#HTE

A Desk Designed with a Transparent Top for Crafters

For me, a desk is where the computer lives, and a workbench is a separate piece of furniture on which I make medium-sized, hard-edged objects primarily out of wood. For people producing smaller and softer craft objects, however, the desk and workbench are one and the same. I came across this design for the EZ View Desk 2.0, which targets the latter category of users, and was interested to see how different its design is from what I think of as a workbench.

First off the top is transparent, which I think is freaking amazing. My benchtop is perforated by holes (think Festool’s MFT) to accept clamps, and even if it wasn’t, any transparent top would quickly get scratched into opacity by the metal tools I use. But I would love to be able to store this many tools close at hand and be able to see exactly where they all were.

Drawers beneath the top level offer yet more storage, and in the center is a pull-out platform to store a cutting device made by the same manufacturer as the desk.

What appear to be mere cabinet doors from the outside, open to reveal shallow shelves inside the doors on which yet more items can be stored.

Behind the right-side door is yet another drawer, another pull-out platform with full-extension drawer slides, and an open compartment beneath.

The left-side door, however, has no open space behind it. That’s because….

…the space behind it is meant to be occupied by a series of removable containers.

While that design choice greatly limits where you can place the desk, I cannot deny the utility of hauling a bin of materials over to your project, to decide which one to select.

This desk has actually been discontinued; the manufacturer, a company called The Original ScrapBox, states they are working on an upgraded design. I’ll be curious to see what they come up with for 3.0.

By the bye, the same company manufactures a much larger crafts storage unit, the WorkBox, which we looked at here.