Industrial style desk ~ reveal 3/3

How To build an Industrial style desk ~ or 2

To recap, we built our son Michael, 2 Industrial style desks for his birthday, he is going to OIART in September to study audio engineering and his saggy pressed board desk just wasn’t cutting it. We would have done a couple of things a little differently ref the building of these desks, hind-sight being 20/20, this was our first project of this type. Over all though we are very happy with how it turned out and the end user, Mike, is very happy with it…

Welcome to the technical part of the series. :/

We asked for a sketch and Michael sent us this…

As you can see it’s a little vague, but this did give us an idea of height and size-ish, the main design criteria was, to be able to stand while he produced and he wanted some shelving for his speakers and large computer screen.

After a few sketches of our own… we came up with a plan.

Shopping List

• 1 – 59″ x 29 1/2″ VIKA FURUSKOG (Ikea) – pine table top
• 2 – 47 1/4″ x 23 5/8″ VIKA FURUSKOG (Ikea) – pine table top
• 8 – 1″ x 3″x 8′ pine (fascias)
• 2- hinges (front of small desk) 2 – hinges with height locking mechanism
• 27 lin. ft. of 2″ industrial steel pipe
• 27 lin. ft. of 1″ industrial steel pipe
• 8 – 2″ T connectors
• 4 – 1″ T connectors
• 16 – 2″ floor flanges
• 24 – 1″ floor flanges
• 8 – 2″ to 1″ reducers
• 2 – 1″ x 14″ x 7′ pine planks (for desk lower shelving)
• 54 decorative deck screws (fascia detail)
• high heat satin black spray paint
• acetone (for cleaning the pipe before painting)
• wood glue

Tool List

• measuring tape or tapes if your like me, *scratches head, where did I put that?
• pencils
• safety glasses
• hearing protection
• cut off saw
• sander
• distressing kit (torch, rebar, chains, screws, hammer, chisel)
• welder (6018 welding rods)
• welding mask
• grinder
• steel brush (for removing slag)
• rags
• drill
• bolts
• screws
• sandpaper
• orbital sander
• foam paint brushes (for applying the stain)

We decided to tackle the larger of the 2 desks first and work off of that scale and height. We built all of the legs first.

All of the leg heights were determined ( I won’t bore you with the math) and each pipe was cut to suit (total height with desk top is 41″ AFF.). All of the pieces were welded together as shown below. First spot welded to hold everything then a permanent 360 degree weld was applied.

Quick mock-up with the top, looking good…

On to the body of the desks… this is the skeleton of desk 2, not to confuse things but the construction of both skeletons are basically the same, the difference is, desk 2 has a split top… more on that to follow.

This detail shows what I mean by skirt of the desktop or fascia, we used wood glue and the deck screws with a simple butt join, we wanted this to look industrial, so no fancy stuff…

Bud is all about building templates and doing mock-ups before we put things together… works out well.

You can source that hinge here.

 Mr Meticulous and his military ways…

In the metal shop I spied this, isn’t it amazing? The guy that works there is making it from bits and pieces of “junk”…

Thanks for showing interest in this series, please let me know if you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer them…

~Laurie xo