The subject pretty much covers it: my office has an old, cheap particle-board based desk, but no holes through which to feed all of my various electronic gizmo wires.
Drilling about a 1.5" hole in it is no problem, I’ve got an attachment for my ancient power drill that’ll do the job perfectly. BUT, I want something decent to finish it with, like some sort of giant polished aluminum grommet, so that it won’t just be a big ugly hole. Modern desks come with these sorts of things already, but I just need the doo-hickey. Perusing a Home Depot and asking several of its workers about this only left me cranky and irritated… so, my question is, what the hell would one call what I’m looking for, and where might I purchase one? Has anyone else here done this before? I’d like to think that I’m not re-inventing the wheel here, surely other people have gotten disgusted with having dozens of wires hanging off the front of their desk, and elected to take swift and decisive action…
The desk has some sort of veneer glued over particle board? How dense is the board? It might be possible to round off the edges of your hole with a router, and then paint to match the desk, unless the desk uses a wood grain veneer. In that case, you pretty much have to have a grommet. I don’t know about aluminum, but I know I have seen plastic ones for this purpose. If the folks at Home Depot can’t help you out, try an office furniture store. Also, search on Google.
I know exactly what you’re looking for; the ones I always see are black plastic. I think you will have luck at an office furniture supply place. Better find the grommet first, then cut the hole to fit it.
If the grommet search proves fruitless, here’s an easy back-up idea. Any good electrical supply place (like Home Depot) carries a selection of metal and plastic rectangulat plates that fit wall light switch recepticles and such. Use one of them to dress your ugly hole.
One such design has a big hole in the center (about 1" - 1.5" diam.); some metal ones even have a plastic grommet lining the inside edge.
If you need a bigger hole, get a plate used to cover the big rocker-style designer light switches. They have rectangular holes (with rounded corners) that measure about 1" x 2.5". That should be big enough.
It looks like Cheesesteak nailed it… for some reason it hadn’t occurred to me to try office-supply type stores.
I’ll definitely purchase the grommet first, and then drill my hole. I’ve got a wide assortment of such drill bits, so it shouldn’t be a problem, although I’m slightly worried about what effect this will have on the cheap wood veneer… oh well, it’s someone else’s desk, and they’ve already given me permission
If you can, clamp a piece of wood over the area and drill through both it and the desk surface. Also, don’t just drill straight through, when the bit pokes through the bottom side, drill up so that the bottom surface does get a big divot taken out of it. This is the same as when drilling out a doorknob hole.
Here’s another trick for drilling a neat (big) hole in wood. You’ve probably got a hole-drilling set with interchangable sawtoothed “rings” or a set of wide flat bits with cutting prong-blades near the edges. This trick will work in either case because there is a central narrow cutting tip that centers the hole and drills deeper than the actual hole-cutting blades.
Start the hole on one side (the neat side, preferably). Drill deep enough for the central tip to fully penetrate the other side (making a little center hole) and to cut the (big) hole only partway down. Stop. Do not drill the big hole to the other side; it will be an ugly jagged mess. Go to the back side. Poke the central tip through the existing center (little) hole and finish the job.
(When you “break through” the ringholder gizmo might slam into the cutting surface, scratching it. That’s why I suggest finishing the job from the crappy side.)
