Falling directly into the developer-turned-woodworker stereotype, I’ve started my career by making a few desk ornaments.

I’m lucky to have great resources for woodworking in my area, with the flat garage filled with well looked after hand tools (planes, files, saws) and a community shed down the road with all the power tools and machines I could need for just $150 a year to access.

Tech YouTube is filled with content creators with snazzy desk setups and two pieces caught my eye:

These looked simple enough to make, and would free up space on my current desk, or any desk I might use in the future and add a bit of warmth to all the highly plastic/metal, synthetic bits of technology that I use almost everyday.

One of the other main goals would be to get familiar with using power tools and machinery, as getting over that barrier makes going to the community shed a little less daunting and opens up a variety of things to potentially make. I often had quite in-depth conversations with a lot of helpful people at the shed, who all had differing opinions on the best combination of tools to use to achieve a desired outcome.

Macrocarpa was used for the laptop stand, and pine for the monitor stand. Total cost for this build was ~$15 as I bought some magnets to inlay and stick the laptop stands together.

In the end, the key was just getting the project done rather than using the 100% correct method (if that even existed), and while I’m painfully aware of all the flaws with each item, would anyone really notice?

I’ve optimistically put ‘pt. 1’ in the title as I have more woodworking ideas lined up (I’m more motivated by creating things that solve some kind of problem) that I hope to share on the blog. I’ll have to come up with something for the headphones and its long cable…