Mike's Last Build
- Thread starter sfsuphysics
- Start date
sfsuphysics
Supporting Member
Oh yeah, I pulled the trim off, still got it, it's easy enough to fire nails back into it to stick it back after I prime/paint it bright white again. Was considering replacing the window, something newer instead of the old single pane wood jobber that's there... but unfortunately the big box store only has them in stock in 12" multiples, and this one is 3.5x that in height didn't feel like waiting the month or so lead time to get it either... I'll just deal with the condensation as it happens, and I can always replace it after the fact anyways. No reason to do it before paint, because chances are I'll hit it with the dark blue paint and have to paint over it anyways, all the angles are cut properly anyways so I don't have "fit" it in.
Welding ain't gonna happen. Almost 100% leaning towards building it with wood. While I trust aluminum as far as strength, I don't know if I trust the fasteners much especially in the environment that we live in... zinc coated.. oh yeah that'll last long! With wood I trust the joinery, the glue, and screws I hide, rabbet joints, lap joints, mortise & tenon joints, basically a little bit of everything and it should be super sturdy and strong.
Welding ain't gonna happen. Almost 100% leaning towards building it with wood. While I trust aluminum as far as strength, I don't know if I trust the fasteners much especially in the environment that we live in... zinc coated.. oh yeah that'll last long! With wood I trust the joinery, the glue, and screws I hide, rabbet joints, lap joints, mortise & tenon joints, basically a little bit of everything and it should be super sturdy and strong.
rygh
Guest
I usually do wood also, because like you, it is what I know.
Although the wood at HD/Lowes seems like it gets worse every year ...
And warpage can cause damage down the road.
I ended up building structural 2x6's out of plywood for key supports instead of just buying boards.
But since I use a lot of epoxy, I would trust that over welds if I was doing it in metal.
Especially aluminum or other fun things to weld.
From 3M structural epoxy datasheet:
Although the wood at HD/Lowes seems like it gets worse every year ...
And warpage can cause damage down the road.
I ended up building structural 2x6's out of plywood for key supports instead of just buying boards.
But since I use a lot of epoxy, I would trust that over welds if I was doing it in metal.
Especially aluminum or other fun things to weld.
From 3M structural epoxy datasheet:
sfsuphysics
Supporting Member
Stand!
Well sorta
Picked it up from Petco, was on sale for $45, and then there was a $10 coupon, so for $35 I didn't have to deal with making a stand for my 40g breeder tank, that will be where anemones will be housed. It's powder coated (supposedly) steel, obviously very light weight as I can easily lift the whole thing with one arm. But again it's holding a 40g tank, so I'm not terribly worried about that.
So the stand is incredibly Ikea like, it uses 16 bolts and washers, and gives you an allen wrench to tighten. It's super simple, two rectangles are the legs, a rectangle goes between to tie them together, and two long pieces for the bottom. That said, simple design means easy to screw up. First the connector doesn't go on top of the "leg" portion, it goes between, so here's hoping those bolts don't shear! I figure a piece of plywood on top anyways should stiffen it all up ... hopefully. However reading the instructions it specifically says make sure the center is flush with the ends...
Now I'm just a physics teacher, but seeing daylight under my level tells me the center isn't flush with the ends. Now no matter the amount of banging I could not get it flush. About the only thing I could do is widen the bolt holes which would allow the bolts to move up, but I'm not putting that kind of effort in this stand, besides it probably will weaken it. That said, the plywood on top will fix things up, just need to shave down the ends of the plywood so everything lies flush, maybe 1/32 of an inch, who knows.
Next the bottom rails
Yup that's not flush either, it's flush on the inside just not the out, I figure I can flip the beams 180° and it'll be flush on the outside... although knowing this stand who knows.
Geee ya think!? For $35 I didn't expect much, it's 5 pieces plus some bolts and washers.
Overall though it's not horrible for $35. Due to the dimensions it's a squat stand for the tank that goes on it, so should be perfectly fine. Already scratched the top, I'll dab it with paint before putting plywood on top. Was thinking of just using magnets in plywood to hold the sides on for easy access. While there's virtually no racking protection except maybe the bolts, I could use metal screws and attach a piece of plywood to one side, then magnets on the other for easy removal to access the sump underneath.
