Last summer,
my wife's office purchased a new laser printer/copier machine that was
much larger than the one they were using. The small table that supported
the old printer was way too small for the new printer. Realizing
of course, that she could requisition or budget for a new printer stand,
she thought that I might enjoy the opportunity to build one for her office.
She
was right, this would help a recently retired woodworker from getting too
bored. Here is the result with the complete build process story to
follow:
Actually, the first thing I
had to do was to make a trip to my wife's office to take some measurements
of the new printer. I then came back to the shop and made some CAD
drawings of the design I intended to use.
After the drawings were completed,
I began looking around the shop to see if I had any material that could
be used to make the stand. I surprisingly found enough pieces of
hard maple left over from when I built my workbench
to supply all the components for the stand. Some of the pieces would
have to be planed down to a thickness that I could use but I decided that
would be O.K. It would keep my DeWalt
734 planer from getting rusty!
I planed down four pieces
to 2" square and installed some 3/8" - 16 threaded inserts into one end
of each of the pieces which were going to be used as corner legs of the
stand. These inserts would be used to attach some casters making
the stand a portable unit. You can see the newly inserted inserts
in the picture on the left.
After the "legs" were fitted
with the inserts, I cut them to the desired overall length and began laying
out locations of the intended mortises that would fit to the upper, center
and lower rails. The completed leg pieces showing the mortises can
be seen here in the photo on the right.
Upon completion of the mortises,
I cut to size the rails that were to be used as supports between the legs
at the top, center and bottom of the stand. I milled them to 3/4"
thickness and cut the overall widths and lengths to size allowing for the
tenon lengths. I opted to cut the tenons on my router table as opposed
to using dado bits on the table saw. You can see a few photos of
this process below:
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Using
the router table to cut the tenons.
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Finished
tenons
on top rails.
.jpg) |
Finished
tenons on
all the rails.
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The next step was to cut
3/4" deep X 1/4" wide dados in the center and bottom rails to support the
slats that were to be mounted in these rails forming shelves to hold paper,
etc. You can see these dados in the two photos below after the side
assemblies were glued up.
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One
side after glue up.
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Two
sides after glue up.
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When the side assemblies were
dried, I added glue to the front and rear rails (top, center and bottom
pieces) and clamped them in place. When the mortises and tenons were
laid out, I planned it so that there would be a 3/16" inset of the rails
from the outer edges of the legs. You can see all this detail in
the photo of the clamped up unit in the photo on the right.
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After the lower stand assembly
was dried and unclamped, I laid the top upside down on my workbench and
cut corner mounting pieces to hold the top to the printer stand base.
I made these pieces from some scrap birch plywood and screwed them to both
the legs and the stand top. I'm not sure whether this was a good
approach to mounting the top or not but after a few months at the office,
it's still holding up without coming apart. This can be seen in the
photo on the left.
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The
photo on the left shows the completed stand prior to mounting the shelf
slats into the base.
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The finished stand prior to
applying a beeswax, turpentine and boiled linseed oil mixture as a finish
can be seen here on the right (This is the same finish that I used on my
workbench).
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.jpg) |
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.jpg)
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All in all, I think the project
turned out O.K. as seen here on the right. I know I had fun
building it and that it was appreciated by my wife's office personnel.
As I have said one other time before...... I'm happy, they're happy and
Ol' Dave is, too!
Dave
dave@oldaveswoodshop.com |
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