How to read this Instructable: (A) Read the titles of Introduction #1 and Introduction #2. (B) Choose either #1 or #2 to read in its entirety, depending on your local conditions. (C) Or read them both. (D) Proceed to step 1.

INTRODUCTION # 1 FOR READERS WITH PLACES TO GO, PEOPLE TO SEE, PHONE CALLS TO MAKE, and E-MAILS TO SEND

I built a folding desk, out of wood, which folds flat (standing) to an unobtrusive package ~7 inches deep, 30 inches tall, and 5 feet wide, and opens up to a 24 inch deep by 5 feet wide work area. It works. Please have a look by passing directly to step 1.

INTRODUCTION #2, FOR THE LEISURED CLASS, THE RETIRED, THE UNEMPLOYED, THE VACATIONING, THE CONTEMPLATIVE

Scenario the first, wherein we consider those times we lacked a folding desk, and so we suffered a set-back

How often has it happened to you, that you stumbled across a Situation for which if only you had had a folding desk, benefits would have fallen into your lap like ripe fruit plucked just in time and washed in the sparkling waters of deep-woods Maine once held sacred by pre-European natives and polished against the soft thighs (the entirely proper upper frontal portions thereof) of vestal virgins (of whatever sex and gender pleases you most)? Picture this:

Yeah, I'd hire you right now on the spot for this creative job of planning a multi-generational, interstellar coloniza-tion voyage, and pay you tons of money with full medical benefits and weeks of paid vacation per year, IF ONLY you had brought your own desk with you to the interview, because, as you see, we're short on desks.

Wicked bummer, as they say in my native Massachusetts. You need to carry a folding desk in your vehicle.

Scenario the second, during which inspiration came, then went: went so bad it done gone

On a deserted volcanic island just south of the Philippines, the tropical vines brush your cheeks as you push through the jungle, up the peak. The sweat has been washed from you in one of those sudden showers that sweep through like vague curtains. Ahead, a cliff wall still dripping from the shower seems to glow as the sun emerges and electrifies the clinging droplets, and then....you see the work of a human hand! Initials emerge, 'A.S.' followed by an arrow, and the arrow points into a cave concealed by the angle of buttress-like rock. Your pace quickens, the razor grass rasps your bare shins, leaves red lines that weep their own little glistening droplets, but no matter -- there's a skeleton before you, reclining on a ledge in the cave, and a few rusted masses of steel that were once implements, and one piece of shining gold that once covered the face of a watch. You pick up the gold watch, open its cover like a doctor examining under ban-dages, and there it is, an inscription -- this is the watch of Arne Saknussemm!

It hits you like a flash of tropical sun spearing through the squall -- Verne was writing geography, not fiction. All of a sudden Professor Hartshorn's Geology 106 course -- taken years ago -- all falls into place. He would be so proud of you. A revelation -- you must retrain, re-theorize, offer the world shocking new theories. The slopes of the volcano drift under you in your sliding, tumbling, careening return voyage to the tourist camp. You must start now, a PhD dissertation hovers at the edge of cognition, no, two PhD dissertations, one for Geology, and one for Comparative Literature, since Verne too must be re-visioned.

You arrive at the camp, bruised and disheveled. Fellow adventure tourists offer you bottled flavored water, iced delicacies from the cooler, barbecued exotica carried up the slope by the guides for lunch. The helicopter turbine spools up to whisk you back to the resort (the guides must walk) in time for cocktails, but no, no, you reject this foolishness, you despise a life spent in wanton, arrogant pleasures. You must write, you must start now, but all is lost. You can't start. It is gone. You need a desk to organize your project and map out the location of the cave. You need it now. Where is your folding desk, which can be carried anywhere? You never built it. You n-e-v-e-r built it.

Scenario the third -- a True Story

Your friend works for a very real, innovative high school. They are what the future of urban education should be. They do many things well, but of course, they have no money. Educating teenagers is not considered a valuable enough of an occupation to warrant any attention from the powerful. Classes are small, true, your colleagues are agreeable and full of hope; you could get education done in such a place, but.... teachers don't have their own desks. There's no room besides no money. They migrate from class to class, bringing their stuff with them. Your friend needs a folding desk that would store right under the chalk tray of the blackboard when not used, and quickly fold out to spread out and correct those essays, and just as quickly fold down again to travel to whatever new location the small school will offer next. She needs one, and you build it. For real. It works. Please have a look.

-- photo, completed desk in classroom

Footnote: I just discovered that Automater built something of similar design. Go see: https://www.instructables.com/id/Collapsable-Hobby-Bench/

Step 1: Materials and Design Paradigms

TOOLS: cross-cut saw, electric or hand-drill, screw driver (I also used bit-and-brace with screwdriver bit; much cooler than battery driven screwdrivers; I bought this at an antique shop and just used it because it was still strong), block plane or radius tool to break sharp edges, pencil, measuring thingies, sanding thingies, clamps, and a counter-sink tool.

