Built by Family, for Families — Three Generations and Counting
My grandfather, Jarvis P. Osborne, was what we'd call a maker today — except the word didn't exist yet when he was doing it. He was just a man who made things.
During World War II he served in the Navy as a machinist mate, which in practice meant he kept ships alive in the Pacific theater. Dead-in-the-water vessels, sometimes while battles were happening around them. He'd board them, figure out what was broken, and fix it. Whatever it took. I think about that a lot when I'm in the shop working through a problem. JP Osborne did not give up easily.
After the war, he and his wife — also a Navy veteran — settled in Prescott, Arizona. He built a telescope from scratch and founded the Prescott Astronomy Club. He worked wood, leather, and metal for friends and family. He was also known to read the dictionary. Nobody in the family could stump him on a word. Not one. The man was relentlessly curious.
1953: One Sheet of Plywood, Two Kids, One Very Good Idea
In 1952, JP and his wife had twins. The year after, he built the Double Desk.
It was cut from a single sheet of ⅝-inch plywood — that was the standard at the time. Simple mortise and tenon joints, wedged tight. Two kids could sit facing each other. Tray in the middle. The whole thing came apart for moving and storage. I used it myself as a kid, and the fact that I remember it says something.
When my first child was born, my mom showed up at my house with it. All these years, she'd kept it. But the top tray was gone, and the desk was showing serious age. I took it out to the garage to figure out what could be salvaged and what needed to be rebuilt.
⅝-inch plywood, it turns out, isn't something you can just walk into a home center and buy anymore. So I made adjustments — upgraded to ¾-inch furniture-grade plywood, tightened the tolerances, and rebuilt the whole thing. Same proportions, same basic concept, better materials. My grandfather would have done exactly the same thing.
The Daycare Years — When Everyone Started Asking
My wife ran a daycare out of our house while our kids were young. The Double Desk lived in the playroom, and I heard about it constantly. Parents would drop off their kids and stop to look at it. Every time: "Where did you get that? Can I buy one? Can you build one for us?"
So I started building them. For friends, for family, for anyone who asked nicely. Eventually I thought: this could be a business. I wrote a business plan. I talked to manufacturers. I sacrificed a couple of years of sleep learning exactly how hard it is to manufacture a heavy physical product at small scale and ship it across the country. Shipping costs tripled in two years. The margins were brutal. The logistics were worse.
I learned some lessons the hard way. That's fine. I don't regret any of it.
What I took from that experience is this: the design is great. The product is genuinely good. The people who want to build it themselves — the DIY parents, the grandparents, the woodworking hobbyists — they're the right audience. So I changed course, and now I share the plans.
The Next Generation — A Family Business in the Truest Sense
Here's the part that means the most to me. My son is a husband, a new dad, and a CAD designer. He makes the technical drawings and CAD files that we sell. First grandchild on the way.
That's five generations now. JP Osborne designed it in 1953 with hand tools and a sheet of plywood. My mom — one of those original twins — kept it all those years and handed it back to me when my first kid arrived. I rebuilt it in my garage and spent years figuring out how to share it with the world. My son produces the plans that let other families build it in their own garages. And his kid is going to use one of these desks before long.
That's what a family woodworking legacy actually looks like. Not a museum piece — a working design that keeps getting passed down and improved.
Why "Heirloom Play"
The name wasn't hard to land on. An heirloom is something you build well enough that it's worth keeping. Play is what kids do — and what I'd argue adults do too, when they're in the shop working on something they care about. Put them together and you've got what we're trying to make: things worth building, things worth keeping.
These aren't grandfather woodworking plans filed away in a drawer. They're live plans, updated for current materials, drawn in CAD, ready for your table saw or CNC machine. But they carry the same intention JP brought to that first sheet of plywood in 1953: make it strong, make it simple, make it last.
If you're thinking about safety and materials — good, you should be. We put a lot of thought into that, and you can read more about it in built with safety from the start.
When you're ready to build, we're ready for you. Carry on the tradition — get the plans.