Desk stands on it's own!Haven’t posted an update for a little while but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been working!  This whole project has taken more time that I expected – that has been a learning experience in itself!  Funny how the Part 3 post says “Finally it’s starting to come together”!  So what have I been doing?

Keyboard traysFirst off I got the keyboard drawers in.  I bought some 14 gauge steel (about 1/16”) and realized it was better to take it somewhere and have them bend it as opposed to cutting it myself and then welding on the sides.  That turned out to be an excellent choice as it was much quicker than doing it myself.  The place I took it (not sure I should name names?) did a great job at first but it was an inch shorter than what the order was for.  They used my material and said they would redo it using their material.  Unfortunately their material wasn’t nearly as clean as mine was – it had considerable corrosion on it in some places.  Rather than having them redo it a third time I’m going to see how it looks on the desk – hoping it will be alright in the end.

Once I had the steel bent I drilled some holes in it and attached the keyboard slides to it, and then those to the “ribs”, and then the ribs to the bottom piece of plywood.  The keyboard trays work really well!

4 legs bolted to 4 stumpsNext up was the legs.  These are 3” x 3” x 3/16” angle.  I wanted them to be removable so I decided I’d weld on some “stumps” made of 2” x 2” x 3/16” angle and then bolt the legs to those.  Only issue is that the outside corner of angle is square while the inside corner is rounded.  All this meant was that I had to grind off the hard corner edge of the stumps so they would fit tightly inside the legs.  Then clamped them together and put them on the drill press to drill holes for the bolts.  The most tedious part was grinding the cut edges of the legs (and the bottom of the frame of the desk) so that everything would weld up nice and square.  That took a little bit of time but then it was easy to just weld on the stumps, with a few tack welds to make sure everything was coming together as it should before it was permanently welded together.

Now with the legs and keyboard trays the end is in sight.  It’s nice to have it sitting up all by itself!  Next up is putting on the laminate and getting the back all finished up.  Shouldn’t be too long now!

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