MATERIALS: 1 x 4 or 1 x 3 pine boards, laminated table-top available at most commercial home improvement stores. A few screws, glue, four small hinges, one long piano hinge, optional chair/table leg-bottom plastic protective thingies.

MY DESIGN -- Three components: (1) support stand: a standing structure like a book case with-out the shelves (but wait! You can also build a bookcase and add a desk top over its front: just make sure you store books there not often used). (2) Fold-outs that will fold out and support the desk top. (3) The desktop hinged in some way to the front edge of the bookcase-like skeleton.

Subsidary structures in include diagonal bracing on the back of the support stand. How can you get there? Here's how: (A) Follow this instructable slavishly, or (B) follow my less proscriptive design paradigm below (Eternal Rights to the Paradigm granted to Instructables):

Design Paradigm Stage 1 -- Perform ergonomic thought experiments to decide the dimensions needed for your folding desk. English teachers need a minimum of 5 foot desk top width and 24 inch depth or we lose our minds. Generally 28 to 30 inch height works best for the Standard Human but feel free to vary that as needed. Just sit somewhere, pile your usual stuff around you, and move around in typical ways. Take notes about the things that fall off the table, the things that you bump with your elbow, the things your forehead hits when you pass out from exhaustion and collapse forward onto the desk.

From these notes you will grow a basic ergonomic schematic. All good things flow from this spiritual engineering.

Design Paradigm Stage 2 -- Think really really hard about how you will locate your folding desk, thus:

Must it be stored in a high traffic area such that you don't stumble against it? (as at the front of a crowded classroom, thus setting a thinness parameter; if not, you can relax that parameter and make it bigger in folded down condition so you can add features such as storage areas or draws on it).

Will it need to travel in a vehicle often? (if so, will it fit in your car? what parts will be scraped and what parts will scrape your car, thus how shall you round off edges and protect it from scuffs and so on? mine fit in my Ford Focus hatchback with a little slow fitting and push-ing).

Will it need to be nomadic once in a building? (put plastic slidy things on the bottom, or use wheels that contact ground when you tilt one end up to tow -- see my 'toolbox/workbench' instructable).

Step 2: Build the Support Stand (looks Like a Bookcase Frame)

Step 2 -- Build the support stand

Cut pine boards and fasten into a bookcase-like frame minus shelves that will stand 29 inches high and 5 feet wide. The boards should be wide enough so the completed desk will stand on its own. I use 90 degree clamps used in picture framing to hold the side pieces to the top piece. Once clamped, glue and screw. Drill pilot holes for screws for best results. use sheetrock screws for good holding power in softwoods.

Yes, you can see that the side is bowed (warped wood) and sticks out in the picture; this and other flaws were more or less planed smooth and square later, though not to perfection; I am a rough carpenter whose work looks best when photographed from distances of 15 feet or greater. If I were a good carpenter, I would be nearly perfect, and that might threaten various physical laws.

-- 2 photos: 90 degree framing clamp used; screws to fasten sides.

Design Issue -- If you plan on storing in safe place or attaching to a wall, then the stand need only be deep enough for the plane of the rear diagonal (lateral) supports, the foldout support legs, and the table top if you nest the table top inside -- all told, it could be as thin as three inches, but then it won't stand up well. Mine was ~9 inches deep, and it stands up as any book case would.

Step 3: Brace the Support Stand With Diagonals (with Plato's Approval)

Plato felt that triangles are a near perfect form. They are the minimal geometry by which worlds can be made. The world is just surfaces composed of zillions of joined triangles (but did he un-derstand spherical geometry to attain fair lines in all things? A great question!).

Think of it, anything less than a triangle is an incomplete form. A line is infinite -- you pull at it and it just keeps on falling in your lap; you pull that line forever and never see the job done. Terminate the line between A and B and nothing better happens. It's a line, one dimension, ar-guably hardly even there: very bad. Lines are responsible for wars and lawyers. Two lines form an angle, but unclosed, sharp, hurtful, dissatisfying incomplete. But a triangle! Oh!

This is a good time to triangulate your support structure against lateral forces. You can build a giant X that becomes 3 triangles once joined to the structure. Then you can add one more board that joins the X in the middle from the center of the top piece, making more triangles as well as supporting the structure against vertical loads. You'll see. It's all very easy, beautiful, and func-tional. Triangles, in a nutshell.

So look at the pictures. First add one diagonal and fasten on. You may need to creatively use clamps and bungee cord to compress the legs into the diagonal and hold it there for marking, drilling, and screwing.

-- photos of diagonals being braced from slipping with temp screws, clamps, and bungees.