Now the question is whether to do a peninsula style, in which case it becomes more of an entry way divider, I'll have to see if there's enough space to walk by once everything is setup. Or as a traditional against the wall tank, which makes much more room to walk by, but it makes the usable wall space shorter, so if I wanted to put a small couch there I couldn't. Again we'll have to see. I just put this together because I wanted to get it out of the garage, and wanted to mentally kind of put things together on what to do with it.
I will say though, the ease of putting this together made me think again about the aluminum stand. I'm really in no hurry at this point though, even if I had a stand up now I can't put the tank on it because I want to drill the back of the tank. I'll do some joinery with some scrap pieces to see how much work it'll be to get it all snug and tight fitting.
Well sorta
Picked it up from Petco, was on sale for $45, and then there was a $10 coupon, so for $35 I didn't have to deal with making a stand for my 40g breeder tank, that will be where anemones will be housed. It's powder coated (supposedly) steel, obviously very light weight as I can easily lift the whole thing with one arm. But again it's holding a 40g tank, so I'm not terribly worried about that.
So the stand is incredibly Ikea like, it uses 16 bolts and washers, and gives you an allen wrench to tighten. It's super simple, two rectangles are the legs, a rectangle goes between to tie them together, and two long pieces for the bottom. That said, simple design means easy to screw up. First the connector doesn't go on top of the "leg" portion, it goes between, so here's hoping those bolts don't shear! I figure a piece of plywood on top anyways should stiffen it all up ... hopefully. However reading the instructions it specifically says make sure the center is flush with the ends...
Now I'm just a physics teacher, but seeing daylight under my level tells me the center isn't flush with the ends. Now no matter the amount of banging I could not get it flush. About the only thing I could do is widen the bolt holes which would allow the bolts to move up, but I'm not putting that kind of effort in this stand, besides it probably will weaken it. That said, the plywood on top will fix things up, just need to shave down the ends of the plywood so everything lies flush, maybe 1/32 of an inch, who knows.
Next the bottom rails
Yup that's not flush either, it's flush on the inside just not the out, I figure I can flip the beams 180° and it'll be flush on the outside... although knowing this stand who knows.
Geee ya think!? For $35 I didn't expect much, it's 5 pieces plus some bolts and washers.
Overall though it's not horrible for $35. Due to the dimensions it's a squat stand for the tank that goes on it, so should be perfectly fine. Already scratched the top, I'll dab it with paint before putting plywood on top. Was thinking of just using magnets in plywood to hold the sides on for easy access. While there's virtually no racking protection except maybe the bolts, I could use metal screws and attach a piece of plywood to one side, then magnets on the other for easy removal to access the sump underneath.
Now the question is whether to do a peninsula style, in which case it becomes more of an entry way divider, I'll have to see if there's enough space to walk by once everything is setup. Or as a traditional against the wall tank, which makes much more room to walk by, but it makes the usable wall space shorter, so if I wanted to put a small couch there I couldn't. Again we'll have to see. I just put this together because I wanted to get it out of the garage, and wanted to mentally kind of put things together on what to do with it.
I will say though, the ease of putting this together made me think again about the aluminum stand. I'm really in no hurry at this point though, even if I had a stand up now I can't put the tank on it because I want to drill the back of the tank. I'll do some joinery with some scrap pieces to see how much work it'll be to get it all snug and tight fitting.
sfsuphysics
Supporting Member
It could be removed.. permanently, seriously each of the 4 touching points is literally just tacked on with a weld, zero finishing of the weld (I think it's more decorative than structural), you can see air between the cross and the steel tube.
rygh
Guest
Looks like you have something to practice welding on, for when you make your real stand.
Earthquake sheer forces look like a big issue with that stand. So at least permanently connect a few side panels.
A tank that size is a bit small for peninsula setup I would think.
You usually want extra space between front and rockwork, and now "front" is on both sides.
Earthquake sheer forces look like a big issue with that stand. So at least permanently connect a few side panels.
A tank that size is a bit small for peninsula setup I would think.
