Luckily I was able to use an industrial sized planer for this project. And honestly if it wasn’t for that this desk wouldn’t of come out this nice at all; caught a huge break there. But what the planer does is make the two faces of the board parallel with each other. This is important for a desk because if the legs are square then the desktop remains parallel to the ground. It also removes bows and imperfections in the heights of the woods. There was a scare that the planer would rip out the butcher block pieces and the entire thing would be chipped, but luckily this wasn’t the case. After being planed the desktops came out looking better than I ever could have imagined and were already basically presanded.

Next, I needed to tackle the legs and supports. I used the red oak I had left over from my bed build to make them. Each leg is a trapezoid shape, held together with pocket screws. The holes were placed on the top and the bottoms of the legs so that they would be hidden. One face is always on the ground and the other face is always connected to the desk.

Once everything was made, the next step was to do a final sanding pass, clean off with a tack cloth, and apply polyurethane to finish. I repeated this three times with gradually increasing grit sandpaper until I was happy with the seal and the smoothness.

The last step was to screw everything together. There were countersunk holes in the legs that would screw into holes made on the desk. I was terrified screwing into this desk because it is pretty thin and I had to make sure I didn’t screw all the way through, but luckily I took my time and everything worked out!

I have been using this desk for weeks and I ABSOLUTELY love it. There are imperfections here and there but thats almost my favorite part. Any handmade piece won’t be perfect, and each impurity tells another story of how it was made. Each different species of wood pops when compared to the others, especially the purple heart and zebra woods! I hope to use this desk for years to come!!

If you have any questions on any part of the build I’d love to answer them in the comments!