Decided to make a monitor stand for my home office since the glass one was boring and ugly. This one is much better at hiding my mess and it matches the lights in my office!
Check out the full build video below!
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TOOLS
MATERIALS
Orange Spray Paint: Matte Sunrise
step 1: prepping lumber + glueup
I started by crosscutting the rough lumber down to more manageable sizes. Then I ran them through the jointer to flatten one face, and square up one edge. Then ran them through the planer to bring the opposite face parallel and finalize the thickness of the lumber to about 20mm thick.
Next, I ripped the lumber to random widths and edge glued them together to make the panel.
step 2: cnc and glue up the base
Once the panel is dry, I used double-sided tape to attach it to the CNC. Then I used my 1/4" downcut bit to cut out the profile of the monitor stand. Then I applied glue to the front and back faces of the pieces to glue them together and form the monitor stand structure.
Note: if I were to do this again, I would also use my CNC to cut out holes in the pieces so I can use dowels to help align them and avoid the parts slipping when clamping.
step 3: sanding and finishing the base
With the base glued up, the last thing to do to it was sanding and applying finish
step 4: making the drawer box
There were a lot of scraps leftover after the CNC operation. These are perfect for making the drawer box. I ripped and crosscut the pieces to their final sizes at the table saw, and then I marked rabbets on the ends of the front and back box panels. I swapped over to my dado set to cut these rabbets out, as well as one along the bottom edge of all the drawer box pieces for holding a 1/2" bottom panel later on.
Once the drawer box pieces were cut, I applied glue to the joints and attached the drawer box sides together. I also countersunk holes and used screws to reinforce the drawer box panels. This was probably an overkill though.
I cut some plugs at the drill press to plug up and hide these holes. Next, I applied glue along the dado at the bottom of the drawer box and glued in the 1/2" plywood piece for the bottom.
Since this drawer box will slide along the table top, I attached three thin wood pieces on the bottom to help reduce the friction as the drawer box slid in and out. Also, due to the shape of the monitor stand, there's a lot of side-to-side movement between the drawer box and the monitor stand. So I attached two strips to the bottom side of the monitor stand to help guide the drawer. These guides were attached using screws.
step 5: drawer front carve
After designing the pattern for the drawer face, I carved it on my CNC. I started out by using the 1/4" downcut bit to remove the bulk of the material. Then I came back with a 1/8" radius bullnose bit to finalize the curves. Lastly, I swapped back to the 1/4" downcut bit cutout both the drawer front and the finger pull.
step 6: dividers
I had some more scraps left, so I ran these through the planer to get them down to 6mm and then cut them to their final sizes to make the dividers.
Next, I laid out how I wanted the dividers to sit, and marked where to cut the dados. I cut the dados using my regular saw blade, and making two passes for each dado. Finally, I glued all the pieces together. While the glue dried, I prepped the pieces for painting by putting tape on the glue surfaces.
step 7: painting + final assembly
I started the painting process by first applying primer to all the pieces. Then followed up with a blue paint for the drawer front, a reddish paint for the dividers, and a white paint for the finger pull.
Once the paint cured, I removed the tape on the glue surfaces for the drawer front and the finger pull, and attached the two with glue. I used double-sided tape to help me position the drawer front on to the drawer box. Once I was happy with the position, I drilled countersunk holes into the drawer box and attached the drawer front to the box with screws. Finally, the dividers were just friction-fitted into the drawer box. After a little bit of tapping with a mallet to get the dividers in place, the project's complete!