To build this I cut out the sides and top from a piece of thin plywood, glued them together (with some additional structural support), then filled in various holes and defects with wood filler. The final step was to sand down the filler and spray paint the whole thing.
WARNING: More detail than you asked for ahead!
I started with some 3/16" thick plywood and laid out the sides (the back-to-back trapezoids on the left) and the top with box joints (on the right). The top is a little wider than the DT/DN, and the box joints extend out an additional 3/16" (the thickness of the plywood). These 2 plywood pieces are each 1’ square. [Woodworking is all imperial units in the USA, you will have to convert if you live anywhere else…]
I then cut out the sides and top, and 2 additional triangle pieces I used for extra structural support. The box joints/tabs can be cut out with a coping saw, but I have a chisel so I used that. They don’t have to be perfect because everything gets filled and painted later. For the sides, I estimated the angle I wanted, and made sure the front part (the smallest side) was tall enough to clear the DT/DN. In mine, it just clears the case, but does not clear the knobs. If I were to do it again I would make it taller to clear the knobs at the front. You will need to do some trigonometry to get the side length correct.
Notice only the top joints are cut. I then line up the top with each side and mark out where to cut the joints on the side. This compensates for any error in the position of the top joints. Once the top and sides fit together, I glue them together and clamp them (this can be tricky with only 3 sides, so either glue one side at a time being careful with the angles or create a temporary 4th side to keep the bottom spaced apart the right distance during clamping). If you don’t have clamps you can use big rubber bands (but then you need to have the temporary 4th side). In the gluing it’s important to make sure that the bottom stays spaced apart enough to fit your DT/DN underneath!
After the glue dried there were still some ugly gaps at the joints (and the thin plywood tears easily leaving more defects), so I filled the gaps and defects with wood filler. After that dried I sanded down all those areas to end up with this:
Here is where the triangular support pieces go, to stiffen the sides (also glued in):
Since the plywood is cheap, and tears easily, it’s not really good enough to use as a “bare wood” look, so I painted it black. Before painting I drilled 4 holes for the VESA mounting screws (M4 screws, 14mm). I centered these, but in retrospect I would probably prefer to shift them slightly towards the back because the DT currently tilts forward a little and gets in the way of manipulating the DN knobs. Not a big deal though, it just means I need to pull the DN slightly forward to play comfortably.
There are other ways to do this of course. It might be easier to glue a block between the top and each side instead of using the box joints (but then beware of space constraints underneath). But I was comfortable with this process.
BOM: 3/16" x 1’ x 2’ plywood, wood filler, glue, 4x M4x14mm screws, black spray paint, sandpaper
Tools: saw, chisel, clamps, drill
Time: 2-3 hours actual work time + several hours thinking about it + 1 overnight for glue drying + 1 overnight for paint drying
thanks
