Story time...a tale of Music Production and Furniture Construction (DIY Desk Thread)

Once upon a time there was a young Australian man. He wanted to move out of home and having a below average Ikea desk, which didn't quite cut it for music production, he decided to buy a $3000 Music Production desk. That man, was not me.

So now that I've lost your attention I'll get down to business. In the next few months I will be moving out and having a Malm desk from Ikea (complete with a very sagged middle part) I decided that I wanted a new desk for dedicated Music Production. Being that I don't have $1500 AUD I decided I'd use my basic knowledge and high school woodworking ability and build my own desk.

I went through a few designs and after speaking to a few people I decided to use Trimble Sketch-Up to get a 3D view of what the desk would look like. Using Sketch-Up allowed me to design the desk really easy and is a great CAD like program (especially as it's free and has a generous learning curve.) After breaking down my design and editing it a bit I settled on the following design.

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Anyway, I thought I'd share a journal in this thread of how I'm making the desk (complete with photo's) for any who are interested.

I was originally going to build the desk out of MDF with a veneer on the desktop (as it's cheap) but I wanted to stain the desk a mahogany colour and therefore needed something that actually stains. I ended up going with a laminated Pine panel (30 mm) for the top part of the desk and then 17 mm Pine Plywood that is structurally graded. I picked the wood up and got it cut by Bunnings (the local hardware store.) This let me put the wood in my car and saved me time messing around with a circular saw when I got home.

I drew up the legs and used a jigsaw to cut the back leg bit out. The intention of this is to put drawers in the bottom parts but make it able to fit racks mounted vertically if i need it. I had a big offcut from the Pine Panelling and decided to use it as a brace for the legs. I made the slot for the brace tight so as to keep everything very solid.

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Once I drew and then cut the first leg, I used that as a template to cut all the others.

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Even without using any glue, screws or joins I could support my whole weight just on the support brace (about 95kg/210lbs). I placed the top onto the legs and brace to get a picture of how it would look and then cut out the sides and back of the keyboard box and placed that inside too. This is the product so far.

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I'll be keeping this thread up-to-date if people are interested and can supply plans or whatever if wanted.

Thanks for reading.

TLDR; Building a music production desk...look at the pictures.