Between August 2023 and February 2024, I made myself a desk and learned how to weld.
My previous desk (pictured exiled to the driveway) was fairly similar. However, when I and my dad made it in 2014 I did not anticipate the global pandemic and corresponding WFH craze. I learned the hard way that its little L shape is tragically unergonomic: you can’t sit perpendicular to your monitor! The shelves were also the wrong size and hard to get at.
This desk became a place for things to pile up instead of a place to do things at. Something had to change.
I started in the smallest way possible. My dad had a lamp he was willing to donate to my strange experiments, and I had keyboard tray slides I didn’t like the look of (not pictured).
I had a lot of fun spray painting lamp and slides to look “confetti’d”. Masking off color with washi tape worked like a charm.
My dad’s shop contains many wonders. He had enough scrap plywood for a desktop, and we finished the edges with “picture frame material” abandoned post-move by a neighbor.
With the top finished, the size constraints of the desk frame were established, and it was time for me to learn how to weld. A family friend, Fred, agreed to teach me. I showed up to the first session with a very boring design and he told me to go away and come up with something I was more excited about.
This was perfect advice that should be applied to many situations. I went away and came up with this vaguely Craftsman-ish design. I then put this design into SketchUp. The SketchUp model was good enough to figure out what materials we needed and how much of each.
Of course, the instant I started messing around with non-virtual mockups, I took what I had decided on for leg diameter and brace square size and threw it right out the window. In my defense, a 1″ diameter leg looked so flimsy (see example with dowel).
With perseverance on the parts of both Fred and I, we went from tests on scrap metal to chopsawing, welding, and grinding the real parts. We started with the ladderlike braces, moved on to the mitered corners of the frame undergirding the desktop, and then tackled the tricky angles of the leg assemblage.
Meeting once a week, this took us from October to December. In January we reconvened to figure out how to attach the legs.
Starting with the braces was certainly great practice! It also involved less manhandling long, unwieldy pieces of metal than other steps I could name. The above are pictured before grinding down the weld beads. Below: beautiful grinds.
The most important part of welding is making sure your helmet is turned on. The second is clamps and spacers. In this case, I even ended up drawing on the tabletop to make sure the two leg assemblies matched.
Note that I’ve trimmed down the braces; the original lengths were cut to match the SketchUp drawing, which, as established, got thrown out the window.
There are a lot of fiddly little steps in a project this prolonged. At one point, I begged my younger brother to weld the bottoms of the legs on because I just didn’t want to deal with it.
This is the picture my brother texted me after reading an earlier draft that left out his noble contributions. He created a pretty sweet setup, re-purposing the bits of wood I used to space the brace crosspieces.
The bottoms are little disks, each with a threaded hole in its center that fits one of the adjustable leveling feet my dad bought on eBay. I believe they were created by welding a nut to a washer. As you can see, I weaseled out of much of the process from the desk’s ankles down.
I have glossed over here a whole process of deciding whether to cross brace the legs along the back of the desk. A cross brace is shown in the SketchUp model, but I wanted to fit a filing cabinet between the legs and the keyboard tray, and the cabinet was large enough that one would have to jog the cross brace out. The desk also sits against a wall with a tiny closet where I store big pieces of paper and I don’t wish to be impeded in my paper retrieval.
Instead of cross bracing, which is objectively the correct and smart thing to do, we extended the attachment area of the legs out almost to the keyboard tray. Instead of rendering this in SketchUp I have drawn a very quick picture.
A little bit of side-to-side flex remains, but it isn’t noticeable when sitting at the desk.
Around Christmas, as we were getting close to wrapping up welding, I figured someone should get a certificate. I made this “Zandbergen Fabrication Facilities” (read: my dad’s back yard) Most Wonderful Welding Instructor certificate for Fred. The younger brother, also Fred-trained, contributed his endorsement.
Fred was tickled by it!
Fred and I had a little photoshoot for the desk so he could show it off to his friends (as I am showing it off right now).
I finished the keyboard tray and wrangled it in there with vital dad help post-photoshoot.
Wall shelves that couldn’t be blocked by desk clutter were always part of my grand vision. When we cut out the desktop, we got lucky: it was possible to leave just enough for two shelves.
I finished the shelf edges with the same picture-frame material, and the extra foot of shelf wood became a tiny table for my laptop.
Desktop, shelves, and tiny table were all stained “Golden Pecan” and sealed with a few coats of spar varnish polyurethane.
I am tremendously pleased with my desk! The look of the raw metal grew on me along the way, and now I can’t imagine it with paint (it definitely needs a clear coat, but I was too excited to start using it).
The picture frame material features finger joints; I’m very proud of centering them and matching their placement on both shelves. The shelf depth was determined by these $6 plastic boxes from Target.
It’s hard to tell from this picture, but my filing cabinet fits in with about an eighth of an inch to spare.