Writhe and Shine

Song of the Day: Distatix – “Replicant”
Get the entire album here:

Those of you that use scanners often know that there is no good place to store them. Yes, you can put it on top of a cabinet, shelf or somewhere else out of the way, but when you need to use it there is the whole process of taking it down, finding the cords and plugging them all in.Or you may already have a place for it on your desk or work space, but you always seems to put stuff on top of it.

They just take up so much real estate. They need a flat surface with lots of room above it for the lid to open.

Well, I decided to fix that problem with what I had available. Here is how I did it.

I inherited an Ikea computer desk with one of those roll-out keyboard things.

It served its purpose for the time I actually had a keyboard and a monitor. Now that I have a laptop the desk just serves to hold my pens, printer, paper, a few portfolios, and some random other tools. I was rearranging things one day and thought it would be great if my scanner would fit in the keyboard area.

But it didn’t fit.

So I measured and determined that I needed to move the thing down one inch.

I pulled the thing out and removed the two tracks. It was simple, only two tracks and four screws. I had to make sure I labelled which one went on which side. That is very important. Notice how the screws are thick and not pointed at all.

Then I butted the ruler against the underside of the desk and measured down exactly one inch. It is also important to keep the tracks level. Measuring down from the underside of the desk helped a lot.

I made my mark for all four screws. Then I took a regular pointy screw and made a hole exactly on my marks. I used a screwdriver to work the screw into the wood a little way, then removed it and went to the next mark.

Now that I had the hole started, I needed to make it large enough for the thick, non-pointy screws. Luckily I have a cylindrical file. I twisted that in the hole until they were the same size as the old ones above.

Now that the most difficult part was finished, I replaced the tracks using the new holes.

I put the drawer thing back and made sure it worked properly.

And then placed the scanner in its new home.

Now whenever I need to use the scanner I just need to pull out the drawer.