i spent an entire day making an ugly phone stand using power tools

i spent an entire day making an ugly phone stand using power tools

To make a long story short: I want to make a desk for my new apartment in Minneapolis. I want to make it myself and I want it to be huge. It will be an 8' x 4' behemoth with storage space and an internal skeleton make of 2" x 6" lumber.

step one: find a place to build it

Mom was very kind to let me use the garage. She even helped me clean it! When I got to it, it looked like this:

So I tried to sweep it, but that took too long. A leafblower was much more effective!

It's hard to tell how clean it is now because there's no built-in light! I fixed that by looking around for stuff in the garage:

step two: find the right tools

My parents have a Shopsmith, one of the greatest multi power-tools ever created. Unfortunately, part of its belt drive was frozen.

I took it apart and discovered the problem: it's hard to see in the picture below, but those plates are supposed to separate; however, they don't because the part under the spring is stuck.

Fortunately for me, some Blaster did the trick!

Now for the fun part... putting it all back together.

In my overzealousness to fix the problem, I accidentally knocked the speed selector out of alignment. I won't describe how I fixed it here, but just keep in mind that it was difficult and messy.

When that was finally done, I had to put it all back together!

While doing that, I found that one of the screws didn't fit in its hole. A little clamping fixed that:

Once the motor was all reassembled, I had to slide it back on its tracks. The spare table helped a lot with this:

All this work became worth it when I finally turned it on!

step three: practice

I was tired at the end of the day, so I decided to just make some practice cuts.

And I wound up making a nice phone stand! (It still needs some sanding)

All in all, today was a great success! I can't wait to actually get started on the desk!

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