Solid Wood Study Desk

Details

A writing desk in solid sheesham, Dalbergia sissoo, from the farm-grown timber belt around Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, with a 25 mm edge-joined top and a dovetailed drawer. Solid wood is the most abused phrase in Indian furniture. What is sold as solid sheesham is routinely rubberwood, Hevea brasiliensis, stained dark, or a particleboard carcass under a sheesham-look foil, and once a piece is assembled and polished nobody can see the difference. The second cheat is moisture. Timber that goes into the workshop wet is dispatched wet, shrinks after it reaches you and opens its joints in the first Delhi summer, which is why IS 287 exists and sets a permissible moisture content for each of India's four humidity zones. The third is the joint itself, because cam fittings and knock-down bolts assemble in ten minutes and survive one house move.

• Species named: Dalbergia sissoo, solid through the top, frame, legs and drawer box
• No rubberwood, no particleboard, no MDF and no foil wrap anywhere in the piece
• Kiln-dried to 8 to 10 percent and pin-metered at three points on every panel before dispatch
• Frame joined with drawbored mortise and tenon, no cam locks and no knock-down fittings
• Drawer box in solid sheesham with machine-cut dovetails at all four corners, on full-extension slides rated 30 kg
• Two-component waterborne polyurethane, VOC under 50 g per litre against 500 to 700 for a solvent lacquer
• Heavy metal migration tested to IS 9873 Part 3, the toy standard, so the edge is safe for a child to mouth
• Ships fully assembled, so there is nothing to build and nothing to build wrong
• Sheesham is a figured timber. Grain and colour vary board to board and desk to desk, and it darkens a little over its first year. That is one tree rather than a printed pattern.