HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN DESK SET
A DESK set is a great addition to a boy’s desk. If he has a pen tray he knows where his pencils and pens are to be found without rummaging through a tangled mess of top strings and marble bags and nails. If he puts away on the bill file that I Owe You that Billy Smith gave him for a pair of rabbits, it won’t be all crumpled up and beyond identification when Billy gets his next month’s allowance. When you come to think of it, a desk set has a great many advantages—and then, there’s the fun of making it.
The desk set which is shown in the picture comprises five pieces—an ink well stand, a bill file, a pen tray, an envelope opener, and a book rack. It is all, with the exception of the envelope opener, made of one-eighth-inch basswood.
For the ink well stand (Fig. 1) use a piece of wood, four inches square. The two-and-a-half-inch opening—which is the size of the average glass ink well—should be cut first, before the corners are weakened by cutting out the half-inch rounds. After this is done, cut the corners, and last, the eight-inch bevel. Fig. 2 shows one of the feet of the ink well. It is shown, by dotted lines, in position in Fig. 1. The four feet are glued to the bottom of Fig. 1 and the inside corners project inside the opening, making four half-inch squares on which the ink well may rest. The feet are made from pieces of wood one and seven-eighths inches square, cut in the shape shown, and ornamented with a little design in “chip” carving. This chip carving is ordinarily done with what is called a skew chisel—that is, a chisel which is not square at the end, but which has one point an eighth of an inch or more longer than the other, so that when it is put into the wood, one end of the cut will be deep while the other is barely cut out at all. However, it may be done with a jack knife, if you are very careful. In the “motif” shown in Fig. 2, the points where the three lines from adjoining corners meet are where the deepest part of the cuts should be. This is done with the knife held point down and the thumb on the end of the handle. Then, with the knife still in the same position in the hand, you chip out the wood with a sliding cut toward you, slanting it down to the depth of the cut. It is a little difficult to describe this without seeing it done, but if you look at the patterns and the photographs, and experiment a little on a piece of wood, you will find it easy.
(A) FILE. (B) INK WELL. (C) PEN TRAY.
