Old Desk to Laboratory Bench Using Basic Tools

I often admire pieces of furniture I discover here or that are built by awfully talented friends. Each is a perfect symbiosis of ascetics and usefulness. They are crafted from quality wood using fancy tools or are made from nearly overlooked gems from the waste wood pile brought to shine with skill, care and talent.

I will not show you such a piece of art. I created a monster, patched up from dying pieces of furniture, tarnished with awfully cheap parts, combined with quality goods and brought to unholy life with the power of electricity. To do so I used only the crudest and most painful tools. A friend compared it to Dr Frankenstein's famous creature and that's quite fitting. But it's some useful monstrosity.

• an old desk
• roof battens
• reclaimed wood
• screws
• cable clips
• 2x 60 cm LED batten light
• 2 switches and wiring
• multiple socket
• surface mounting sockets
• lead storage rack
• ESD-safe mat
• compartment box
• drawer storage units
• storage boxes
• wall hanger

Tools:

• fine hand saw
• mitre saw guide
• screw clamp
• power drill
• drill bits
• pocket rule
• screw driver and screw driver bits
• hammer
• rasper
• pincers
• wire cutter

Some problems are like a zombified cat biting it's own tail. For quite some time I didn't use the workshop often, because it was a mess and I didn't tidy it up, because I didn't use it often. Tidying up is not one of my favourite amusements. But when I resurrected some old projects from their eternal sleep in dusty cardboard boxes, I was reminded how uncomfortable it is to fiddle around with some projects sitting on the floor or using the only free square centimetres on the table for 6 hours strait.

And what is the first step to clean up am mess in the workshop? Obviously to built something new. Not entirely new. I have this old desk I got for free. I wanted to use it as laboratory bench for my tinkering with electronics. Instead it became a dump. The main problem was that nice big shelf under the tabletop. It would be handy, if it still left enough room for my legs under the table.

I have a lot of stuff to tinker around with some day in the future. So I put it on the table. And under the table. And around the table. I never sat there anyway. Now old planes to solve all this problems at once resurfaced. I wanted:

• space for my legs
• space for all the stuff
• some aid to organise the stuff
• great illumination (the illumination in the workshop is good, but you can always do better)

After getting a overview of materials at my disposal I drew some sketches. I just wanted to get a good idea how the laboratory bench should look like. The exact measurements were pretty much decided by the reclaimed wood and the parts I got, while I built the thing. I bought the rest like the storage units to fit together with the wood I had at hand...

The materials I found were:

• brand new roof battens, 50x30 mm, 5 m length (leftovers from the attic renovation)
• some case boards from an already deposed of cabinet (in my parents cellar)
• my old slatted frame
• parts of a broken garden bench
• some spare wood from old projects
• a board from the old pergola, that outlasted the years well, as it was sheltered by the balcony
• a wall mounted coat rack (which already found its way on the firewood pile)

I asked my father for the case boards and got his help on top. I didn't decline such a kind offer. He also objected that raw roof battens might not be the best materials to make the uprights. Shivers might bite in my fingers when I put stuff in the rack. He got a point, so I used as much planed wood from the slatted frame as possible for the more easily accessible parts.

To get a better feeling for practical dimensions I looked at some laboratory benches at work. I wanted to have the lower shelf circa 50 cm above the tabletop and the hight of the light at least at 1.80 m. To get enough space for my legs I had to lift the whole desk by at least 8 cm.

There is not much to say about this step. I can't remodel a desk, while it is still the centre of a big mess. So I put everything in boxes, stored it away for the time being and cleaned the desk. It was in high need of some good cleaning.

We disassembled the slatted frame outdoors and sawed the the roof battens to length as well. We had much more space, it is way easier to carry smaller parts down in the workshop and the weather was nice. We had to clean the wood a little with a damp cloth, because I didn't want to carry bird s*** and spiders into my house. I sawed everything using a hand saw and a mitre guide box, since I don't own fancy electrical saws.

This step was obviously only necessary, because this desk was built for youngsters and had to low legroom for me. It is needless, if you use a table with a good hight. Sitting next to the table, holding the pocket rule against it, I decided that I need at least 8 cm more. The roof battens have a width of 50 mm, I put two pieces underneath. Now the desk is 10 cm higher.

