Keyboard Riser

After rearranging our computer desk and getting rid of the keyboard drawer, I discovered that the feet on the keyboard that make it tilt towards you were broken. The keyboard itself slants backwards, so with the keyboard on the desk rather than under it, it’s really hard to type. To solve the problem I made a quick and dirty keyboard riser.

Looking around my shop I found some scrap 3/8″ plywood and a 3/4″ by 1″ stick of pine to make the riser. I didn’t want to be bumping into the front edge, so I needed to cut the underside of the plywood at an angle so that it would all but disappear under the keyboard. To roughly figure out the angle, I cut out an 8″ by 18″ piece out of the plywood and put it on top of the 1″ x 3/4″ stick. Then using the protractor I measured the angle perpendicular to the bench top which was about 97º This meant I had to set the table saw blade to 7º.

I don’t have a sled for cutting panels on my table saw, so to try and cut the plywood safely, I clamped it to a chunk of 2×6. The piece I’m cutting in the picture isn’t the final piece, it’s my “test” piece — I got the angle wrong and had use another piece of plywood for the finished product.

Leaving the table saw set at the same angle, I cut the pine stick so it would rest flat on the table. I only needed a piece 18″ long so I stopped cutting before I reached the end of the stick. 

After a good sanding with 80 grit and 100 grit paper, I glued the foot to the bottom of the riser and held it in place with a few pins from my pin nailer. Since I didn’t have to wait for the glue to dry to remove clamps, I wiped off all the excess and spray painted the riser flat white outside. I would have preferred flat black, but I didn’t any in my paint cabinet. After coating it lightly about six or seven times I brought it inside to dry and was able to use it the next day.