That was an excellent read! Thanks for that!

Fully agree that we should be allowed to mod any of our technology to put on anything we want. My point was that Apple is being singled out for it when almost every company in the modern era does similar things.

Windows is a proprietary OS, but it is designed to be licensed and run on any compatible hardware irregardless of who the hardware manufacturer is. You can even install it on an Apple computer. Apple’s OSes are only designed to run on Apple hardware. And then is given away with that hardware. They do not license it out for anyone to run on just any hardware.

If you are using wood food skewers, they are probably bamboo. While not a wood, bamboo is actually really hard. On the Janka hardness scale it rates well above food safe, non-exotic, hardwoods like oak and maple.

Bamboo skewers are cheap, food safe, and available at almost any grocery store. They are one of my go to cleaning tools.

Definitely don’t go with any wood from a piece of furniture or a random piece of wood if you are worried about ingesting tiny bits of the wood. Some species of wood can cause real issues for people due to their oils and some more exotic lumbers are actually toxic. Wood used in furniture? You have no idea what that was finished with or what kind of glue was used.

Having owned and used both iphones and android phones, l definitely see all of the issues presented in the lawsuit as valid. I just don’t understand how these charges are being brought up under antitrust laws.

It’s not exactly like the microsoft antitrust suit from 2000ish, iOS is a proprietary operating system on a proprietary piece of hardware. Nintendo isn’t being hit with suits for not allowing me to play playstation games on my switch.

If the government really sees an issue with this they should focus on creating a set of interoperability mandates much like the EU did.

Definitely go with pocket holes over dowels. Speaking from personal experience dowels are very hard to line up especially with a hand drill instead of a drill press.

I don’t know what your expectations for the desktop are, but with the tools you have at hand right now a rustic or farmhouse style desk would be the most reasonable expectation. Prepare to put in a lot of work and have small gaps between each board and a non-flat face.

To create a top that is perfectly flat and has no gaps is virtually impossible with the tools at your disposal.

If you truly want to build the desk yourself with the tools you have AND you need it to be perfectly flat you could do your absolute best to build it flat and tight and then place a glass top over the wood. Then you can admire working over something you built yourself and if you acquire the tools and skill in the future to make the top flat and fill the gaps you can refinish the wood and ditch the glass.

You may want to look into community woodshops or tool shares in your area. If available they will usually require you take a couple safety classes with their teachers so you know how to use all of the equipment and then a monthly fee for access to the tools and bench time.

In a couple other responses you mentioned not having the tools for joinery. I think it may be beneficial if you tell us what tools you do have access to.

PVA is going to be one of the strongest wood adhesives you can find aside from construction adhesive and I wouldn’t trust any furniture only held together with glue.

Typically you are going to use the glue in conjunction with either joinery or metal fasteners.