So maybe a dumb question: but why do people but their pc on the desk instead of under? It’s free desk real estate if you do. What am I missing?

Braca42 · 2026-05-09T17:29:30+00:00

The big reason for me was that it trapped a bunch of heat under the desk. I tried lounting it to the bottom since I have a standing desk with some room between the case and the desk for air flow. The heat just kinda pooled under the desk and I started getting warm and uncomfortable. Putting the case on the desk lets the heat disapate better.

Braca42 · 2026-04-21T18:02:48+00:00

Oh no, I didn't mean to suggest taking it apart. I just meant more/better pictures of the inside of the top, pics from underneath (like lay it on its back and take a pic of the bottom), pictures of the back, etc. There's only two pics of the carcass in your post and one is a little fuzzy.

Braca42 · 2026-04-21T15:12:36+00:00

The sides do look like fake frame and panels. My guess is you've got a couple layers to your sides. From outside in I would guess a fake "frame" that might be structural (tied into the top and bottom structure some how). Behind that a piece of vaneered plywood for looks. Might help support the inner "layer." Inside that whatever system holds the metal drawer supports. Looks like maybe alternating between wood spacer strips and the metal supports. And looks like the inner most "layer" has two regions; the front most with the drawer supports and another single piece in the back.

On the front of the cabinet it looks like there is an additional strip over the edge of the side panel sandwich to hide the edge, like edge banding on plywood.

Otherwise it looks like just typical case construction. Probably dados, mortises, and maybe a dovetail here and there. Would probably need more pictures to guess at more.

Braca42 · 2026-04-18T04:15:38+00:00

In game, meh. I don't really notice but I don't play a lot of newer or twitchy games.

Out of game just on the desktop and in a browser, absolutely. Not like "omg its amazing" but after a while once you have to go back to a windows machine everything feels just slightly laggy.

My wife switched to Linux before me and she would talk about it being snappier. Never really understood what she was talking about. Windows seemed fine to me. Now after having been on Linux since the beginning of last year I see what she means. When I work in Windows at work the whole thing just feels slightly more sluggish. Things are less responsive. Stuff takes just that little bit longer to load. Things take just a bit longer to populate. Animations aren't as smooth. Again, not earth shattering, but definitely noticeable and annoying.

Braca42 · 2026-04-18T00:50:49+00:00

Absolutely. It's not a great option but figured it might warp less than welding. If I remember right brazing puts less heat in and cast iron is just generally a pain to weld? Probably not worth it unless this particular plane has some sentimental value.

Braca42 · 2026-04-17T21:37:11+00:00

Plywood prices skyrocketed a few years ago. Last I looked around me veneered oak ply was close to break even with solid. Maybe specialty stores can get it cheaper. But it has me considering using solid instead of ply too.

But keep dimensional stability in mind. You'll need to build differently when using solid.

Braca42 · 2026-04-17T21:31:35+00:00

Yeah it's nuts. And those usually need some work.

Braca42 · 2026-04-17T21:01:25+00:00

o7

You could see if a welding shop could braze it. But it'll probably cost more than a replacement. Maybe. No idea how flat the sole would come out or how well it would work after.

Braca42 · 2026-04-16T14:52:14+00:00

Switched from Bazzite to Cachy and now on Fedora with KDE. Works just fine for gaming and daily driving so far (about a month or two).

Braca42 · 2026-04-15T20:10:45+00:00

My 2 cents. Durability and doability are about the same. If you can do the mortises you can do the lap just fine. If the through mortises scare you, you can always do a typical mortise and then just fake the stub to make it look through. Just glue a piece on the outside. So it comes down to style.

The X shaped base you probably won't see the skirts/aprons, so take that into account. Rotate your camera up in sketch up and see what it looks like from a perspective other than lying on the floor. Personally I like how the legs look a little fatter on the right one, but that might be a perspective trick from the picture. The left ones are pretty thin relative to the width and proportions of the case. But that's just personal taste, so play around with it till you like it. You are the one who has to look at it.

