New electronics desk

Another project that I have been working on during weekends, and the occasional spare evening, is a new desk. This is to house the current mess that is my electronics hobby:

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Up til now I've been doing all my work at the dining table, then packing everything away afterwards, which is a pain. It also results in me finding bits of solder on the table while I eat dinner.

The wood for this project was some recycled spotted gum, which I had left over from the dining table that I built. This wood was intended as a table extension, but three years later we've never had enough people to actually need an extension, and I'd still not built it anyway. So I decided to just use the wood for something useful.

The pieces were mainly 40mm thick, which is fine for a large dining table, but was looking way too chunky for a small desk. So I cut them down the middle using a circular saw, and then cleaned them up a bit using a planer on my drill press.

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I've ended up with about 450mm depth, and 1300mm long for the desktop. Here's the gluing, and the desk top:

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The underneath of the desktop is still quite rough and uneven. My partner saw that side and commented how good it looked - "Oh you've done it like a rustic look". What am I, an animal? I demand comfort and smoothness when soldering, thanks very much.

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The legs have been done with some hidden biscuit joins, and a generous smearing of glue.

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I decided to put a back and sides on the desktop, as I don't know how many times I've lost some random part as it rolled off the back of the table.

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Finished off the wood with a coat of wax/oil finish.

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Here it is in place - it fits into the space available with about 2mm clearance. It took about 20 minutes before the cat claimed it as his new bath spot.

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Final bit of work - some shelves to go at the back. This used up pretty much the last of the Spotted Gum wood.

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There's just enough room for me to squeeze into the chair. :-)