I started the cleanup and assembly by taking apart the dry fit of the desk.

A couple of the pieces still needed to receive a round over. Specifically, the bottom and top stretchers for the cable channel needed to be rounded over to get rid of any cable-snagging sharp edges. 

The inside surfaces of all of the pieces were sanded before assembly. 

With all of the hand cut dovetails on this project, I was bound to have some mistakes that needed to be fixed. Here, the grain on one of the tails blew out while chiseling. To fix it, I started by cutting a clean edge that could be used as a good glue surface. 

I saved all of my off cuts from cutting the dovetails for exactly this reason. I can use them for small fixes like this and the color and grain matches will be almost perfect. 

I found a piece with as close of a grain match as I could get and cut a small patch off of it. 

The patch was glued on oversized... 

... and cleaned up with a chisel.

The result is a fix that will be invisible once assembled. 

The upper case glue up was not without incident. I used Titebond III which gave a long open time, but swelled the grain. This resulted in extremely tight joints and a crack i had to fix mid-glue up. In the end, everything came out just fine. 

The rear divider was also installed while the assembly was still in the clamps. 

The drawer dividers were installed making sure to put glue on the front couple inches of the joinery only. This will allow the case to expand and contract without the drawer dividers creating any stress. 

The front caps were also installed on the drawer dividers. 

Next up was the cleanup of the dovetails. First, I used a hand plane to flush up the joints. 

Next, the case sides were sanded down through the first couple grits. 

There were a few gaps that were visible enough that i wanted to fill them. I used a variation of the sawdust and glue trick using CA glue. CA glue will soak into the end grain, so I not only filled the cracks, but also soaked some into the end grain of all of the tails. This served to darken them up a little and create a little contrast. 

There were a few gaps that were too large for sawdust. In these spots, I used more of the off cuts from the chisel work. These were the perfect size to fill small gaps. 

Once a good piece was fit in, Some this CA glue was also applied. 

The excess could then be cut off with a sharp chisel. 

The drawer divider end caps were glued in long and needed to be brought down to their final size and shape by hand. 

Before the lower case could be assembled, the back panel had to be pre-finished. 

The case dividers were also installed, and were glued in only in the center couple of inches. 

For the lower case assembly, I switched to hide glue, and I only wish I had used it for the upper case glue up. I will be using hide glue for dovetailed glue ups from now on. There is no swelling, and the glue almost acts as a lubricant on the joints. What a joy to use!

The end result!