What with all the Star Citizen excitement going on I’ve been pondering my desk situation.

No no, stay with me. The computer desk I’ve got I’ve had for ~13 years now. When I moved in to my first place I mentioned to a friend that I’d need a desk, and he told me he knew a guy that might be able to help. He led me to a side store I’d never been to because it just sold knick knacks and crap. Well it turned out that what their business really was was buying damaged goods off trucks. In the front store section there was crap… in the smallish warehouse out back was mildly damaged furniture. I got a very basic, but very large, 9’ wide and 8’ deep L-shaped desk with a scrape on one side. It’s an amazing workbench and has been great, but of course, it’s also huge. When we moved into the new house I split it in two and now have half in the basement as a separate workbench.

And now I’m thinking I might save the current desk section as another workbench in my office, with a new, smaller, nicer desk for my setup. Why?To accommodate my joystick. As it is, all I have is a huge flat surface. And that’s ok, really, but it’s not conveniently ideal. I have to drag down my joystick (an X52 Pro, so huge in its own right), plug it in, wire it up, etc., and then of course at the end of the gaming session that monstrosity is in my way so I need to take it down, unwire it, blah blah. Similar difficulties with my huge racing wheel crop up but that’s harder to deal with anyway.

So here’s my idea. A new, smaller desk. In the front underneath, I mount two rails, sort of like drawer rails or similar. Attached to that are two well-reinforced wooden/metal platforms onto which I can mount the joystick. When I’m done, I can shove them to the side and use it normally. 

A handful of issues come to mind. First, whatever this rail is it’ll have to be strong enough to handle some vigorous joysticking (ha ha! Double entendre.). Two, the rails are going to have to lock in place. I don’t need to be in the middle of a critical mission only to find my throttle sliding away from me. Three, the desk chair will need to roll freely. I’ve seen people do modifications to the armrests of the chair to mount joysticks too, mostly for the more hardcore sim guys. But I need a workspace too, so I intend to have this new desk on one side for personal computer use and gaming, and then be able to swivel around and roll over to the old desk which is now a workspace for my office laptop and paperwork and the like. Four, the desk will need to be able to handle a multi-monitor mount. That’d be long-term but it’s been on my mind for a while agian too. 

I’ll need to poke around online and see what kind of rail setups I can get that might work for this. And what kind of desks I can get to which to mount them. On the latter front, lots of places (Ikea being one I’ve done this with before) sells just legs, so if it really comes down to it I could cut my own desk and work on it. 

Something to ponder.