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Adjustable feet - overkill in hindsight

A project log for Desk-ercising with the Exer-desk

Getting a little exercise during the daily grind.

joseph-eoffJoseph Eoff 07/17/2021 at 21:580 Comments

When I built the "Exer-desk", I had several things to juggle.

Given all of those variables, I decided the only thing to do was to make the desk with adjustable feet.

I measured things out and calculated what I thought would be the correct length, then made the feet with an adjustable range of just less than four inches (10 centimeters.)

As it turned out, the legs are almost perfectly the same length and the lowest end of the adjustment is the perfect height.  If I'd have known I was that good, I could have just made them the right length and been done with it.  Oh, well.


On the off chance that someone else may need to build adjustable feet for a desk or table, here's how I made mine.

This was the goal:
 

Adjustable feet, solidly attached to the legs of the desk.

I started with some 8 millimeter nuts and bolts and a bunch of steel plates:
That's a rod of silver solder there in the picture above the steel plate.  Some people weld, others braze.  I silver solder.

I drilled 8.5 millimeter holes in the center of all the plates.  The short screw and nut are used to hold the other nut in place while I'm soldering.

Like this:
It looks like this when I'm soldering things together:
The torch is lying there on the other workbench while one of the steel plates with a soldered nut is clamped in the vice.

I bought four rubber feet.  I had some long 8 mm screws and a bunch of nuts and washers in the garage.  A bolt, a washer, a nut, and one rubber foot go together like this:

The big flat screw heads and the washer keep the bolt from tearing out of the (relatively) soft rubber.  The nut holds it all together.


The nut soldered to the plates hold the feet.
When I put them all together, I put in an extra nut to lock the adjusting nut.

The long 8 mm screws go into 9mm holes I drilled into the legs.  The plates are screwed to the legs to keep things together.

Unlock the lock nut and screw out the foot to adjust the height,  Tighten the lock nut when done.

The screws I used were something over 100 mm (4 inches) long.  You can use most of that adjustment range with these feet.

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