Sliding Drawer for Musical Keyboard
My new year's resolution for 2021 was to learn how to compose music. To that end I dug out my old keyboard from 1988[a], which, surprisingly, worked very well. I kitted it out with an ESI MIDIMATE eX[b] MIDI-to-USB, downloaded LMMS[c], and was on my way.
The only annoying thing was that the keyboard stand was too short, and keeping the keyboard on the stand meant it used up the available floorspace under my standing desk.
So I set out to get a sliding drawer for it. After searching for off-the-shelf solutions for a while and only ending up on forum threads that vaguely described DIY solutions I realized I had to build one myself. This is what I came up with:
The drawer surface is attached to two drawer sliders, which in turn are attached to four console brackets. Finally it is all attached to the bottom of the desk surface.
What you need is this:
A drawer surface: I used an old bookshelf and cut off a 96cm x 30cm x 1.5cm section. It's particle board with a black veneer.
Drawer sliders: I used these from Clas Ohlson[d]. It seems like you can get them from Home Depot as Everbilt 16in drawer slide[e]. I used the 40cm / 16in version. Make sure you get the right set of sliders so that the drawer can slide as far out as you need it to.
Console brackets: I used four Dolle Herakles 165mm x 190mm[f] brackets, which you can also find at Home Depot[g]. It gives me 17cm of clearance from the top of the drawer surface to the bottom of the desk surface. If that's not enough you can get bigger brackets - Dolle has up to 190mm x 240mm (9.4in x 7.5in) Herakles brackets. Thanks to the arms having an even thickness at the ends you can also flip these around so that the horizontal arm goes in over the drawer surface to conserve horizontal space when mounting.
Screws: I used 3.5mm x 16mm wood screws[h] to fix the brackets to the desk, and M3x10[i] screws with lock nuts to attach the sliders to the brackets. Finally, to attach the drawer surface to the sliders I used some old screws I had in my toolbox - I think they might be 4mm x 30mm drywall screws.
If you choose not to use Dolle Herakles console brackets, to take note of the following:
The bracket should have holes in the "up" direction close to the vertical arm. This is because we'll hang the sliders from the vertical arm, and if you attach the horizontal arm too far from where the weight of the drawer hangs you'll only create a lever to break off chunks of your desk.
The bracket should have holes in the "side" direction far from the horizontal arm. This is because we'll hang the sliders here, and any extension of the vertical arm beyond the attachment point is just wasted.
Here's the final result.
Update 2025-07-29: How has it been? Has it aged well?
Overall it has worked really well. It has survived four years and one toddler (37 lbs) who likes to hang from it. (If I had a heavy keyboard I'd consider not just screwing it in, but super-gluing it as well.)
One thing I would do different would probably be the length of the rails. The original slid out far, so far that it started to flex if you were to hit the keys real hard (toddler provided this test), so I ended up putting screws through the rails to limit how far it could extend. Without those it would also put me so far away from the desk that it was hard to reach the keyboard and mouse, something which I still need to do even with a little programmable keyboard.
Other things are purely practical: I'd pay someone to cut the shelf, or use one of those machines where you're guaranteed to get a 90 degree cut (not just across but depth-wise, too), and not think "I'll just eyeball this with my saw". The shelf closes ok, but the right end is about 5mm away from being able to close and lock. Can be solved with some trimming and spacers but that's for another day.
Actually this is a point I should make - make sure the shelf and the rails really form a flat rectangle when they're extended (imagine one of the rails pointing up, or outwards - you can't close the shelf), a few millimeters off where they attach translate to a centimeter or worse at the ends.