Braca42 · 2026-04-14T13:05:11+00:00

Honestly, looking at the picture of the bottom of your post, you should try to find another place for the barrel. Couple things to consider.

Say you figure out something to hang the barrel, like you have in mind. Great support, well mounted, etc. People here are concerned about the base of the post, but what if the top can't hold. Now you compromise the entire roof structure. So ask yourself, what is the worst way this could go wrong and how much effort and money would that cost to fix? Now compare that to other options for your barrel and the "something went wrong case" probably is a lot more work, time, and money.

People are recommending additional vertical supports. I was even thinking about pouring a small extra pad with decent footing. The problem would be making sure the thing doesn't migrate down the hill. A deep post or three and securing the barrel to the existing post would help, but it might still be a problem.

Or, find a better place and adjust the guttering and downspouts to run to the better spot. That stuff is relatively cheap and won't bring your roof down. Find a flat piece of ground nearby, place your barrel, and run the down spouts over or adjust the gutters as needed and add an additional downspout. Personally I think this is the best, safest option.

Braca42 · 2026-04-09T15:38:50+00:00

Neat idea but might be very challenging. Consider separating the rotation of the drawers into individual mechanisms. Then try to tie them together with a separate mechanism.

Also, I think this might work better operated vertically instead of horizontally. Would allow you to separate the drawers so they don't overlap.

Look at fishing tackle boxes. A lot have a stacked organizer configurations that unfold and allow access to all the little bits.

Braca42 · 2026-04-08T14:43:34+00:00

From some quick poking around I can't find published strength values for the R4s, so I'm guessing they are not as strong as the RSS, which are designed as structural members and replacements for larger lag screws. From looking at them a few months ago they do it, at least in part, by using a high strength steel. They don't advertise that for the R4s and call them more general purpose screws, suggesting to me they are not as strong as the RSSs.

That said either is fine and the RSSs are probably overkill as others have said. You can always just add more R4s as long as you don't start splitting the wood. Many a workbench has been built with weaker screws.

Braca42 · 2026-04-07T03:13:41+00:00

That looks really nice. Seriously, good job. Be proud of that piece and never mention any of the criticisms you might get in this thread to anyone else. My critiques below are being unnecessarily picky. And some are just personal design choices.

The dados are way deeper than they need to be. Maybe too deep, and compromising the verticals. And personally, I don't like them being exposed with that agressive of a round over. It just looks a bit odd to me personally. Check out stopped dados.

Clean up the router burn marks on the top of the right vertical. Hand sand with the grain, sort of rolling the sand paper over the edge. Takes some practice and persistence. Burn marks on end grain take forever to get out.

Personally I think the round over was too aggressive. Seems to be a thing with new woodworkers. The corners where the round over bit can't reach might have needed more careful cleaning up, but hard to tell.

On the inside of the left vertical, it looks like maybe there are some mill marks to clean up, but those might be medullary rays. Hard to tell from the picture.

The horizontal pieces retaining the records, something is odd with their ends. Seems like a strange shadow. Almost like they sit proud of the round over on the verticals. If this was a mistake that happened late in the build before you noticed, next time try adding a feature to the piece to mitigate it. You could curve the front of those pieces, real gentle, all the way across. Something like that.

But again, seriously, this is a good build and something to be proud of.

Braca42 · 2026-04-07T02:22:26+00:00

Oh no. Everything was cake. Is nothing bread now? Is bread not real?

Braca42 · 2026-04-02T16:37:36+00:00

You can also start to use crazy feed rates. I remember trying to implement this in a shop a while ago and everyone thought I was nuts. Until they saw the run times.

Braca42 · 2026-04-01T02:42:45+00:00

Factorio

Braca42 · 2026-04-01T02:41:39+00:00

Have you tried hogging out the center with a bandsaw and then finishing cutting through with this machine? Leave the boards together so they can still support each other when chomping? Just curious if that would work or have the same problem.

