Computer Station

[Taim_98]

Hey everyone,

 

I've decided, now that I'm finally done first semester and exams are over, I would try something new. The table I'm currently using I've owned for several years, and I'm starting to get sick of it, it's inefficient for my needs, it doesn't fit with the rest of my room, and it's not cool enough!!! So what I have for you today is something I've been working on for quite some time now, with several prototypes and re-edits. This table has been designed to fit perfectly in the space I want to, and hopefully will make things look a lot nicer. This is really my first build to this size, so I hope you guys enjoy and if you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to join me!

 

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My current work area

 

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The completed station

 

The table will not be going in the same place where it is now. I would show you where it would go, but it's kind of a mess right now

 

[Taim_98]

The past couple days have been kind of messy. Because of the fact that I live in Canada, Alberta to be specific, it gets cold. Very cold. And snowy as well. Since I don't have a work shed or any secure area of the sort, I have had to create my own

 

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First thing first, I had to get rid of all the snow

 

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Then, I set up a tarp to cover the area, because I was expecting more snow to come

This tarp wasn't big enough for my liking so I got a bigger one

 

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Unfortunately, I didn't do a good first job and it was very windy that night, so it came loose. There was snow too  

I tried again in the morning, cleaned up the snow, and tried different ways of hooking it into place, so hopefully it should be strong enough now

 

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I'm hoping to get started on the actual building portion very soon

 

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Wish me luck!

[Taim_98]

So I finally got some time today to go out and get some work done. I only have about 2 hours of sunlight left after I get home from class, so I wasn't able to do much.

Over the weekend I did a mini project again and printed out a bit of a "blueprint" guideline for one of the boards, it's six pieces of printer paper taped together with the schematics on them. The printer didn't print on the margins as much as I hoped it would, so I had to fill out quite a bit. The taping job could have been better too, but it printed unevenly.

 

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This contains most of the main parts I need, which is why it's first

I know this is more work, as I could just take the image of the plan on a laptop or something, but I decided I might as well try something new, have a little fun. Why not! This whole project is about new experiences anyways. If this works well, I'll do it for the rest of the sheets

 

 

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I moved a sheet onto a table, which was quite hard to do alone

 

 

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The light you see in the back is more for warmth than light, it was incredibly cold today.

I had to put up more tarp to cover the stairs area (you can see in the previous pictures), as more snow, wind, and coldness were coming in than I would like

Because of the cold and having to set up the tarp I couldn't do much sketching, but hopefully I'll get more done tomorrow as the stuff I had to waste time on is done with now. 

[Taim_98]

Worked on marking out the lines for the table a bit. There was another thing that came up today as well though that took away a bit of my time, I noticed there was an error in the original planning! 

 

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It's a bit hard to describe, but there were a few problems. Some angles for a couple pieces were off, and one piece didn't fit as it should. Haven't completely fixed the last one yet, but it's going to be one of the last pieces cut out, so I can take some time if I need to

 

 

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Here's the cover I was talking about in the last post. It's not much, but when it's 20 below freezing, and you have to find something that will cover it in the first place, it's much more difficult.

 

 

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I'm going to Edmonton tomorrow morning, so I won't have time to do anything over the weekend unfortunately  I was looking forward to it. I'll probably work on it again on Monday, as we'll be coming back Sunday night

[Taim_98]

So I came back from Edmonton last night and, unsurprisingly, it had snowed in my area

It was too dark in the moment to assess the damage, and I was too tired, so I just let it go until tomorrow morning

The snow had caused the tarp to become too heavy and was unable to hold itself, causing the rings to rip

covering my planks with snow

Its a good thing it's cold, and I'm glad this happened sooner than later, because snow doesn't damage the wood, melted snow or rain. So this was actually, even though it's a waste of time, a good thing

That's twice I've had to fix the tarp, so this time I decided to use an even bigger one, and support the rings by folding the edges three or four times over themselves

This one completely covered everything, which I'm really happy about

After going through so many repair jobs and obstacles, I finally decided that I would have to make at least some progress, so I cut out one of the pieced I had finished marking out

It's a very simple piece, but it gave me a good idea on what settings to use for the jigsaw (which I bought for this), and how it would turn out

Hopefully I'm done with the setbacks and can start making some real progress in the coming days

 

[Sean_A91]

I'll be looking forward to more of this, I've been considering making my own desk as of late.

[Taim_98]

18 hours ago, Sean_A91 said:

I'll be looking forward to more of this, I've been considering making my own desk as of late.

