{"id":277,"date":"2012-06-09T15:16:14","date_gmt":"2012-06-09T19:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ab4bj.com\/wordpress\/?p=277"},"modified":"2017-04-23T18:49:27","modified_gmt":"2017-04-23T22:49:27","slug":"the-great-ham-radio-desk-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ab4bj.com\/wordpress\/2012\/06\/the-great-ham-radio-desk-project\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Ham Radio Desk Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the last few years I’ve used a folding table, bricks and a piece of light shelving for a make-shift ham radio desk.\u00a0 I finally decided that I needed something that was a little more permanent and a lot sturdier.\u00a0 After searching for commercially available alternatives and being less than thrilled by what I found, I decided to build my own desk.\u00a0 That presented a bit of a problem as I am hardly the master woodworker.\u00a0 So, I was left with finding an “easy” alternative that provided the two essentials I was looking for: a lot of surface space and a raised shelf that covered the entire back of the desk.\u00a0 I also wanted to make sure that this desk could handle the weight of large and heavy pieces of ham gear.<\/p>\n

After much searching and thinking, I finally arrived at a solution.\u00a0 While not inexpensive, it has left me with a perfect desk for my ham radio needs.\u00a0 Here’s what I did.<\/p>\n

My journey started at the local Home Depot where I purchased a solid core door, measuring 32 inches wide by 80 inches long.\u00a0 This solid door is 2 inches thick and VERY heavy.\u00a0 For the raised shelf, I bought a nice long piece of pine board measuring 11 inches wide and 1 3\/4 inches thick.\u00a0 This is all very\u00a0sturdy stuff, but the real dilemma was how to build it into a\u00a0functional – and safe – desk.\u00a0 The solution presented itself in the form of galvanized conduit with threaded ends.\u00a0 I purchased several lengths of 1 1\/2 inch diameter pipe for the legs, and five pre-cut 8 inch long and threaded 3\/4 inch diameter\u00a0galvanized connectors for the risers for the shelves.\u00a0 The expensive part of the project was buying the threaded flanges to connect to the\u00a0legs and risers for the shelf.\u00a0 The large flanges are secured to the underside of the desk to\u00a0attach the\u00a0legs.\u00a0 The smaller flanges are attached\u00a0to the top of the desk and bottom of the shelf to\u00a0attach the risers for the shelf.\u00a0 I used stainless steel wood screws to secure the flanges to the wood.\u00a0 This was a LOT of screws (60 in all)!<\/p>\n

But the biggest dilemma was how to get the legs cut and threaded?\u00a0 I don’t have the equipment to do this and was not sure how to proceed.\u00a0 I knew I wanted the desktop to be\u00a030 inches high\u00a0(I had a two drawer file cabinet that I wanted to just fit under the bottom of the desk and a keyboard drawer to be mounted to the bottom of the desk) but no way to create the legs from the pipe.\u00a0 Home Depot came to the rescue when they told me that for no charge they would cut and thread the pipe to my specs!\u00a0 I was thrilled and about two hours later I was home with five large cut and threaded legs.\u00a0 They also cut my shelf board for me, even though that’s one part of this project I could have done.\u00a0 The only downside to the pipe is that a lot of oil was used for lubrication while they cut and threaded the pipe.\u00a0 Needless to say, this was a bit of a mess that had to be dealt with along with removing some sticky labels on the pipe used for the risers.\u00a0 I scrubbed each pipe (including the risers for the shelf) with a rag drenched in WD40 to remove the gummy labels.\u00a0 My wonderful wife then washed each of the pipes with hot water and soap.\u00a0 They were as good as new!<\/p>\n

After all of the parts were ready (and dry!), I decided to first stain the shelving and table top.\u00a0 I selected Minwax Early American stain and gave all of the exposed surfaces several coats.\u00a0 After the stain was good and dry it was time for assembly of the desk!<\/p>\n

I mentioned above how heavy this door\/table top is.\u00a0 My ham shack is upstairs in our house and I doubted my wife and I would be able to carry the finished desk up the stairs from our garage.\u00a0 So, I attached the flanges to the bottom of the desk in the garage and we then carried the desktop up the stairs to the shack.\u00a0 We brought the rest of the pieces upstairs and assembled the desk in the shack.\u00a0 This amounted to screwing the legs into the flanges on the bottom of the desktop and screwing a flange on the bottom of each leg to make a “foot”.\u00a0 I then screwed the smaller flanges to the bottom of the shelf and screwed the riser pipe into each.\u00a0 Next, I screwed the bottom flange to the riser pipe and\u00a0placed the shelf with attached risers and flanges in place on the desktop.\u00a0 It was then easy to screw the shelf down to the desktop by securing the bottom small flanges with screws (Note:\u00a0 I drilled a small pilot hole for each screw.\u00a0\u00a0This made the wood screws go in much more smoothly).\u00a0 The final touches included mounting the Office Depot keyboard drawer and purchasing two large clear desk pads to protect the wood top.\u00a0 I then spent about four hours putting all of the equipment back in place, running wires, etc.<\/p>\n

Here’s a photo of me and Wally the Wonder Dog admiring our work before the equipment was put in place (click on the photo for a larger version).\u00a0 Note that I placed a fifth leg in the center of the table top and a fifth riser at the front of the shelf for extra support.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s a photo of the completed desk from the front (sorry about the fair quality photo).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Finally, here’s the desk with the equipment replaced.\u00a0 I will add a link in the near future to show the current station, as some of this equipment has been replaced.\u00a0 Update<\/strong>:\u00a0 Here’s the current configuration<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This was a fun and enjoyable project that resulted in a new desk that is sturdy and functional.\u00a0 Not only will this desk last a lifetime, but I bet you could hold a square dance on it!\u00a0 In hindsight, I wish I had made the shelf about an inch or so higher, but that’s not really a big deal.\u00a0 I’m considering adding another shelf or half-shelf, but that’s for another day.\u00a0 Now, on to the next project!<\/p>\n

Update – April, 2017 – The Desk Continues to Evolve with New Equipment<\/p>\n

\"AB4BJ<\/a>
AB4BJ Ham Shack<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the last few years I’ve used a folding table, bricks and a piece of light shelving for a make-shift ham radio desk.\u00a0 I finally decided that I needed something that was a little more permanent and a lot sturdier.\u00a0 After searching for commercially available alternatives and being less than thrilled by what I found, … Continue reading The Great Ham Radio Desk Project<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"powered_cache_disable_cache":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[29],"class_list":["post-277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ham-radio-desk"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pDldz-4t","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ab4bj.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ab4bj.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ab4bj.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ab4bj.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ab4bj.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/ab4bj.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":746,"href":"https:\/\/ab4bj.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions\/746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ab4bj.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ab4bj.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ab4bj.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}