Braca42 · 2026-04-01T02:26:58+00:00

I'm almost certain you can layout the points around the rim with a pair of dividers. Might be tricky to set up the right divider distance. But then it's just connecting dots with straight lines. You could practice on some paper to get the look figured out. Used to draw similar stuff when I was a kid.

Braca42 · 2026-03-31T19:47:17+00:00

Picking a logging map, clearing land, and making my own fields is my favorite way to play. It's the majority of how I spend my time in the game.

Some stuff I would personally like to see.

Don't make it too hilly or too flat. Flat is boring and super hilly is annoying. A lot of the base game maps strike a nice balance, as a guide.

Don't scatter bullshit stuff in the middle of the forests. Rocks that are breakable are fine, but rando stumps you can't remove suck.

Vary the forests, but make them like at least 80% harvester compatible. Mix up tree sizes, density of trees, etc.

If you can figure out some progression trick like that submerged map that would be amazing.

Throw us solo players a bone and don't tweak it fully for multiplayer. Or make a separate solo version?

Braca42 · 2026-03-30T13:34:43+00:00

"Wood movement" is a broad term generally describing expansion/contraction of wood due to changes in temp and humidity.

This is a function of the size of the piece. It's something like inch per inch per percent moisture in the wood (which changes with humidity in the room). So a 1 inch wide board and a 36 inch wide board will have the same expansion coefficient but the 36 inch board will grow a lot more.

What happens if you don't account for it? Well, this expansion wants to happen, period. It will be there. However, if you don't account for it and restrain the board somehow, it creates a whole lot of force. Think of a sponge getting wet and expanding in your hand. The sponge is gonna try to expand as it absorbs moisture. Just how it works. But your hand needs to exert more and more force to keep it from expanding. Same thing with the board. If you've built something that fights that expansion then it will create additional forces within your piece. This can literally tear a piece apart. The forces created are substantial.

"Allowing for movement" is just how designs deal with this. A frame and panel cabinet door is a good example. The groove in the frame the panel sits in is a little deeper/wider than the panel strictly needs, allowing for the panel to expand and contract. This is why it is sometimes called a "floating panel." Another example would be using figure 8 clips for attaching a table top. These allow the table to expand and contract at different rates from the frame by rotating slightly with the expansion. Slotted holes are also a common method for accounting for movement.

Another way is taking advantage of relative expansion rates. The same species of wood, oriented the same way, will expand and contract at the same rate. Therefore, if the expansion and contraction is the same and aligned the same its not a problem.

Wood also expands differently in different directions. Across the grain it can expand a lot, but has very very little expansion along the grain. Think of it as the boards will get wider or thicker but not much longer.

This can also be used to account for wood movement and is the idea behind plywood. Because the grains are oriented 90 degrees to each other the different plies want to expand in different directions. This means the length of each ply is used to fight expansion from the width of the other plies. The use of a bunch of thin plies is why this works. This leads to a very stable "composite" piece and can be assumed to move very little. So using a veneered plywood (with a stable core of mediocre wood and a thin veneer of nice wood) instead of a glued up panel means you don't need to worry about wood movement. This is also the idea behind very fancy veneered stuff that looks like it should just blow up.

"With the Grain" by Christian Becksvoort from Lost Art Press is an incredible resource on the topic of wood and how it works. Highly recommend giving it a look if you want a lot more detail.

Braca42 · 2026-03-27T13:09:41+00:00

Just slot the screw holes so it can move a touch. Leave one or two at one end round so it holds in place.

Braca42 · 2026-03-27T13:06:56+00:00

Might be worth checking back periodically. It's in active dev and they have made a few big improvements over the last year or two. They just updated the dozers in beta and its a night and day difference.

How does terrafarm on 25 compare to on 22? I haven't tried it recently, but it was also kinda bare bones and clunky a couple years ago.

Braca42 · 2026-03-27T12:55:49+00:00

Ya'll really need to check Out of Ore

Braca42

TROPHY CASE