Let the Easy Way Slap You in the Face

Sometimes the easy way only slaps you in the face after hacking your way down the hard path…

Over this past weekend I undertook the (seemingly simple) task of building a standing desk. The old sitting desk was a bit too small and I wanted to try the standing life. The desk concept will have to be another post. The reason for this post are the studio monitor stands that I wanted to build to get the speakers as the correct height.

I went through a bunch of revisions for the stands. I build the desk using galvanized pipe, so the first revisions were using galvanized pipe. The speakers weigh ~10 pounds a piece. All of the designs were going to require me to drill some holes in the desktop and permanently affix the stands to the desk. I went as far as buying the parts for the stands, but ultimately returned them after realizing that I want the freedom to rearrange the desk layout over time.

Then came version two. I would build the stands out of the rough cut pine that I have in the rafters in my garage! Basically free, because the pine came from a tree my buddy downed and gave me. The only investment would be time. After more time deliberating with my wife, we came up with a prety cool idea: make some sawhorse-like stands that would lift my speakers to ear height for that perfect listening experience.

Off I went. I cut the wood, got the angles right, and then started gluing… It was the gluing and clamping that really killed me. I can’t tell you how many times I dropped the stupid thing and the clamps exploded off. After all that sweating and swearing, I finally had clamped a full stand. I waited the 30 minutes recommended on the glue bottle, unclamped and put them on the desk. THEY WERE FREAKING MASSIVE.

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻)

I slept on it. In the morning, I was racking my brain about what to do. I spent some time setting up the rest of the desk; the polyurethane had finished curing. Still not happy about the speaker situation, I went outside to mow the lawn. Moving away all the carnage from cutting wood the night before, I took a look at the scrap pieces of wood… (forehead slapping sound).

Yea… the cutoffs from making the sawhorse ended up being perfect for angling the speakers right at my ears. After hours thinking, cutting, and mostly failing to glue, the solution was right in front of me.

It looks so much cleaner now. Still needs a bit of cable management, but I’m happy with the way it’s going.

Now my wife gets some cute sawhorse-like things for potted plants. Happy wife :)

2018-05-28