Step 4: Rabbet the Diagonals Into Each Other for Grace

When you add the second diagonal to form the X, test fit, cut, and mark where it forms the X on both boards. Then chop out the facing sides between the marks to let one fit into the other.

(A) Mark where diagonals cross each other.

(B) Use measuring thingie such as compass to mark depth of rabbet cut (one half of 3/4s of an inch, whatever that is. I think it is 3/8s inch, right?

(C) Use a crosscut saw to make several cuts down to the depth line.

(D) Hog out the stuff with a wood chisel; smooth with a bastard file.

(E) The second diagonal is ready to inset here and screw to the legs of the support structure. Screw it in at the X place too.

The support stand is now strong laterally. But what if you lean on it? The 5 foot long top will sag, s add the vertical support from the center back of the top and down to the X of the diagonals. Now the support stand is very strong.

This is a good time to round off all edges as aesthetics demand and patience allows. I had a ra-dius tool but now it is dull and hard to sharpen. A radius plane would be great (radius all edges BEFORE you screw boards into a structure) but it is not in my budget yet (and yet I just bought a rabbet plane, go figure. I must be having a lucid daydream of building a lapstrake wooden boat). A block plane and sandpaper will suffice. Rounded edges do not damage as easily as sharp 90 degree edges.

Step 5: Build the Foldout Legs

Easy -- they fit inside the support stand, hinge to swing out vertically. I built simple rectangles, fastened in shiplap style, with boards wide enough to require no diagonals for strength. Mark the overlaps, mark the depth (one half of each board thickness or 3/8 inch in this case), make many saw cuts down the depth line, and chisel, or, in this case, just two saw cuts per shiplap if you are good at sawing -- best of all. See photos.

I did the shiplaps IN THIS CASE on a drill press and cleaned up with a chisel. Faster to mark, saw, and chisel as we did with the rabbet on the diago-nals, what was I thinking? I know: I have 'chronic milling machine envy.'

Thereafter, clamp, glue, square with a square, and let dry. Then test fit under the support stand because at this stage you need that little boost of satisfaction of seeing how the thing will look in the end.

Step 6: Attach Foldouts to Sides

Clamp the foldout legs to the sides and mark where the hinges will go. The hinges will be set in about an inch which will make legs flush inside the support stand. If you intend to nest the table top inside there too, then the legs will inset ~2 inches and the table top on the outside of that to be flush with the front of the support stand. That is graceful. I did not do that.

To make hinges lay flat I ground holes in the inner stand legs for the hinge part of the hinges to set in to.

I screwed the hinges to the rectangular foldout legs (also gouged out wood to let the hinge intoi the wood so it would lie flat, see photo with the chisel), then clamped these to the sides of the sup-port stand, then screwed the hinges to the stand. Make sure the foldout legs will swing freely un-der the top of the support stand.

You can add now any little plastic thingies to the bottom of the support stand legs and the foldout legs. I used chair leg floor protectors.

Step 7: Add the Table Top

The table top was purchased as one unit from a commercial home supply store, 24 inches by 6 feet. Space and ergonomics dictated a foot be cut from an end. I opted to attach this table top so that it rests on the front edges of the support stand, gracelessly exposed when folded down. I had reasons, (a) hinge geometry, (b) how screw heads protruded slightly when piano hinge would be attached, and so on, (c) the table top would rest on a solid support and not swing around and bang things irritatingly when hit by toes, air currents, and high-speed insects. But the tabletop can bang the front of the support stand, so I added hasty rubber bump pads by using too-large hole-grommet rubber things (thinner is better; I used what I had; I don't even know why I had them since they are designed to slip into holes in sheet metal). I think I should have nested the table-top in and worked around the various protruding hinge and hinge opening angle issues. Enough. It is done. Here's your chance to improve the project.

Anyway, (a) attach the piano hinge (it gives a lot of support, that's why I liked it) by clamping, drilling 10,000 pilot holes, then screwing it to the support stand. (c) Then locate the table top against the hinge, clamp the table top down, drill pilot holes, and screw the screws.

Finally, in my case, I had to protect the piano hinge from opening too far and stressing its at-tachments, so I added a stopper-string so that you can lift the tabletop only so far before folding out the support legs. Again, other hinging methods would avoid such little irritating issues.

Yes, I eventually sanded smooth the ugly hole-filling compound.

Step 8: Done

-- No more steps. Not really. OK, two more:

(a) Drill a hole with a large diameter drill for inserting of fingers for moving the table around, since this is, after, nomad furniture. (b) Sand (I go up only to 220 grit since I am lazy), then coat with the coating of your choice (I used waterbased polyurethane, 3 coats because I was in a rush as usual; also, I hate finish work; 5 coats are better; maybe even 15 or 20).

Bring the table to its location (celebrate it's first nomadic function) and be happy knowing that you have eased some of the world's paperwork through woodwork.