I got too much clutter on this little desk so I figure I want to make some drawers to
go underneath it and it'd be cool if one of the drawers could actually fit a keyboard
in it I started by cutting some pieces of the right width from 2x4 material and then
re-sewing that down the middle on the table saw to make thinner pieces to make a drawer
side I then used the thickness planer to trim all the pieces to the exact width and after
that I plan them feeding lots of pieces in at once that way I can avoid the snipe on
the ends because it's all continuous feed then cutting quarter inch box joints into
the end of the pieces with my super events box joint jig I always have that one already
set up for quarter inch joints so it's pretty straightforward especially because I just
used my regular saw blade for that so the setup is really minimal and then gluing them
together I cut these fairly tight tests so it's a bit hard to squeeze them together but
on the other hand that once they're together that glue setup is so fast I really don't
have to worry about clamping or anything like that
[Music] although for the last two joints at once that fast setup is a bit of a problem
and so to get these joints to fully close I have to apply a little bit of heavy persuasion
these drawers are going to be side by side under the desk and I worked out with how much
room I've got left on the sides and the middle to make wooden drawer slides of this size
with basically a hardwood piece that slides in another piece with a slot in it
[Music] these pieces will get this slot cut into them and for between the drawers I've
got wider pieces for slots on either side and to cut those slots I've got a slot cutter
on my router table that cuts a quarter inch slot so it'll take a few passes
[Music]
I made two little blocks with a notch cut out to help me position the slides that go
on here this is one of them and it doesn't go all the way to the front doesn't need to
because the only time the front part is used if the drawer is all the way closed at which
point it's got lots of support the back is more critical because if the drawer is most
of the way open that's where all the load goes
with the slides on the drawers and in the rails plus the h-shaped rail in the middle
my total width comes to about 91 centimeters which is as much space as I've got underneath
the desk so this is cutting it very close I think I need to mount that under the desk
to see how that actually works out
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measure how much space I had on the front but on the back I am a few millimeters less
than that oops
I think the easiest fix will be to just put a shim in here that moves it back further
apart I don't want to move them closer together on the front because the screw hole is right
here and I can't move that okay
[Applause] [Music]
and here's my shim to make it wider on the back foreign now that I know my drawers are
going to fit I can go back to working on them [Music]
now for the drawer pulls on these things I'm going to put these things on here like this
and I just need some kind of indent to grab it by something like this on the router table
[Music]
it's not entirely obvious but it actually tilted this router a little bit because this
is not a ball nose but it's actually a small Cove bit with the guide bearing cut off and
by tilting it the bottom of these grooves still ends up around instead of being flat
like it would end up with this flat top bit
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you know just throwing the keyboard in the drawer makes for terrible ergonomics and even
if I raise it up a little bit it's still hard to get that space bar plus it may hit the
top When I close the drawer so I cut a bevel into the front of the drawer and the handle
and that makes it easier to reach that space bar especially if I tilt that keyboard back
a little bit
now I had the idea of getting fancy and making something that lifts that keyboard up a little
bit like this when the drawer is pulled out but that's just getting very complicated and
this kind of works and also this way I don't have anything that gets in the way for getting
it stuffed behind the keyboard now the way these drawers are there's higher risk of pulling
out by accident and the handle isn't very good at catching them so I made these little
uh rocker stops to go in the back and those will prevent the drawer from pulling all the
way out foreign [Music]
and also one for the keyboard drawer and I made some blocks that hold the keyboard at
just the right level so it fits and I can easily hit the space bar I also made drawers
for Harriet's desk which is of the same design and I think the anti-pull-it feature is especially
important for kids and this desk is a temporary Miracle of tidying up but of course some of
that stuff is just in the drawers now and I made that drawer handle this shape because
it hides nicely under the desk and it also serves as a wrist rest with a keyboard and
it's not perfect but mostly I just use the keyboard here for configuring the networking
on Raspberry Pi computers and after that I mostly just access it from my main PC
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