Very nice. That's a keeper. Her heirs will fight over it.

I used mortise and tenon joinery on the leg-carcase joints. I cut the tenons using my OF1010 and a 3/4 inch dado bit. I laid the board flat underneath the guide rail on the MFT1080, put the router on the guide rail, and ran it across the ends of the boards. With a stop to align the boards, it wasn't too difficult to get nice flat tenons with square shoulders. I did the mortises on my drill press with a square mortising bit.

This is awfully self-serving, but I thought I'd bump this thread as a potential entry for this month's contest. It was almost entirely Festool built, and the first thing I attempted with my new collection.

Poto

Very nice, I like the way the wood grain looked on it.

Ooo - you got me. I bought a $99 Makita RO sander for that project, and have never used it since. I'm now the proud owner of an RO125 and the rectangular sander whose name I can't remember (and the Festool site seems to be down, so I can't check). But I did a lot of hand sanding, too. 

Poto, really? You mean you did not convert one of your fine tools to a sander as well? Did you buy the RTS 400, 1/4 sheet sander or the RS 2 E, 1/2 sheet sander. I have both and love them both. I used my RTS 400 for about an hour tonight on some more raised panel doors I had to make. It works like a charm.   Fred

Hey, thanks for all the very nice compliments, guys! The desk is even more beautiful now that it's aged a bit. I keep having students come up to me and compliment me on it - I guess they're friends of the grad student I made it for. I'd love to do work for them, too, but they can't afford me.  Heck - I can't afford myself! 

I have the RTS400. It's a great sander, though I found that I didn't use it at all on my last project (which I have yet to post). I used the RO125 exclusively, and it did an amazing job. Had some serious hogging to do, as well as final finishing of some big, flat planes of wood. It did everything. I got the RTS400 to get into corners, and to do some flat surfaces of a 3D puzzle I was making. Worked really well for that.

Thanks for noticing the grain matching, Eiji. I spent hours looking through a huge pile of cherry at TH&H, to find boards with the right figure. I ended up designing the desk proportions around the boards I found, rather than vice versa. It's like cooking: get inspiration from the ingredients available, rather than forcing a set menu on inadequate ingredients. I particularly like the wavy figure on the sides of the desk, as I have spent a lot of time studying internal waves in the ocean, which look a lot like that. A nice desk for an oceanographer!