Huge break and I come back with this, I know it's not related to the green but its 100% geek.  I am working on my welding skills before attempting to make the sawmill, I have a plan in my head and partially on paper but it will need to be really solid as a thrown or snapped sawmill blade could easily be fatal.  I also have the problem that we have recently moved house which is why I have not updated for ages, I had to upgrade the desk as we are living in a "nice" house now and the desk looked like a piece of crap.

The old desk:

So on with the desk.  I have stripped my old desk down to basics again, done some needed upgrades and a ton of finishing.  I started out by taking the old seat off and cutting the mounting bars and armrests off, then making something smaller for the new seat.  I think it looks a lot tidier now.  I mounted the new seat and discovered that it was sitting further forward than the original seat so I had to extend the desk and make a new monitor mount.  The result is also a lot tidier than the original, even the seat looks like it was made to go there.

I have drilled a bunch of holes throughout the structure for running cables through and lightening the desk.  It has not lightened it as much as I would have liked but it has made the cables a lot tidier.  I also patched all the holes that made it lok untidy then file filed everythin so there were no sharp edges.

I bought some new springs that were far smaller than the original garage door springs I used, perhaps a bit too small as it gets a bit heavy just before it gets to the down position.  I will probably revise the spring system yet and perhaps look at some hydraulic rams or something, I need to find someone to advise me on such matters as I have no idea and imformation is hard to find on such a specific thing.

Once I was happy with the look and performance I wire brushed everything, sanded it, wiped it all down with solvent and painted it with 2 coats of primer and 3 topcoat matte black.

I waited a day and assembled everything and I am really happy with how it looks, although I still need to make a new desk top to replace the one I am using as it is really messy wood and looked so bad that i decided to paint it with everythng else rather than polish and varnish it as I originally intended.  I will buy some nice wood to replacet he desk top with and make the side table that wil hold the mouse cradle, ipod dock, speaker volume controls, USB hub, and a place to put coffee.  The side table is important because if you sit anything on the current desk and decide to get up, it flies into the window behind the desk.

I apologise for my lack of updates but things have been harder to get done now that I am back working full time again, I have 2 days a week to do stuff instead of the 5 that I used to have.  We have just got permission for having chickens at our new house so the next update will probably be when we put them in their new and slightly changed coop.

More Pictures of completed desk here
http://imgur.com/a/dMwCO

Cheers.