Glad to have you here! Hopefully this will be of some help, maybe not a lot as this is a learning experience for me as well, but something is better than nothing!

[Taim_98]

The new tarp I've put up seems to be holding together well, but I haven't pinned down the opposite sides to ensure it doesn't rip again, so I have to clear the top of snow and ice every time I get to work. It's a huge tarp so nothing splashes onto the inside, and a little bit of cleaning at the beginning is a great trade off to ensure it doesn't rip

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The next piece I had sketched out is my monitor stand. This was a huge one, and having to do it alone is quite tricky so I will most likely be getting help for the rest of the big pieces.

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It turned out pretty good and all the dimensions seem to be what they are supposed to be. Two pieces down! I'm getting better at using the saw, so cutting should begin taking less and less time, and I will be able to cut more out. Drawing out the lines seems like it will take the most time, but as I get more practice at it I am getting faster and learning new techniques as well

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I decided that, just to be safe, I would cover everything up. You can never be too careful, even if it requires a little more effort. 

I apologize for the lack of content, I'll try to take more pictures if I can, and if anyone has any suggestions, feel free to let me know!

[Sean_A91]

Man you're having tons of trouble with this weather, the funny thing is, rain and dew would be worse, so while it seems counter-intuitive to do it now, its actually better than like, summer. x3

[ExplOregon]

I just started modelling my computer desk I plan on building, going to watch this for ideas

[Sean_A91]

By the way, how do you plan to finish the wood?
Will you paint the surface? Maybe white top black edge? or vice-versa?
I currently have a desk with stained top and and a black edge, and it looks really sleek.

[Taim_98]

On 2/13/2016 at 5:12 PM, Sean_A91 said:

Man you're having tons of trouble with this weather, the funny thing is, rain and dew would be worse, so while it seems counter-intuitive to do it now, its actually better than like, summer. x3

Other than the fact that it's almost unbearable to hold tools, that's true strangely enough 

Now that I have everything covered up, it should be safe from the elements, the most dangerous being rain.

I have noticed though that on the underside of the tarp there`s a buildup of ice particles or something like that, so I`m going to have to be careful

[Taim_98]

On 2/13/2016 at 5:17 PM, ExplOregon said:

I just started modelling my computer desk I plan on building, going to watch this for ideas

Hopefully you pick a few things up here and there, this is a first for me too so it`s just as much of learning experience for me

Let me know how yours goes!

[Taim_98]

On 2/13/2016 at 5:23 PM, Sean_A91 said:

By the way, how do you plan to finish the wood?
Will you paint the surface? Maybe white top black edge? or vice-versa?
I currently have a desk with stained top and and a black edge, and it looks really sleek.

I'm not too sure about that actually

It's most likely going to be a black as my room is black themed. Light grey walls, dark black-grey carpet

I haven't considered a white top as it may stand out too much, but it might work better than I'm imagining

[Taim_98]

Felt I was posting too often with too little to the update so I've held back for a few days, but I feel I've done enough for a new post

It's been incredibly cold, reaching down to -30 or so, so I had to skip a day that I could work on the table as well

 

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I've finished cutting out all but 4 of the parts, which are inside of another piece for which the measurements have still not been corrected, so for now I'm basically done cutting out all the parts from this sheet!

I still have to make the angles on a lot of these pieces but I'm debating on leaving that to after cutting out all the pieces from the sheets.

[Taim_98]

New update for you guys. Been working for the past couple days, skipping some days as well because of the cold and snow. Also, I have some good news and some bad news. Let's start with the bad

 

First of all, it's not all that bad lol. I have finally run out of wood sheets to cut and will have to go to buy more, but the rear door of our car is not opening so going to have to figure something out for that.

Now the good, I have cut out enough pieces (as I planned) to begin a test build of the main areas of the table! I might get started with that tomorrow, or maybe tomorrow will be for getting more wood, I haven't decided yet

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One of the sheets was damaged like this on two of the edges, so instead of cutting around or keeping it, I just decided to trim that part off

 

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the first side

 

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and the next

 

I didn't end up taking as many pictures as I though I did, so this is all I have for the day I worked on this sheet

 

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This happens almost ever other day, but I'm posting a picture today because it hasn't been this heavy and stayed up before

 

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got it all cleared out and placed a new (and the final) sheet onto the table. The smaller piece you see on top I was just using to make straight lines

 

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the final cut of the last sheet

 

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and all the pieces I have cut out so far! The long one laying horizontally at the bottom isn't actually a piece, I just couldn't' find anywhere else to put it because it's too tall.

