This Valentine’s Day, I wanted to build something for my wife.
I looked at her standing desk and wanted to replace the boxes and books she’d been using to support her keyboard and trackpad. Although it makes her look a learned woman, it lacked storage space and stability.
I had some leftover poplar from my last couple builds which I thought I could use. Since I’m working with leftovers, I had to measure my spare lumber before I could design the riser. I wanted to maximize the size of the platform using the materials on hand.
Thankfully, all of the leftover pieces were 5/4 boards. This gave me a uniform place to start with, but it also meant that I would be working with very thin boards, as I needed to re-saw the boards in order to create enough surface area for the desk riser.
The sequence of work
- Sketch a design that made use of the spare cutoffs I had handy
- Chop the pieces to rough size
- Joint the boards flat
- Plane them down on the other side
- Split my 5/4 board on the bandsaw to get ~5/8
- Plane again to smooth out the rough banding—this took us down to ~ 1/2″
- Glue up top platform
- Cut dado grooves along the sides, center, and back
- Sand down the inside of the grooves to get a snug fit
- Sand down all the boards to 180g grit
- Glue up the sides, back, and center support
- Break the edges with a sanding bar
Skill Development
There were a few new skills I developed while making this piece
- cutting dado grooves
- re-sawing with the bandsaw
- using a nail gun
- dry fitting
- glueing
Learnings
As part of my journey into woodworking, inevitably, mistakes were made. I’ll incorporate this into future builds.
- Start thicker: I started with too-thin boards. This was set by my leftover cutoffs, but if I was planning to make this again I would start with 6/4 or skip the re-saw and use 4/4 boards without splitting them.
- Create even more glue-able surface area: Had I had thicker boards, I would also have been able to cut dado grooves into the back side so that I could have the legs slot into the back instead of just butting against the panel.
- Measure twice: I would also have been more meticulous with the measurements of my boards for flush fits along all planes.
- Consistent groove depth: I would have found a way to make my dado groove depth consistent after removing the sled from the crosscut saw. I got away with it in this case, but it would be nice to have all the panels line up fully flush.
- Get a second opinion: I have the luxury of working in a woodshop with other people. Especially if my plans involve something I haven’t done before, it doesn’t hurt at all to get a second opinion about my plans before I cut myself into a corner.
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