It is important to sink the heads of the heads of the screws well. Space between the battens is unwanted and the heads of the screws, that hold the lower battens, are not supposed to scrape against the floor. I prepared the wood with a countersink (a bigger drill would also work) and sank the heads of the upper screws quite deep, because I didn't want to bite too deep in the desk using 80 mm screws and I didn't have 70 mm screws. I used 60 mm ones and just sunk them a little deeper.

On the inner side panel of the cabinet part I enhanced the new pedestal with battens, at the outer panels the uprights of the shelf serve the same purpose - besides being uprights.

I fixed the uprights to the side panel of the desk using three screws and to each of he pedestal battens to fix them more firmly than the screws from below would do on their own. The front uprights are reclaimed from the the slatted frame and became quite bent after disassembling the frame. But the shelves forced them in shape again. The back uprights are made from roof battens. They are straighter but rawer. As the shelf boards are only 94 cm long I have to put some supporting uprights on the table top. Those are also made from slatted frame parts. I decided to go with 94 cm shelf boards on the left side and 34 cm on the right side. The desk has a with of 130 cm and the uprights are 2 cm thick. So the width of the right shelf is just what is left. I had to saw the two 34 cm shelf boards from a 94 cm one. For the upper shelf I used some smaller board I had and let it jut out.

The shelf boards were put on some narrow battens as support and are screwed to the uprights to give the structure more stability. On the lower side the middle uprights are only fixed to a batten I screwed to the back of the tabletop. I didn't want to screw into the tabletop from the upper side so there are no holes if I ever demount the rack. The rack was already quite solid, but I attached some webs to make it even more rigid. I had enough wood from the slatted frame and the garden bench left.

A width of 94 cm on the left means that three 31 cm wide drawer storage units fit in. I selected some with 46 cm hight as I wanted to mount the first shelf board circa 50 cm above the tabletop. I also choose a compartment box, that fits in on the right shelf.

The next shelf has to be at least 20 cm higher for my measuring instruments and power supplies to fit in. The upper shelf is as high as possible using the slatted frame battens.

If I ever get something new, that won't fit in one of the shelves, I can displace one of the boards without being bothered. A few more screw holes in this kind of rack won't hurt.

I worked a few years as an electronics technician, so I felt okay doing this myself. If you are unsure how to do things, it would be better to ask a professional. I bought a multiple socket, that can be mounted with screws. It was easier to mount it to some battens from the slatted frame first, because I wanted to install it in the free space at the back of the desk and had limited space with the power drill or screwdriver. I fixed the cable to the back of the desk using cable clips.

Now I had enough sockets for the soldering station, a benchtop power supply, some old, unnecessarily big and heavy multifunctional device, the ESD mat's ground contact, the lights and further sockets.

To mount the lights I fixed a board to the upper battens of the rack. Two switches allow me to turn on the lights separately. I got a 3 m cable with europlug to contact the lights to the multiple sockets. For the short pieces I had to use the cable of a defect lamp in addition, when the 3 m were used up.

To connect the surface mounting sockets to the multiple sockets, I used a cable from defect multiple sockets. I mounted them to the side of the desk, to have some reachable sockets after putting the laboratory bench back against the wall.

The features I added were:

• the coat rack with extra hooks (as there are always some work clothes laying around)
• a lead storage rack for measuring leads and cables (its attached to a batten, that got some toy's hat later on, to make it less edgy)
• holders for clamps (stripe of board and a leftover batten piece)
• a old handwritten table of resistor values I found during the clean up (I wrote it around 15 years ago)
• a solder holder
• measuring tapes at various edges

To organise my stuff well, I bought three drawer storage units fitting right under the lower shelf. They would stand on their own, but to make it really firm I used more battens on the back of the rack and the wall mounts of the storage unit.

I also bought a compartment box with four cases to fit in small parts I need on my way sometimes.Things like terminal blocks, crimps and so on. The box fits well into the narrower segment of the rack.

Last but not least I got some storage boxes to get more stuff into the rack.

Most of the time an additional project leads to additional chaos. In this case the plan to tidy the workspace up a little actually worked. And to build a laboratory bench got me way more motivated than tidying up on its own. Now I can enjoy future projects even more.