My mom stacked 2 stools to form a laptop stand.
So, then she asked me to build something more permanent.
I start by gluing together several boards to get
a board of the total width that I need.
I’m using some of my long reach clamps to make sure
the boards end up where they're glued.
Next I ripped the wide board to the width that I actually
need.
The final width just barely still
fits through my thickness planer.
I'm using a sort of box joint to joint the top of the
laptop stand to the sides. And I'm cutting those with
my Screw Advance Box Joint Jig.
I couldn't be bothered to put a dado blade in my saw
so I'm just making several saw cut for each slot that
I need to cut.
So, that was a more complicated cutting sequence
than usual, for those fingers.
And I did screw up on the first one. It's a bit too narrow.
So that's all of 15 seconds to crank that carriage home.
Some people suggest that I add some kind of quick release
so I can just pull the carriage home.
But if that mechanism took an extra hour to build,
I would have to cut 240 full width joints before that
time would be amortized.
So, I cut these fingers a second time
because I had extra length left over.
And now let's check this fit with all that.
OK. So before I put those corners together,
I'm gonna have to put shelves in here.
Because those have to come together from the side.
And then I can put the top on from the end.
So I want to dowel this board onto here.
And for that I need to do a precise series of dowel holes.
And that's my old invention here, my doweling t-square
comes in.
And I'm just gonna put the jig on here and it lines up.
If I line it up with the marks on here
it lines up with those holes and I can accurately drill
through here.
So I didn't drill a hole in every possible position
because I didn't think I'd need that many dowels.
So now I need to drill the same pattern of holes
in the end-grain of the shelves.
And I'm gonna use my doweling jig the way it's meant
to be used. And to position the jig, I clamp my
Doweling T-Square on here.
And I've got the same marks that I lined up the jig with
on here. So I just put the dowel jig on here and
line it up with those lines there.
Well, they look like the line up all right.
Before I assemble the stand, I need to add a rabbet
to the back edge for the back panel to fit into.
And making some dowel pins for my homemade dowels.
These need to be just a bit longer than pre-made ones.
So I can't really use those.
Now comes the moment of truth, to see if my dowel
holes actually line up.
I did not dry fit this.
But that's what the hammer's for.
OK, here's the challenge.
Will 18 dowels all line up and fit?
Kind of, I guess.
Maybe I should have dry fit this whole thing.
OK, now this side.
With a big enough hammer, you can make anything fit.
Before I can put the top on it, I need to cut some small
pieces of wood to fill the extra bit of the box joint that
I cut.
Now I need to smooth that off. I could sand it.
But I think I'll try the jointer.
Well, that turned out OK so far.
Got some minor gaps here.
But those'll fill up if I do a little bit of sanding and
varnish right away because then the sawdust goes in
those gaps.
Now squaring out the end of that rabbet that I cut
on the tablesaw earlier.
And here it is all done.
Felt kind of odd making a project with no moving parts.