 

That's all I have for this update! Hopefully I should be doing a lot more soon. Also, let me know if you guys prefer more frequent updates, with the stuff I completed that day. Or would you like less frequent updates with progress over a course of a couple days or a week.

[Taim_98]

I could barely get to sleep last night because of how eager I was to get started on working on this again, yesterday was too cold to work. Today I decided to try something new, something I would have to do eventually and didn't have any certain idea on how it would go. I decided to make the angled edges on all the pieces (I have cut so far) that need them.

 

I wasn't sure how I was going to do this. My jigsaw only had the option to cut 45 and 22.5 degree angles, and the ones I need are much more odd. I also thought about using the circular saw which has the ability to cut any angle between 0 and 45 degrees, but it was too cumbersome to work with, especially on small 6 inch by 4 inch-ish pieces.

I figured I would try again with the jigsaw because it would probably be the easiest. I put the long edge of the piece on the table, and left the piece hanging over a bit. I then took the jigsaw, holding it vertically, and followed the line I had made for the angle

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This was good, but not good enough. The piece was shaking a lot as I cut, and I didn't want to risk getting any closer

So then I figured I should just file the rest down

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This allowed for more precision with less risk, but it took a long time finishing up all the pieces this way. 

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In the end I managed to cut them all out to my satisfaction, hopefully they line up well enough with the pieces they will be joined to

 

I had some time left until sundown so I decided to quickly do one more thing before heading back inside

I had to cut out a "hole" from another piece

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My level of skill at performing insertion cuts is improving as well

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Managed to get the piece cut right as the sun had almost set, so I had to use the camera flash to take this picture

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And with the piece removed

I'm planning on going to get more sheets tomorrow, but we'll see how that goes or if I end up doing something else.

[Taim_98]

Managed to find some time to go out today and get 2 more sheets of MDF, and then had a little left over to start cutting one of them out

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Didn't have time to print out a bigger copy, so quickly made a sketch of one of the boards

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Same piece of the sheet, but moved to the whole backside because of its complexity

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Got 3 pieces cut out and some of the next sketched before the sun was beginning to set

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And everything I have so far

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You may remember that a post or two ago I said I had enough to make a test build of the table.
Wellll
I may have missed a piece
BUT I HAVE IT NOW I CAN MAKE IT I PROMISE
Don't know when I'll actually get to it though lol, don't have a lot of room outside
We'll see how it goes

[Taim_98]

Lot's of pictures for this update! Even removed some so it wouldn't be too overloaded
Spent most of today outside and got a lot done, just had a banana for breakfast and went straight to work.
Starting off where I ended the last post, I had to finish cutting the rest of this board. The main area is one of the 3 pieces of the desk-top, around it is two more pieces that had to be cut out, and inside it are several pieces to be cut out (it's going to have an open top)

 

First off, the outside pieces

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Already have one cut out as you can see

 

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After cutting those out, and trimming the rest off, you get this giant piece which needs to be hollowed out

 

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And looks amazing afterwards! I'm getting excited already (I have been throughout this project though so that's nothing new)

 

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Placed it with the other pieces because I couldn't wait any longer and everything looks good so far. Feels a bit smaller than designed (but its's still huge), probably just because it's not elevated though.

 

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Cutting out the inner pieces, there were 8 more I cut after this

 

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And had to make the edges for many of them as well using my new technique! I'm very thankful that I figured this out as it made the work so much easier. I just clamped the piece down onto my work table, flipped the jigsaw upside down, and carefully went along the angled line as much as I could. Sanded the rest down to a smooth finish

 

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Got most of them done, except the top two. It was getting too dark and I had to squint too hard to see the lines on the ruler so I just left it aside for tomorrow.

 

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Another picture of the pieces I have so far

 

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Lots of minis

 

I'm thinking of doing a proper test build tomorrow
I have all the pieces I need to put most of the table together, and then some. I might change my mind tomorrow though

[Taim_98]

I was talking to a couple guys and they told me I should get this build sponsored. Should I go for it? And how would I go about that

[Sean_A91]

Wouldn't sponsoring require your build to somehow include a part of someone else's product or some such? Maybe a built in sound system or something, I'm not sure how else to get it sponsored. If ya can though, go for it.

Afterthought: I guess theres materials and such too.

[Taim_98]

11 minutes ago, Sean_A91 said:

Wouldn't sponsoring require your build to somehow include a part of someone else's product or some such? Maybe a built in sound system or something, I'm not sure how else to get it sponsored. If ya can though, go for it.

