Low Horse

I've talked a bit about how I switched my office job's old desk with a standing desk. I had hoped that this stool would allow me to rest my feet on the lower rung when I wasn't sitting on it but there wasn't enough room for my knees to fit underneath the seat. I remembered seeing a project via Make a while back for some low saw horses and I decided to just make one as a foot rail. This was my first attempt at doing joinery with hand tools only. I learned a lot and the project turned out just fine. Here's the tutorial from Make if you're interested: http://makeprojects.com/Project/Low-Horses/813/1

As with any project, careful measuring in the beginning will save you heartache in end. I had just sharpened my chisels so this was a great project to try them out on.

Here are the feet before I carved them. I just used some simple pine 2x4s I had lying around.

Here is the glue-up of the foot and the rail.

 One of my joints fit perfectly. The other? Not so much but it still held together after the glue-up.

 

If this was something that I was going to use in my shop, I would have taken the time to really smooth those rounded edges but since this is something that I'm using in my cubicle to put my feet on, I took some liberties.

Here's my set-up. My keyboard and mouse are on a (very fancy) pull-out tray and now I can rest my feet on my standing rail all I want.