Production desks

[OllieDuff]

I made a desk for FoH mixing about 18 months ago - it was L-shaped so that you get the most desk space per seat used up, took up two rows depth and four seats wide, including the operator. There was enough room for a Yamaha M7CL-32, a copy of the score and a laptop with radio mic telemetry. I will dig out photos at some point soon.

The constructions was a 12mm ply skin on top, 3x1 framing and a 9mm ply skin on the underside. This gives you a shelf to keep paperwork, pens, and various other bits under the desk, as well as providing extra stability for the legs. I also built some side screens which slot into brackets on the edge of the desk, so that the punters don't get disturbed by the glow from all the various LEDs.

For cable management, I cut out and hinged a 6" wide panel from the top surface, with cutouts for cables to emerge at regular intervals, and a large cut out at one end of the L for cables to come in. The cable flaps along the two sides of the L meet up, so you can open both flaps, drop the cables in and close up again.

The only bit I wasn't happy with was the legs; I cut holes in the bottom skin and added a locating pin, but they still wobbled too much, so when we use the desk we screw in some diagonal bracing. Happily, the legs are made of 3x3 so they fit nicely inside the desk for storage.