Afterthought: I guess theres materials and such too.

Yeah they were thinking parts, I was thinking recognition too

My PC specs are just fine so I'm not worried about that, but it's nothing special. I'm making (what is in my opinion (and hopefully you all will agree lol)) an amazing table, but the parts going inside it won't compliment the build like I want it to; no proper color scheme, nothing that *pops*, air cooled. I'll probably end up buying a couple things here and there for the PC aspect of things, I still have some other stuff to purchase though

[Taim_98]

Sorry its' been so long. I've started working, part time with school, and the weather hasn't been very favorable either. But I should be back now hopefully, with somewhat more frequent updates.

 

http://i.imgur.com/mmKz0J6.jpg

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Strong winds and the weight from new snow caused the tarp to rip in the places being held up by beams

 

http://i.imgur.com/3ENDn3q.jpg

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Just taped it down because I couldn't be bothered to do anything more

 

http://i.imgur.com/T8Z78e0.jpg

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One of the 3 pieces that will hold the monitor stand up. Gotta glue these together

 

http://i.imgur.com/sP0zyxt.jpg

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Cutting out a lip for this board

 

http://i.imgur.com/EjevIRi.jpg

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And cleaning it up

 

http://i.imgur.com/534MQis.jpg

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Made a decently big pocket inside this board as well

 

http://i.imgur.com/spevL0y.jpg

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And put together the frame for the shelf to see how it would look. Looks good to me, and is fairly strong as well. With glue it will be much stronger

 

http://i.imgur.com/lPnGDyu.jpg

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And moving my bed to the opposite side of the room to make space to store parts as I finish them

 

That's really all I have for this update!

Should be finishing more sooner, especially now that I have a bit of a deadline

See you soon!

Edited March 12, 2016 by Taim_98

[Taim_98]

It's been almost 2 weeks since my last update, and I've done quite a bit since then

 

http://i.imgur.com/0zktouD.jpg

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Started off with priming most of the pieces I've cut so far

 

http://i.imgur.com/nwqIphP.jpg

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The table-top pre-primed

 

http://i.imgur.com/6yfVU9l.jpg

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The table-bottom post-paint. I used a generic black paint with an eggshell finish for this one since it won't be visible anyways. The good stuff I have saved for later, for the visible parts

 

http://i.imgur.com/PO6ghwN.jpg

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I had one final sheet left to cut. I still have some parts left to cut out because of water damage due to snow, and some angles left to make.

 

http://i.imgur.com/Z2xlb8u.jpg

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All but one piece cut out

 

http://i.imgur.com/wCavKwE.jpg

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And the final one, the base of the compartment where my computer will go. This is the outline of the piece, it was a struggle to cut out.

 

http://i.imgur.com/hmh4tLP.jpg

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Trying to put it together

 

http://i.imgur.com/bb6j0Vc.jpg

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Looking okay, got some sanding to do though

 

http://i.imgur.com/Xce381P.jpg

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Got it all glued together and did a test placement to see if it was a decent fit. To my surprise, it was better than I anticipated! Will look even better once I've done finishing touches, filled it in, glued all together, and painted

 

http://i.imgur.com/Wcrhtym.jpg

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Bought a new roller with a 1/4 inch nap because it's supposed to give a smoother finish. From what I noticed, it seems to have helped a little, but I would have preferred even smoother. I wanted to go the spray machine route, but a good machine just wasn't in my budget yet, I don't have an appropriate area to do that, and it would have used more paint (from what I've heard). Maybe for my next build. Being restricted to no spray paint also meant having to paint each before assembly

 

http://i.imgur.com/Wcrhtym.jpg

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Priming some more sheets

 

http://i.imgur.com/Hm4yBRM.jpg

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And the first layer of paint. I've done some more layers and the other side. The pictures look exactly the same, so I didn't bother uploading those ones.

 

I hope to be done all cutting and painting soon so I can move onto building, installing parts, lighting, and finally using it!

 

One last thing. I've noticed the paint seems to be a bit sticky on some of the earlier ones I did, and even causes it to strip if it makes contact with anything for long enough. Anyone know why? Or have a solution? I'd appreciate that

[Taim_98]

Hey all, it's been a while. Sorry for the lack of updates, but I have a pretty good excuse. As you may have heard, there was a huge forest fire in the Fort McMurray area, which as you may have figured is where I live. I've been out of town for almost 2 months now and have just gotten back today. I don't know when my next update will be, but I want to get to work as soon as possible. Take care, see you soon.