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Welcome to the Project FiveWood Build Log! |
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01.26.08:back to table of contents Things are moving slow and sure. I finished enough of the motherboard tray so that I could work out placement. I've still got to glue up the trim items and put the lacquer finish on it of course. |
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Here I'm just placing the trim items for reference. |
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I also began work on the bottom tray. This tray will have a wire path and air flow path below the 'false' bottom of the case. |
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I've just got things jumbled in here for fitting. Nothing glued. |
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If you're looking for Christmas and birthday gift ideas for me, I'd say that I never have enough clamps. |
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I started tracing out a back-slot panel, I am not sure why yet. |
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Here, I traced the back profile of the frame onto polystyrene, This lets me square up the back, clamp it down and then trace it. |
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Here's my reference for building the back panel. |
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A little razor action. |
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Here's the back panel blank I build. This has mahogany and walnut joined up. |
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A little glue and a little planing will make this work. |
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The trace out for the scroll saw. |
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Here's the trace out for the fan-mount panel for the top of the case. |
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and a little more razor action. |
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Here's a glimpse of the next mod. Just testing hardware right now. This is the guts of an old Dell. Runs well with OpenSUSE. |
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02.01.08:back to table of contents Okay, I've been jumping all over the place. I'm still on target to get this project completed by the end of February. It'll be a push, but I won't have to be a hasty push. Here's my plan for the top of the case. The top will have two panels. This will be the bottom-most panel. |
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This requires maple with holes. I couldn't find any maple with holes in it already, so I made my own. |
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I used the hole cutting bit to make the holes and here, I tried to use it to cut rings. Looks nice in this picture, but didn't turn out so well. |
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So, I ended up cutting these rings on the scroll saw. these are mahogany and I hope they look a little more towards the red side when they're lacquered. |
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As seen on TV, I want to have a walnut stripe down the center of this panel. These fit well and it will show once I level everything. |
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I also headed back over to the frame to start figuring out how to mount the motherboard. This WILL work somehow. |
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Here, the motherboard tray is 'pegged' into place. I should be able to mount the motherboard tray without glue. (That's a good thing) |
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And while I was at it, I decided to trim up the top panel on the band saw. While doing so, the brand new blade I installed went BOOM! |
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Here's a sight you don't want to see. That's my blood on the blade. When breaking, the blade must have whipped over and went into and back out of my ring finger. This happened so fast that I almost didn't know it happened. That was until I felt the pressure and saw this nice set of 14 mm lacerations on the end of my ring finger. |
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| Enhanced by a lot of drippy blood! |
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I would like to show you a picture of the lacerations, but I HAD to leave before I could take any pictures. Plus, my other hand was busy applying pressure to the wound. After a trip to the doctor and a half dozen stitches, I'm back to normal. Well, actually I've got this big dumb bandage on my finger and it is begging to get caught in some other piece of equipment. |
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I practice safety strictly in my shop. You just have to. Shit does happen. Safety glasses are a pain to keep up with, but so are seeing eye dogs. Gloves get in the way, but can be the difference between bad lacerations and accidental dismemberment. While this wound was certainly no life-changing injury, it did occur to me how close I may have come to losing a digit there. I love every digit on my hands. I play guitar and I play golf among many other things that require great digits. My first thought was to leave the band saw as is and make due with my other equipment for a while. So, I changed the blade on the band saw (I'm taking the other back) and finished trimming the top panel. I got it trimmed, but this friggin bandage sticks out like a sore ....thumb?! It is in the way. Anyway, I got right back on that horse.
Next time.
CC |
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02.07.08:back to table of contents Okay, while it may seem that I cut my finger and quit working. The truth is that I have made some progress on Project FiveWood, but I have been working on some shop related things that got in the way. I quickly built a cabinet/stand for my table saw so that I could better catch the saw dust it expels. This was necessary before I moved on with wood cutting in the shop.
