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Designing an Overkill workbench for home office

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Re: Designing an Overkill workbench for home office

#41

Post by avh02 »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #35
chiefalchemist wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Con - It would have to be a drill with a lot of torque. The handle on the crank is approx 6". That's adequate for manual, but less would take significant effort. A knob would be tough (and would take too long). Of the drills I own, I'm not sure any of them could do it. But I also do not own anything super-duper top of the line. Pro - Yes, the hand crank is removable. The socket the crank sits in is maybe a 3/8" hex (…

An impact driver could probably handle it fine, but I can't imagine the hammering action would be good for the mechanism. Physically I would be able to use a hand crank just fine, but if it's anything like reclining the seat in my Volkswagen (a 3" knob on the seatback hinge, rather than the typical lever), I'd hate to do it more than once a day. If it's not convenient to use, I would likely just leave it in the down…

I had this problem with a hand cranked ikea standing desk, it was miserable to do regularly. Especially after I was moved to that from a convenient and fast spring loaded system.

Re: Designing an Overkill workbench for home office

#42

Post by OzzyB »

dazzawazza wrote: post #24
OzzyB wrote: post #16

Is there is link for his old UK desk build? Those steel tubes look boss, great look, and might be something I could tackle myself. This new Japan project looks a lot more ambitious, good luck xD.

Looks like this: https://simplifiedbuilding.co.uk/kits/desk-tables .

That's perfect, thanks friend XD

Re: Designing an Overkill workbench for home office

#43

Post by formerly_proven »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #30
frosted-flakes wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, 2x2s are often or usually 1⅜" x 1⅜", which is rather annoying at times. I'm not sure if that has always been the case, but these days they're mostly only available in finger-joint spruce/fir/pine (presumably from offcuts of larger sizes), which might have something to do with it. (Unlike solid 2x2s, which tend to twist and warp so much as to be completely useless, finger-joint 2x2s are super stable, and alw…

Is there a sane explanation for why 2 = 1.375?

Lumber mills used to separate sawing and milling, so the roughsawn 2"x4" might have been about that (+-5 mm or so), but if you mill that square and (relatively) flat you're loosing a bunch of material. The milled lumber probably still got called 2"x4" since it was made from that. And then things shifted to milled lumber only, and the dimension change stuck.

Re: Designing an Overkill workbench for home office

#44

Post by pimlottc »

linsomniac wrote: post #38

I've been working on a workshop workbench, also using 20 series aluminum extrusion. Here's a picture of 2 of the 4 pieces: https://photos.app.goo.gl/AMaBwa5pRBQfqDPQ7 Aluminum extrusion is pretty nice to work with, though in retrospect I probably wouldn't do it again for the workbench. I was able to source it from China via Alibaba, and even with $200 shipping the pricing is way less than you can get it in the US. It…

Looks good! What’s the reason you say you wouldn’t use aluminum next time?

Re: Designing an Overkill workbench for home office

#45

Post by redm »

Cool project. You really put some planning into it.

As others have mentioned S4S lumber in the US is not standardized in size. It can vary. If your using a softwood like Pine, it will also not be strait. This is going to cause your tight tolerances to be off. You should build this with lumber that has been fully dried, and fully straitened and taken to a lesser tolerance, something that can be plained and jointed down to.

Re: Designing an Overkill workbench for home office

#46

Post by ahelwer »

yboris wrote: post #34

My favorite design idea: move your computer out of the room. My PC is in the next room / closet and the room is completely silent. In my case all I needed was a small hole for an HDMI and a USB cable.

Looks like this person has a triple monitor setup, so that'd be either three DisplayPort/HDMI cables or a single DisplayPort cable if they can daisy chain them (only possible if these are all 1080p monitors). It is an appealing idea, though. I wish there were an easy thin client solution where everything from your actual computer just goes over cat6. Unfortunately cat6 can only handle about 10 Gbps, vs. a single DisplayPort 1.2 cable that handles 18 Gbps. Wouldn't work for multi-monitor 4k setups.

Re: Designing an Overkill workbench for home office

#47

Post by throwaway0a5e »

flaviu1 wrote: post #28
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The copious amount of joints that are held together by the fasteners only and the non-structural deck are not going to like that long term.... but it's also a home office so it really doesn't matter what sins you commit, it'll all survive anyway.

What would be the proper way to do something like this? I've made a couple desks myself, but I've never been able to figure out a good way to do joints.

Dovetail and pin it all old style. A good rule of thumb is to not rely on friction for primary load bearing (e.g. nails in tension are bad but nails in shear or a peg being held in by friction are fine).

That said, a plywood deck that is glued and screwed down like a subfloor pretty much absolves all sins.

Re: Designing an Overkill workbench for home office

#48

Post by bluGill »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #30
frosted-flakes wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, 2x2s are often or usually 1⅜" x 1⅜", which is rather annoying at times. I'm not sure if that has always been the case, but these days they're mostly only available in finger-joint spruce/fir/pine (presumably from offcuts of larger sizes), which might have something to do with it. (Unlike solid 2x2s, which tend to twist and warp so much as to be completely useless, finger-joint 2x2s are super stable, and alw…

Is there a sane explanation for why 2 = 1.375?

Mills cut 2x4 to whatever size close to that then machined it to dimension. Some did a final dimension of 2x4 exactly (within tolerance), others did other sizes. Once you started building something you had to buy everything from the same mill. In some areas this wasn't possible as the yard you bought from changed suppliers.

Eventually they decided enough and standardized on the current size. The standard is more important than the actual size.

Re: Designing an Overkill workbench for home office

#49

Post by gumby »

sokoloff wrote: post #3

Glad to learn about cutlistoptimizer as I looked casually for something like that in the past. I’ll have to figure out how to feed it from Fusion360. Also interesting to learn that Japanese “2x4”s are in that ratio exactly. In the US, they’re 1/2” under nominal size (so 1.5” by 3.5”). Makes it awkward to stack pieces together at times. (2 2x2s next to each other in the US are smaller than a 2x4.)

To address the various questions about the origin of 2x4 sizing, Here’s a brief article on the topic (TL;DR: incremental reductions over decades until standardization was imposed in 1964): http://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/45/nominal-versu...

I had been told it had something to do with WWII but could find no actual evidence.

When we remodeled our house (built in California in 1920j We found all the 2x4s were 2x4, all the 4x6 were really 4x6 and all had been cut from the center of old growth trees (no knots and no warping after 80 years. We reused them all of course.

Re: Designing an Overkill workbench for home office

#50

Post by jpitz »

linsomniac wrote: post #38

I've been working on a workshop workbench, also using 20 series aluminum extrusion. Here's a picture of 2 of the 4 pieces: https://photos.app.goo.gl/AMaBwa5pRBQfqDPQ7 Aluminum extrusion is pretty nice to work with, though in retrospect I probably wouldn't do it again for the workbench. I was able to source it from China via Alibaba, and even with $200 shipping the pricing is way less than you can get it in the US. It…

You might find this interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/woodworking/comments/ir9cv2/slabolo...
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