My Final Photography Project of the Year

[MarkBarbieri]

I've been doing a lot of printing, trimming, and mat cutting this year. I've been commandeering any available flat surfaces to do the job. I finally decided to make my own flat surface.

Using some 4x4s and 1x4s, a bunch of screws, some brackets, and a door, my wife and I (mostly my wife) built an 80" long by 36" deep by 38" tall work table. It's not the most elegant thing in the world, but it gets the job done nicely. I already used it to trim and mat a bunch of prints. Aaron Brothers has frames on sale, so we bought a bunch of them and I've been busy filling them.

It sits in our "camera" room. This used to be a guest bedroom, but I got annoyed at using so much space for a room used only about 4-5 nights a year. Now, we repurpose the playroom when we have guests. This room is now dedicated to storing camera gear, the printer, and the work table.

Here's a view of my new work table:

Here's the printer:

 

[annnewjerz]

Very nice! It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that anyone would own a printer that large, but seeing how many frames you have scattered around the room---it seems like you're putting it to great use!

The work table actually looks really great. I was thinking about making something similar this Christmas when the only thing I could use to efficiently wrap gifts on was our dining room table, but decided I wasn't that handy and had no idea how to even go about building such a thing. Maybe next year...

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Very nice! It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that anyone would own a printer that large, but seeing how many frames you have scattered around the room---it seems like you're putting it to great use!

I sometimes wonder if I should have gotten the 8300 instead of the 6300. It's probably a good thing that I didn't, but there have been a few times when it would have been nice not to be limited to 24" wide. The biggest problem I've seen with big prints is matting. Mats get expensive fast. My biggest mat boards currently are 24"x30". Beyond that, the mats cost about $10 a board, which works out to $30 a print if you use one as a back board and do a double mat.

The work table actually looks really great. I was thinking about making something similar this Christmas when the only thing I could use to efficiently wrap gifts on was our dining room table, but decided I wasn't that handy and had no idea how to even go about building such a thing. Maybe next year...

My wife's design (which she basically copied from Home Depot) was pretty simple. She took two 8' 4x4's and sawed them up to get four 36" posts. Then she took two 6 foot 1x4s and sawed them in half. She laid out the posts in pairs and connected each pair at the top and near the bottom with a 1x4 half. Instead of making the 1x4's flush with the ends of the posts, she had them stick out the width of a 1x4 (which is less than an inch, which seems strange to me). Then we connected the post sets together with 6 foot 1x4's at the top. The butted against the other 1x4s already on the posts. Finally, we added a 1x6 near the bottom in the back. We stuck a door on top of that, bolted it on with some brackets, and called it good.

The whole project (not including getting the lumber) took about 2 hours. We borrowed a neighbors saw to cutting the boards. We used an impact driver for the screws. She drilled a pilot hole for each, drilled a counter sink hole for the screw heads, and then put the screws in. The impact driver was a Christmas gift from me and it was really cool. It was loud, but scary fast.

I considered sanding, priming, and painting the whole thing, but it seems like such a bother. I think I'm going to just leave it rough.

 

[boBQuincy]

There's nothing like a hollow-core door for a quick and easy table! I am impressed that your DW drilled pilot holes *and* counter sinks for the screws!
I got the same impact driver (probably, Craftsman, angle) for Christmas, it has a *lot* of torque!

Lumber is sized like 35mm film, where none of the numbers are actually correct.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

The impact driver she got as a Milwaukee 2650-20 M18. I got her that, a matching hammer drill, and a matching hackzall.


If anyone is curious about the other stuff in the pictures, here's a quick rundown.

• The big black thing on the table is a paper cutter. It's got a self-sharpening rotary blade. It cuts very nicely, but the guide isn't as precise as I would have liked. I bought the cheapy model, so that might be why.
• Behind the paper cutter is the mat cutter. It takes up much more space when in use, but it stores fairly compact.
• The white cylinder on the back of the table is a D-Roller. It probably gets more flack for it's retail cost to presumed production cost ratio than just about anything on the net. There are a gazillion plans for DIY versions. I'm not that competent of a DIYer, so I just sucked it up and bought it. I will say that it works great for its simple task of taking the curl of out paper printed from a roll.
• Under the table is a stack of trays my wife got me for Christmas. I use them to hold my mat papers and non-roll papers.
• The stool is my posing stool. You can really see it, but behind that is a posing table. Honestly, I haven't found them very useful. Then again, I suck at posing people.
• On the table next to the printer are three computer like devices. One of them is an old HTPC looking for a new life. The other two are different generations of Infrant (now NetGear) NASes. They are the file servers for the house with backups, shared files, media files, etc. The share the media files with DLNA, which works well with anything not made by Apple.
• Standing between the desk and printer are a pair of 9' rolls of paper. There is an old used black roll waiting for a new life of unknown purpose and in the box is a green roll used for green screen shoots (which seemed like a good idea but I haven't done in the year or so since I bought it).