Well, well, well...... What do we have here? Could it be another project I went overboard on?
My computer speakers have one of those small subwoofers that all the wires use as a junction box. It's been just sitting on the floor as manufacturer intended for the last 17 years but I finally got tired of kicking it and losing valuable space for my feet at the desk.
I recently removed my desk drawer as it prevented my chairs from pushing in as far as I would like in my small room. Below the actual drawer was a doweled and pocket screwed wood piece that I also removed that sort of framed in the bottom of the drawer. I have stowed away the drawer in case my change my mind someday but the wood piece below is not needed in either configuration so I going to recycle it to make the new sub woofer mount.
I started by measuring the subwoofer and coming up with some sort of bracket for it. I found the drawer's wood would be long enough to make a U-shaped bracket if I cut it with mitered corners.
This is the stage where you should spend the time to make sure the miters are matching so you can get a good nice fit for the glue and clamps to join together. You can tell they are not there yet with the giant gaps in this photo. Unfortunately they are never going to get there because I glued and clamped them together once I had enough of trying to match them. Frankly I was running out of wood length and couldn't afford to remove any more material without the subwoofer getting smaller.
This piece of wood definitely has the most wear-and-tear of the whole desk, all those scuffs and rounded corners are from the various chair arms that have tried to fit under.
Since I didn't spend enough time getting the miters right we have some large gaps at the corner. End grain to end grain glued joints are the weakest anyways so this seemed a little sad looking to me. I decided to try doing splines to see if I could recover the piece. I planed out a small piece of maple and then used my marking gauge to identify what to saw out. I used a western handsaw to clear the grooves and a small chisel to clean up. There were 4 splines in total and could you believe that the 4th was my best one?!
My phone bit the dust and I lost my photos of the maple splines being glued and inserted. They were just rectangles of maple that I jammed into the slots with Titebond II and clamped the corners to make sure it's a strong joint. After that I trimmed the excess maple off on the bandsaw and then chiseled away the rest and sanded to finish.
I obviously sanded away all the cherry stain/finish we had applied when I first got this desk from Arcata Exchange. I don't know what species the wood is, I keep wanting to say cherry since that's the stain we used but I have no idea. I just used Tung Oil to finish this time as I love that it's fast drying and how thin the finish comes out of the can.
Probably the best side since it's the one I took the photo of! Note that wood grain in the splines is running diagonal to the other wood but creates a super strong bridge across that gap. Splines need to be inserted and cut such that you're using wood grains strength along it's length to strengthen the joint. The end result was a joint that is INSANELY strong. I could easily walk up a ladder made of these it would hold my weight without issue and I'm normally find most ladders a bit sketchy.
The color match looks pretty amazing in this photo, I don't think it captured the reality of the color difference but it's under the desk and I certainly don't mind. I was able to reuse one of the pocket screw hole from one end but had to re-drill the other end because of poor planning.
I think next time I'll use the table saw to cut the splines and plane the maple to the kerf width to make it a little easier. These splines are THICK and I think it would have been plenty strong at half their current thickness.
My computer speakers have one of those small subwoofers that all the wires use as a junction box. It's been just sitting on the floor as manufacturer intended for the last 17 years but I finally got tired of kicking it and losing valuable space for my feet at the desk.
I recently removed my desk drawer as it prevented my chairs from pushing in as far as I would like in my small room. Below the actual drawer was a doweled and pocket screwed wood piece that I also removed that sort of framed in the bottom of the drawer. I have stowed away the drawer in case my change my mind someday but the wood piece below is not needed in either configuration so I going to recycle it to make the new sub woofer mount.
I started by measuring the subwoofer and coming up with some sort of bracket for it. I found the drawer's wood would be long enough to make a U-shaped bracket if I cut it with mitered corners.
This is the stage where you should spend the time to make sure the miters are matching so you can get a good nice fit for the glue and clamps to join together. You can tell they are not there yet with the giant gaps in this photo. Unfortunately they are never going to get there because I glued and clamped them together once I had enough of trying to match them. Frankly I was running out of wood length and couldn't afford to remove any more material without the subwoofer getting smaller.
This piece of wood definitely has the most wear-and-tear of the whole desk, all those scuffs and rounded corners are from the various chair arms that have tried to fit under.
Since I didn't spend enough time getting the miters right we have some large gaps at the corner. End grain to end grain glued joints are the weakest anyways so this seemed a little sad looking to me. I decided to try doing splines to see if I could recover the piece. I planed out a small piece of maple and then used my marking gauge to identify what to saw out. I used a western handsaw to clear the grooves and a small chisel to clean up. There were 4 splines in total and could you believe that the 4th was my best one?!
My phone bit the dust and I lost my photos of the maple splines being glued and inserted. They were just rectangles of maple that I jammed into the slots with Titebond II and clamped the corners to make sure it's a strong joint. After that I trimmed the excess maple off on the bandsaw and then chiseled away the rest and sanded to finish.
I obviously sanded away all the cherry stain/finish we had applied when I first got this desk from Arcata Exchange. I don't know what species the wood is, I keep wanting to say cherry since that's the stain we used but I have no idea. I just used Tung Oil to finish this time as I love that it's fast drying and how thin the finish comes out of the can.
Probably the best side since it's the one I took the photo of! Note that wood grain in the splines is running diagonal to the other wood but creates a super strong bridge across that gap. Splines need to be inserted and cut such that you're using wood grains strength along it's length to strengthen the joint. The end result was a joint that is INSANELY strong. I could easily walk up a ladder made of these it would hold my weight without issue and I'm normally find most ladders a bit sketchy.
The color match looks pretty amazing in this photo, I don't think it captured the reality of the color difference but it's under the desk and I certainly don't mind. I was able to reuse one of the pocket screw hole from one end but had to re-drill the other end because of poor planning.
I think next time I'll use the table saw to cut the splines and plane the maple to the kerf width to make it a little easier. These splines are THICK and I think it would have been plenty strong at half their current thickness.
Last edited: