Open Air

So the columns, the panels and the base frame are done. I needed something in the middle of the base though, and since these were scraps the frame was an arbitrary thickness, something like .584547666832243 inches I think. Roughly. Regardless, there is no sheet material known to man that thickness, whatever it is.

I had some 3/16 luan around, which would do fine once I put some support under it. New workbench tool, for those times when you need perfectly flat: 1/4" thick pane of tempered glass, complete with rounded sanded edges. I bought an old stereo cabinet (circa 1986) off of Craigslist for $5, took out this top piece and the door pane (twice that long) and threw the rest away.

Used the frame to mark the luan and got a press fit. Not bad on the first try.

Once it was in place I cut some more oak strips to the thickness I needed to bring the luan flush with the top edge of the base frame (or so I thought) and glued them into a rabbet I cut around the inside.

OOPS! Yes, again. Turns out they were a hair too thin and the luan sat 1/16 or so below the edge of the frame. Yay, fix it time again. I had a roll of self-adhesive oak veneer banding in one of my drawers from a previous project so I got to use a tool seldom used in modding:

I cut strips of the banding for each support I had made and glued them in place with the iron, then put the luan back. Perfect fit!

I don't have any clamps big enough for that job so I used a gravity clamp (also known as putting something heavy on it).

So the base is done. I also got the top done, in a more traditional method. When I made the four frame pieces I cut a groove on the inside for the luan and glued it all in place at once. Beveled the top and bottom edges plus the corners so it matched the base frame:

Top done. Almost. I'd been trying to figure out how to attach the top to the box in the most attractive way. I didn't want any fasteners breaking up the look of the wood. Magnets to the rescue again. Bigger ones.

Drilled a flat-bottom hole in each corner of the underside of the top and another in the top of each column and glued some 1/2" magnets in place. Wow, it worked better than I could have thought. I could probably toss the lid onto it from five feet away and it would end up perfectly in place. I can pick up the whole box holding just the edges of the top. :D

And here it all is together (minus the panel I'm waiting for the acrylic to fix, pay no attention to that please).

Coming together!! I have a new CPU cooler on order, my Thor's Hammer is very cool not pretty enough for this since it will be wide out in the open. Also ordered some individually-sleeved power extensions for the motherboard and VGA power (since they will also be wide out in the open) and some black 90-degree SATA cables.

Still have to cut the front panel for the DVD and the rear panel for the PSU, cut the hole in the top for air flow and power cords, mount the motherboard standoffs, sand and stain, and build the expansion card support and DVD cover.

Don't think my Tuesday deadline is gonna happen, but it's coming along.

Thanks for watching!

Lol, I know how that feels bud. Great work regardless!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blueonblack

So there's that mistake fixed. Whew. Too bad I screwed up the panel while I was cutting it down to its new width and had to order another piece of acrylic since that was my LAST ONE. Yes. I screwed up while repairing a screwup.

<sigh>

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I don't have enough fingers to count how many times I've done THAT. I've come to believe that the true and best way to gauge skill isn't how well you do something. It's how well you recover from your mistakes. And you, sir, recovered beautifully :up: Nice looking case so far!!

it's coming along nicely!

Looking good.. and that wasn't a mistake.. it was part of the design stage. :D

A little progress tonight. Got the breather/wiring hole cut and sanded on the top and the holes drilled for the motherboard standoffs.

Got the cover for the DVD drive cut, rounded and sanded.

And I threw together a quick and (literally) dirty hard drive rack out of scrap acrylic.

My cables and new CPU cooler arrived today and my acrylic is due tomorrow. Hopefully tomorrow will see me mixing stain to put a finish on the wood.

Looking excellent blue. :up:

Ok, I finally finished Mass Effect 3. Immediately started ME1 again, but that's a lot less pressing and gives me some time to work on this project. :)

I got the finish put on, three coats of Golden Oak Polyshades and three coats of satin wipe-on poly. It turned out a little lighter than I wanted but the finish is perfect, has that low-gloss hand-rubbed look I was looking for. No pics because I couldn't get it to turn out with the light in my shop. Final pics shouls show it.

It took me a while to figure out how to mount the ODD, since the case is shallow enough that it woud overlap the PSU on one corner, but I got it again with scraps...

After getting that in place I marked and cut the front acrylic panel for the ODD tray and button and mounted the cover with magnets.

You can see I painted the inside of my acrylic black, as I didn't want to see the inside. It looked very nice with the smoked acrylic before, but I think it looks better black,

All of the acrylic is cut and painted, the drive cover is on, the finish is done, all of the parts are here. All that's left is to build the expansion card retention bracket. Another couple hours in the shop and this should be done!

Woo progress!

Finally got some time to put some more work into this. Today I got the last of the wood cut!

First off, I'm going to need a bracket of some kind to secure the expansion cards. Today's video cards are just too big to let them flop around. Besides, they look ugly that way. :)

Two more pieces of oak, corners trimmed and sanded:

These will be mounted to the top at the rear with screws. I drilled a pilot hole and a very neat counterbore for the screw heads, just before realizing that said counterbore serves no purpose whatsoever since the screw heads will be on the underside of the lid.

I'll be cutting and polishing a piece of acrylic to run across the top of these posts in the back for card mounting. To make it more versatile, I wanted to be able to remove this acrylic piece as needed without worrying about the holes in the oak getting worn out and the screws stripping them out, so I used threaded brass inserts, 6-32 machine thread:

One more piece, the button for the DVD drive, cut off the end of a 3/8" oak dowel and rounded.

Now to put a finish on these last pieces and get started on that acrylic bracket.