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At this point, I recommend you sand your legs and aprons through 180 grit as this is easier to do while things are flat. Prepare your clamps and assemble the legs and aprons into your basic desk foundation, being very careful about removing excess glue and insuring that everything is square. It's generally easiest to assemble the two short sides, let them cure and then join the two sub-assemblies into the full construction. While the glue is drying, this is a good time to construct your drawer and mill the various pieces of lumber you'll need to construct your drawer supports and so forth. Now...you need to be careful here if you choose to make your previously cut drawer front “the” front panel of your drawer. You don’t want to accidentally destroy it when cutting your dovetails as it will do away with the grain matching you already took a lot of trouble to maintain! If you are not sure of this, sacrifice some drawer depth and use the drawer front of the apron as a false front mounted to a complete drawer box with two screws from the inside.
In order to provide additional strength where the top and bottom supports and kickers meet the apron, you can use simple glue blocks on the inside of the aprons to provide greater glue surface when you assemble these parts. Corner blocks to provide a mounting method for your top should also be installed at this time. Be sure they are slightly lower than the surface of the aprons and leg tops and drill oversize/elongated holes to allow for wood movement across the grain on the table top. Alternatively, you can use figure eights or wooden clips to mount the table top.
Wrap It Up
You should finish your project prior to attaching the table top. This make it easier to brush, wipe or spray your chosen finish and insure complete coverage. The version of the table show in the beginning of this article was constructed from poplar and received a water-based dye for color and a coat of garnet de-waxed shellac for additional tone and to seal the piece. That was followed by a clear, protective top coat. For this project, I used several coats of a wipe-on varnish, but typically use a water borne acrylic lacquer sprayed on. (Target Coatings USL)
I hope you build this table for your own use or for a friend or family member. The design lends itself to many styles and it would be easy to adapt it from its basic Shaker orientation to others, such as mission, merely through choice of wood and decorative features.