Desk

I like big desks. One reason is that I have a lot of computer crap. Another is that I hate sitting with the keyboard right up at the edge, but prefer to rest my entire forearm on the desk, so the keyboard needs to be about 15” away from the edge. Previous, I used an old 4x6 dining room table Kim & I bought when we still lived in Iowa City. It was the right size, but offered no storage for books and cables, and everything was always sitting out. So I designed this thing out of oak.

It’s 4x7, has a partially enclosed cabinet on the left which holds the Mac (although not the G5 because it’s about 3” taller), hard drives, and has a slide–out shelf for the scanner. The back half of the inner side is open for airflow and access to cables. The legs are glued up from 4 pieces and slip into heavy duty areas in the top. Bolts hold the legs and the cabinet in place. The top is 2 layers of 3/4” plywood (more like 11/16” or whatever it is these days) with 2 layers of 3/4’ oak overlapping the edges, to which a 1.5’ oak skirt is attached. Black Formica is inlaid into the top, and the oak surround was carefully sanded to be perfectly even with the Formica.

In the new house. Compare this picture to the next and you can see how the glued–up solid doors shrunk and warped a bit after they dried out. Live and learn. The big black box under the desk is the big sub I talk about on the Foot Stool page.

Being the new owner of a biscuit joiner, I used plenty of biscuits when I glued up the boards for the hutch.

All the hutch parts ready for finishing.

Gluing up the hutch.

The hutch has a piece of aluminum T rail embedded into the bottom of the right half. Rather than driving clear to Home Depot to buy a hunk of large diameter oak dowel, I made this one. I sliced the corners off on the table saw, drilled a hole in the bottom, threaded a large T nuts into the hold, cut off a bolt, threaded it into the T nut, and chucked that into the drill press. Then I used a rasp and sandpaper to round it into shape. Before screwing the T rail into the slot, I inserted a T bolt into the slot. The T bolt then threads onto the T nut in the dowel, which tightens it down against the bottom of the shelf, thereby creating a strong, adjustable bookend.