wow.........

any updates?? xD waiting~

HEhehe, sorry! It's been a very busy week! I've got some updates for you

I used a fairly similar process as the drawer faces, I started out by cutting myself some fresh trim strips from this piece of maple:



Hit the miter saw and sander, and lay down some glue:



Then with the nailer. Whoops, one more split.



Here's a before and after shot from the sanding. You'll notice the maple strips got burnt pretty badly when I put them through the table saw (The blade is getting a bit old). After a bit of sanding, they look as fresh as ever:

After trimming all of the drawers and faces, I had to get some wood filler to fill in all of the screw and nail holes, as well as the small voids between the plywood and solid wood. All in all, this process went OK - not as nice as I would have liked.



For the mostpart, I used Elmers Natural Colour Wood Filler. While it did the job, the colour matching wasn't exactly... inconspicious, to say the least. I also tried mixing some sawdust from the random-orbit sander with some wood glue, with not so great results.









You can clearly see, in the end result, that the sawdust/glue filler looks more like glue. It has an almost transparent look to it. I guess I should have used more sawdust?





Anyways, I finished up the rest of the voids and holes with the regular Elmers stuff:



And then sanded it it all up:





Anyone have any tips on how I can further hide the holes? I will have to go over them again with some more wood filler just to smooth them out completely, but even so, I have a feeling that the stain will accentuate all of my filling, which is not the desired effect, to say the least!!

I have ALMOST determined the stain / technique I will be using. I'm getting some very nice, richly coloured red mahogany / cherry right now on my test boards. With that in mind, has anyone used darker wood filler than the natural wood, when staining dark with good effect?

nice project. where is your location? can help make me a table top?

nice project... wanna order... hahaha

cooled down ur system using watercooling.that will reduce dust from build up

Thanks for the comments everyone:

I have considered water cooling, but I am usually swapping components in and out regularly for testing purposes, so that is not very convenient, despite the cleanliness and performance advantages.

It would be pretty awesome if you COULD order something like this, but I'm afraid the shipping would be VERY expensive!!

Hehe, I'd love to help you out supernothing, but I'm in Ottawa.. Ontario! Canada!!

I'll have a real update sometime in the next day or two - work has been keeping me really busy so I haven't had much time for this project

looks cool. do u plan to sell them? juz wondering

canada~! wow...
any updates??
ahahahaha

whaaattt? too bad..

but seriously, this is an awesome project. looking forward for more updates.

updates please

Received a nice package in the mail a couple weeks ago that I've been meaning to show off...





What could it be?



Woohoo!!!







That's:
4 x 2 GB of 1600Mhz CL7 Ballistix RAM from Crucial and
2 x 2 GB of 1333Mhz ECC, Registered RDIMM RAM from Crucial!

So it looks like for the main system I will have some options. Currently I'm thinking either a socket 1156 Core i5/i7 or a newer Sandy Bridge socket 1155. The only issue that may occur with the Sandy Bridge is that those Crucial Ballistix are rated for 1.65 Volts, which I understand is a bit over the recommended voltage for RAM for the 1155 boards. There is a possibility of looking at an AMD AM3 system as well with a Phenom x4 or x6 - I have not made up my mind entirely yet.

For the server system, I am almost definetely going with a Xeon processor - which motherboard is still in the air.

Aren't they so nice?





Can't wait to open them up and test them out! It'll have to wait for now, however.

So here's a distraction - my cat! She's going to have some kittens soon!



Big thanks go out to Crucial, who are officially the first sponsor for The Ultimate Computer Desk



Stay tuned, lots of updates in the pipeline!


This post has been edited by ultimatedesk: Feb 4 2011, 03:00 AM

Last time I left off, with regards to the table surface, I had just finished gluing and screwing it together. I put it on the backburner for about a week to dry while I worked on the drawers, and now I'm going to take it down in preparation for putting the outer trim on it.

Here it is:



All 4 sides were a bit off, with regards to the flushness. This was expected, as the initial sizing cuts were pretty rough, and it's better to have extra material than not enough.



Took out a straight-cut flush bit for the router, and some 60-grit sandpaper for the random orbital sander, and got to work. I did two passes with the router, because since the bit is not 1 1/2" tall, I couldn't trim the whole side of the table with just one pass.











And, after a bit of work, the final result:







The next step is to take a long strip of maple and turn it into trim for the table surface.

update update

Hehe, sorry yangchee98, things have been so busy with work lately, and it is freezing cold here in Ottawa for the past week or so, so I haven't been particularly motivated to get out there and work on the desk!

Soon though - tomorrow or the day after, I'll get some nice new pics for ya

to the DIY geek in me
this is, as the TS name implied, the ultimate ... stuff

as I am still in the "take-things-and-mod-them" stage,
the next best thing is to "Create"
(but living in an apartment isn't really conducive to hammering, sawing and drilling)

Good...I mean GREAT job TS

haha , hope to see your work done soon

Hey mcchin, thanks for the comments, I know what you mean about living in an apartment and not being able to do that kind of work. It's too bad there aren't more "public workshops" where you could pay sort of like a gym membership to be able to go and use the tools.


Aaaaand, this ones for you yangchee98!

The last time I left off, I had just finished flushing the sides of the table in preparation to add some trim. I found a nice piece of long maple that was just a little over 8 feet long, a little wider than 1.5 inches, and thick enough to cut some 1/4 inch strips from.

I layed it out, setup the table saw and cut myself a test piece.



Looks good!



Here's a pic of the cutting process. I'm afraid I had some difficulty with this. Actually, let me rephrase - the saw had some difficulty with this. I was still using the same blade I've been using the whole project - which needs replacement pretty badly. Asking it to cut through 1.5 inches of maple, for a length of 8 feet was asking a lot of it.



I made it through eventually, but the whole process left quite a few burn marks on the wood.



I glued and nailed the trim around the perimeter of the desk, which was a pretty straightforward process.



And then took out a hand plane to get rid of most of the excess material and bring the trim down flush with the desk surface. Some neat pictures here.





After some sanding with some 60-grit on the random orbit sander to get everything smooth, I went nuts with the wood filler.







At that point I stood the surface up in the back of the shop and called it a night.

Next update in the loop, I setup some dado blades in the table saw, mmm mmmm, that was fun!

Have a good weekend everyone!

wow.very creative.nice job.i also want to make own casing.but lack of tool.huhuhu.n not very creative.hahah