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Comment by nmeofthestate | Hacker News Reader

It looks like this guy plans to do a lot of jumping up and down on his desk.

I wouldn't accept a desk that wouldn't hold my weight on top of its usual load anywhere close my home. When we were building a custom workbench in a Hackerspace, I put it in as requirement. You don't want your table to collapse when somebody sits on it.

Does that happen a lot?

It's enough that it happens once. When it does, you'll have a broken desk, and possibly a medical emergency on your hands.

The copious amount of joints that are held together by the fasteners only and the non-structural deck are not going to like that long term.... but it's also a home office so it really doesn't matter what sins you commit, it'll all survive anyway.

What would be the proper way to do something like this? I've made a couple desks myself, but I've never been able to figure out a good way to do joints.

Dovetail and pin it all old style. A good rule of thumb is to not rely on friction for primary load bearing (e.g. nails in tension are bad but nails in shear or a peg being held in by friction are fine).

That said, a plywood deck that is glued and screwed down like a subfloor pretty much absolves all sins.

Dovetails are easy if you have the right tools. But that's a $100 minimum investment, so you're going to want to have multiple projects in the works to really make the investment worth it. Doing them by hand is completely possible, it just takes a lot of time and practice to get right. Mortise and tendon or lap joints are much easier to do with hand tools and are a staple of classic wood working. Plus they are really forgiving. Took off too little: grab some sand paper; take off too much: add more glue and sawdust.

For most projects, glue & screw is fine. It's cheap and low effort. I use it in every utility project because speed > looks. I've never tested it, but I'm pretty sure that connection would be stronger than the wood itself.

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