Build an adjustable desk?!?!? We were all thrown for a loop on this one. Even Jason, who was loving this challenge was scared for a bit. Although I love figuring these types of mechanics out, it still came down to time, as well as material availability. There was so much room for failing, not only for the mechanism but with the time restraint.

I had a basic idea in my head I had gotten from the vice on my work bench, but needed to translate that into something that didn’t rack, looked good, and would be easy enough to adjust.

Thankfully, it didn’t take me long to come up with an overall deign for the actual desk part. But like I mentioned, coming up with the mechanism in time to order the parts and have them arrive was stressful. Like most challenges, you had to wing it because we were all working outside our element. I looked through every gear and pinion offered, along with ways to keep this thing steady. Come to find out, theres a lot out there, and the hard part is putting together all the parts needed without having them in your hand. We really had to imagine how one gear would work with the other in our head, order them and hope for the best.

I had a lot of teak left over from the last build, so I started with the top of the desk while I waited for the gears and 2x4 steel tubing to arrive. My idea was to use the tubing as part of the legs to provide structural stability. This came in handy because I finally figured out that welding is so much quicker than joining wood, not to mention the judges loved when we went outside our wheelhouse.

I ended up ordering plenty of hardware, knowing that I would probably want to mix and match, and I’m so glad I did. By the time all the gears, rods, racks and pinions arrived my ideas had to be tweaked a bit. I used a drive shaft that went from one side of the desk to the other. I mortised a groove on the left leg so that the rack would set into it. On the right leg I had the groove go all the way through and connect to a handle. I attached a gear on either end of the drive shaft. These gears ran up and down the rack. The fact that I had the drive shaft controlling both the gears at the same time kept the desk going up and down smoothly, and evenly. The problem I encountered was that if you let go of the handle, the desk would come slamming down. I mortised in the side of the desk top with the legs that ran up, hoping that it would jam it up just enough to keep it from falling down, but no such luck. I tried to order a pawl, and ratchet, but I didn’t have the time.

I made a walnut bar/handle on the lathe instead of the wheel I had ordered. I thought the wheel looked a little generic, so I gave it to Lacey who was in desperate need of a miracle.