Additionally, I have been working on parts of the FiveWood project that I will show later (surprise!) There are parts of this project that I will spring on you when they're closer to done. This will insure 2 things; 1) I can actually do these cools ideas I'm holding back on and 2) I can get that WOW impact I'm always looking for :)
Well, enough of that blah, blah, blah. I got a little hung up on the back panel. Things are coming along. |
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I've done more work to get the motherboard tray finished. This is the backside of the motherboard tray, what will be seen from outside the case. Here are things placed before gluing. |
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Here I've got it a little closer to complete. |
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Much work has gone into the bottom tray/panel of the case. Here you see the recessed bottom. |
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Here's the cover plate for the bottom panel/tray. We'll see what that recessed area is for later. |
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I threw things together for a mockup to get some inspiration. Instead I ended up saying, "what the hell was I thinking here" and so forth. Looks like I may be re-working some things. |
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I have moved the completion date up to February 25. This is earlier than my last prediction of March 15. Why? I don't know other than I want this rig into competition for March 1. I'm not real confident I can make that date. We'll see. |
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I've been real busy with this project. Again, you're not going to see everything I've been working on. I still plan to spring some things on you later. I went ahead and framed in that backside of the PSU port on the back panel. |
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I've rough framed this in using walnut which contrast well to the mahogany back panel. I'll fill in the cracks and sand it down next. |
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I've also put more work in to the top panel. This panel is made of maple with mahogany and walnut accents. |
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While I have had the 3.5" and 5.25" drive bays complete for a while, I have since decided to re-design them. As stated before, the precious design did not integrate well into the case frame.
Here are my CAD drawings for the new design. This is a new software package call Nap Kin 2.0. |
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As usual, I roughed out the design in scrap wood. Here I have marked up some spare pine to test the process and the concept to insure I'm not off track here. |
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Here is the pine after routing. The reason I do this is to be sure my process of guide routing the slots is sound and repeatable. What you see is one board that is both sides of the drive bays. |
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After routing the slots, I will cut the board down the center line so that I have the right and left sides of the drive bays. This insures that the slots will be perfectly aligned. I did this with the mock-up pine drive bay. I don't have the images of that, but you can guess it worked. |
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So ...I started the process again with a finely planed piece of maple. |
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Here I have 2 boards aligned and screwed down before marking so that nothing will move during the critical measurements and routing the slots. I use this fine piece of aluminum as a fence for the router. |
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Here the first couple of slots are cut. Things look rough now, but just wait and see what I end up with (I hope anyway). |
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Here, most of the slots are cut. |
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Now I have finished the slots and have trimmed the side panels to their working dimensions. |
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I put a couple of 5.25" drives in to make sure I get the spacing between side panels correct. |
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ditto for the 3.25" drives. |
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With all the parts of the drive bay assembly complete, I can start making it look good. I've cut a slot down the center of the biggest panel of the drive bay. |
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Now I can fit a nice strip of mahogany in this slot. I'll trim this out with ...WALNUT! I love walnut! |
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Here's an idea of where I'm going with this. This is as much as I've got to show of the drive bays. I have many little pieces of walnut cut to trim this out and I'll show that soon. |
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On another note, on my trip this week to collect more interesting wood for this and other projects, I came across this beauty. It's cypress and while it may not show so well here, this is a nice white bordered purple grained piece. Smells good too! |
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02.23.08:back to table of contents Badda bing badda boom, badda badda or whateva! I guess it's safe to say I am going to miss my target date of 3.25.08. Of course, the shoemaker's elves may show up tonight while I am sleeping and finish this build for me. Id that happens, I'll have to post the results as these elves don't normally photograph their work. I picked up where I left off with the drive bays. Now it's time to add some BLING to the drive bay assembly. Here's the start of my first idea. It's a bad idea, so I scratch it. |
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I started with this idea next. This is the current plan, I may stick with it as the creative juices are flowing on this one right now. I do intend to have the knotted sections involved, |
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Here, I am adding some copper to the back of this walnut. This will give it some Pop! that's needed here. |
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After cutting the copper to size, I brushed it down for that..uh..brushed copper look. I am currently flattening this copper out so that I can tack it down well. Next, I will prep this drive bay with sanding primer before putting it together and then applying some polyurethane. |
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The next section I have started work on is the modular, dynamic, side-panels (nice name huh? Sounds slick, hope it works!). The idea is that the side panels are easily interchangeable and swapped out. Similar to any other case where the side panel can be removed. I am first building a generic frame that attaches and detaches from the side of the case. To this frame will be attached the door/hatch/plexiglass that allows access to the interior of the machines. I hope you can see the idea in these GIF animations below. If they are not working on this site, click HERE to see them. |
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Probably not so exciting here. I cut 4 runners for the generic frame assembly. Two are white oak and two are mahogany. |
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This frame will be attached to the case via hammered dowels. These dowels will be very tight to hold the frame snuggly without the need for glue (so I can remove it as necessary later on). |
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So I have the frame of the whatcha macallit side panel cut and drilled so that I can attach / detach it via dowels. [You're looking at the case frame as it lies on its side with the case front on the left side of the image] |
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I really have been quite busy on this project. It's not so apparent in the last few postings, but I have not been posting all the work I've been doing. I do have a couple of elements of this project I want to spring on you when they're done. I have been working hard on those as well.
