PROJECT: Lobo

[Waynio]

The silhouette effect with the wolf is awesome mate, and wow, being able to do your mod while working how awesome is that , look forward to seeing this get completed, subscribed & +rep .

[raistnox]

absolutely love your work man + rep and subbed

[slaveofconvention]

TY again all for comments - don't worry - this isn't dead - just had a stupid couple weeks at work - hoping to get some paint (internal black and external primer) on tomorrow and this weekend make a start on the dreaded front panel which I'm slowly getting ideas about...

[slaveofconvention]

My work shift location and times changed last weekend, just for the one weekend so I didn't get my usual stack of stuff done unfortunately. I tried taking parts in to work to paint (I couldn't do the cutting etc as it was a clean site so I couldn't make a mess). The problem was, every time I tried to paint anything, the temperature dropped like a stone and everything got covered in condensation. Water + fresh/wet paint = fubar.

I got as far as masking up and priming the top and bottom case panels...

Which went wonderfully well - then I put on the black...

I also primed and painted the metal part of the iCage but you can see from this pic that the black really didn't take because of the temperature/moisture and it was a real pain in the ass to try to get paint on the insides too...

Which is about when I gave up trying to paint at all, and accepted that a little more disassembly was going to be called for. So this is what you get when you remove the rivets from an iCage...

And you can really see there what I meant about not being able to get the paint on the inside parts despite trying to aim through the holes in the iCage. While I had the drill out, I also decided to strip down the case chassis as I figured that'd be just as much of a pain to paint in one piece...

And that's what you get when you REALLY take a case apart - little bit more than thumbscrew removal there eh?

I managed to pick up a load of mesh from various sources recently - this is the piece that has my creative juices flowing...

Most speakers have a fabric mesh on the front, but this speaker actually has a metal one - wish I could have found the other half of the pair but I could only find one. This should give you a better idea of how fine that mesh actually is - enter car-keys...

And that, is the grand total of everything I managed to get done in five 12 hour shifts - impressive huh?

Anyway - the weather has been nice the last couple of days so I thought I'd give the painting another shot. Here's my impromptu painting booth - the garden shed with everything pulled out and left lying around in the garden...

First thing I had to do is rub down the moisture damaged paint on the inside of the side panels - especially as I had to try to repair some damage caused when the panels clashed together during transit - so we have our panels with some really heavy sanding...

Then I applied a coat of the gloss black...

And a second coat...

Which is when it became clear the damage wasn't totally hidden - I then sanded again - every time you do that, the damage becomes less as the paint gradually fills the indentation - it's not ideal or perfect but this is the INSIDE of the panel which you'll never really see so while good enough isn't usually good enough for me, this time it is - you'd have to know where it is to see it at all and then hold it at just the right angle to make it catch the light.

Between a worklight and a halogen heater, combined with the semi-enclosed nature of the shed, I didn't have the same condensation worries I had at work, so I worked into the night - till about 1.30am to be precise. I'm not that bad a workaholic - I had to be up till 2am to pick the wife up from work.

And the panels ended up looking like this after the final coat of black...

Before painting, you have to clean things thoroughly, and just as important, dry them properly - here's my quick n easy drying station lol

Yup - the floor - least nothing will fall off of it :p

I also got a good coat of primer onto most of the loose parts - they're going to have to be turned and flipped and re-primed to get it all perfect but that's not going to be a problem with the shed and heater available.

... and that's about as far as I got, which isn't bad really - definitely making progress.
At work now, and as the weather is looking a little like this...

I'm hoping I'll get a lot more done this weekend so there may well be another update tonight - stay tuned....

EDIT: Ok, so I should have been modding and I started playing with a graphic - I spotted a thread about custom headers for Project Logs - so I spent about 2 hours and made myself one.... Tadaaaaa

Not too shabby huh?

[msmrx57]

Looking good. Nice header as welll.

[x88x]

Looking nice. I love the header. One thing I would caution you about painting the case while it's taken apart; make sure you go lite on any contact areas. I made that mistake, and ended up having to sand down a lot of paint layers in certain areas, and I still got a fair amount of chipping when I got it all back together.

[slaveofconvention]

Looking nice. I love the header. One thing I would caution you about painting the case while it's taken apart; make sure you go lite on any contact areas. I made that mistake, and ended up having to sand down a lot of paint layers in certain areas, and I still got a fair amount of chipping when I got it all back together.

Yeah, thanks. As it happens, I'm being careful with that anyway. Last case I painted, I couldnt get the buttons or LEDs back into the front panel - that made me acutely aware of how thick paint can get if you aren't careful!

[raistnox]

i ran into the same problem when reassembling my mouse not to long ago as well funny how paint can get so thick and how tight the tolerances are on some of these things

[slaveofconvention]

This part of the painting isn't really a problem. The aerosol paint I'm using for the priming and the interior black goes on in very thin layers. The real problem, or potential for problems will come when I come to put the metallic colour on the outer panels. Even then, the colour isn't the problem - I plan to use a high-quality automotive clearcoat to get a really deep shine and it's the lacquer which can get seriously thick, seriously quickly, especially as I have a habit of managing to screw it up a couple of times before I get it right so I usually end up with 4 or 5 coats... Where possible I plan to sand the edges back a little to make a little more room for clearance so hopefully, it won't be too much of an issue

[chaksq]

Very cool project! Looks real cool. I had an idea for the moon issue, not sure how well it will work but maybe you could somehow add stars to give it more of a night sky feel.