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02.25.08:back to table of contents If you remember, I have this concept for a four-part dynamic panel. I will dub this the Barkley Panel as it is inspired by an idea a friend of mine had that's not too far from this concept. I'll give him his due as well as a 2.75% royalty from all net profits! Here's the Barkley Panel closed. |
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Here's the Barkley Panel opened. |
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First I wanted to convert my 3D design to something a little more sophisticated. I'd love to tell you why I use green paper, but it's really quite complicated (and boring).
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First I cut some nice slats. <---These 6 words represent about 90 minutes of work. I didn't take pictures of that work and won't bore you with all the details, but I just realized that I can blow past this amount of work with 6 simple words. I didn't want to write that I rip-split some boards, planed them down, cut some 2" x 42" slats, mitered them down and blah blah blah (well, I wrote it anyway) |
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Whenever it is necessary to do something 4 times exactly the same way, it requires a nice jig. I settled for a sufficient jig. I have these delrin squares and t-squares I made on the waterjet. They also work real well as framing jig parts. I took double-sided tape (a GREAT product) and secured them to a polystyrene sheet for this quick framing jig. |
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So, viola! Four nice square frames. Now I can make a wooden Windows Logo!! |
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I placed these on the panel frame that I made last time. Here I have not installed them, just placed for positioning. |
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| I then clamped them down so that I can start playing with the trim work. Here I have some rough-cut walnut (and a chunk of stainless steel) I am placing to figure out what I will do next. | |||
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and that's when I ran out of juice. I'll post more progress on the Barkley Panel soon. |
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02.28.08:back to table of contents Just a little more progress. This panel has me thinking so I want to get it knocked out soon before I blow a fuse. I decided to route the strips with a dove-tail bit to get this nice groove. |
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This groove allows a nice strip of copper to fit in. I brushed this copper for a nice finish. Here, the copper is not secured to the walnut yet. This explains the rippling. |
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So I took all the parts I had and threw them together. Nothing is secured or even tacked down here, just laying stuff out to see how it ...lays..out. |
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03.07.08:back to table of contents Okay, I am back in the groove. I have been a little wrapped up in getting my workshop ready for some new equipment. I have made some progress though. Although I have mocked up the Barkley-panel's function in software, I just had to do it where I could make sure things would work. Here I have mocked it up in tiny scale. |
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You can't check things like this too many times. |
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This is what I'll settle on. I'll use GIANT nails hammered through holes made like so :) |
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The Barkley-panel alone is taking as much time as anything else to-date. I spent more time working on the trim work for each of the four panels. |
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This is close to what the final will look like (sans copper). |
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and back to the drive bays. This rather simple setup has occupied too much time as well. I'm starting to believe it's me that's the cause of all these delays. I have the drive-bay completely assembled with dowels and dove-tail groove-slides. Now it's ready for priming. |
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Here are the drive-bay parts after applying the sanding sealer. Now there will be more sanding and it's poly time! |
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as well as the trim work. |
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Here's the motherboard tray completed. from what it last looked like---> |
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On a sidebar, here's one of several new items adorning my shop. You can't do too much to handle sawdust. |
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back to the project at hand. Here's the next sub-project I have started on this project. The top-rails. |
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I am making this from light mahogany and yes, walnut! Here's the cut stock. |
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Here goes my foray into wood bending. This will probably result in wood breaking! I took a stand-in and bent it and traced it so I would have a guide for cutting the supports. |
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template |
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Again, I have to do a mock-up. It takes time, but it saves much more time. |
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Here's the mock-up glued down to some scrap pine as a test to see what kind of force the bent wood will be under. |
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Since this concept will work, I took the stock rails and cut dove-tail slots (for copper!!) |
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I marked the walnut using the template so I could get the angles right. |
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I clamped everything up and drilled holes for dowels. These will provide extra support for the heavy tensioned bend. |
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On to other things. There were portions of the top panel that just didn't have the quality that I desire. Plus, elements were conflicting with each other as well. Here I have cut a piece of polystyrene for a template to cut the next piece. I'll let the pictures explain the rest. |
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I used the planer to angle-cut this piece. This is done by putting the piece on top of an already-cut piece of angle-cut wood. I needed this so I can have some tapered stock for other detail pieces. |
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This is where I stopped. Lots more work to do on the pieces here just to catch up. |
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This project had an aggressive completion date of 02.25.08. Duh-umb! I'll be lucky to finish this one in April! The deal is that the FiveWood project has turned into about 10 sub-projects. The reason this project has gotten scattered like this results from the elements that depend on each other so that the whole can come together. I imagine that it will all come together at once. I just hope I am there when it happens!
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to-do list:
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thanks for looking. CC |
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