You usually want extra space between front and rockwork, and now "front" is on both sides.
sfsuphysics
Supporting Member
Well the 40 breeder that's going on there is going to be anemones and softies with clownfish and whatever cheap fish I can toss in it (damsels, etc), not looking for it to be a super show tank. Only real issue I see with a peninsula look is no stacking of rock against a wall, and water movement (and overflow) come from the back, which would be the case anyways. Basically something for my kid to look at. Since he looks at the clowns in the 300g tub and sees them as "his" fish, where as the tangs and foxface are much larger, hence "daddy fish"... and allows me to keep my anemones without putting the little bastards in a tank I care about
Coral reefer
Past President
Yeah, f having anemones in a tank you care about. They don't play by my rules...
sfsuphysics
Supporting Member
So it's been 10 days since an update.
Update is not much happened, 2 weekends ago went to Santa Rosa to some kid's play/museum and what normally is a trip that is just over an hour, well there's some construction on 101 up there (making lanes wider or something?) and that turned that trip into nearly 3 hours, and ditto on the way back and to put that into perspective that's just about a trip to LA worth of driving in one day, needless to say I wasn't feeling like doing much that day, and just a bit more than nothing on Sunday. Last weekend took the kid camping up at Russian River, now if you don't know that's in the same direction as Santa Rosa.... yeah that sucked, leaving San Francisco was farking horrible even took nearly an hour to get to the GG bridge, the highway traffic was not as bad as Google maps rerouted me through Petaluma city streets to save 20 minutes (so it said), so that weekend was a no-go for work. Unfortunately came back and heard a family member passed away, and that funeral service was this weekend over in Concord, so yeah practically lost another weekend.
I did however do some light sanding various things, not picture worth, I tied the other end of the sink's plumbing into the main plumbing. So I did get some stuff done.
My experiments with wood did not give me terribly happy results in that it took a lot of work to do a little bit of cutting with my router, and one little goof up ruined a piece, these were just scrap pieces as I wanted to get a feel for how much sawdust I'd end up making Decided to think about the 8020 stand again, priced out stuff, around $300 for the alumnium, plus another $80 for shipping *UGH*, but whatever I can eat that cost if I don't have actually build it... then I added in all the fasteners and that bumped the price another $100... *SMH*. I might do a slight redesign of the stand I want too... which goes to the next point.
OVERFLOW!
So the tank has the "standard" Marineland Cornerflo (megaflo?) who knows type of overflows in each corner. In a nut shell I'm not a huge fan of these at all, like to the point of actually hating them. Each corner is ground to top plastic overflow, quarter circle foot print. But the circle has a radius of about 8" (tank still has cardboard around it so can't get exact measurements), which for me sucks, because I want a side to be viewable and even if I cover up the outside with something black, that takes my 36" wide tank and turns it into a 28" wide tank. Also each megaflow has 2 - 1" holes drilled in the bottom. 2 doesn't allow for many options as far as overflow piping, bean animal needs 3, as does most "quiet" ones (herbie, flooded stand pipe, etc) and the reason it needs 3 is the emergency, plus 1" hole? Dafuq! Ok so all of that I could possibly deal with in some way. But the real kick in the nuts is the overflows themselves, the teeth area where stuff drains is not the entire perimeter of the overflow, it's a very small part of it actually and actually has a channel inside the overflow plastic to pull water from about halfway down... now I'm not sure if it's just me, but I thought the point of a overflow box was to skim the surface NOT just allow water to come from the tank.
So my solution was quite simple, I was going to get a new overflow. Actually one from Modular Marine, who makes some really nice super low profile similar in function to the Synergy ones, considerably cheaper for similar size but more importantly they have a range of sizes you can get. Then when the good members of BAR help me move my tank, we'll flip it on it's front, I can drill the back and people can watch in awe at my marvelous hole drilling skills or cringe in agony if Marineland decided to put a piece of tempered glass on the back for some reason and it shatters into a million bits. However the store decided to take the month off, vacation or whatever, won't be open until Sept 12th. So if I want to go this route... I need to wait until after MACNA. before tank even moves. So yeah... POOP! Part of me wants to say screw it and just use the stupid Cornerflo and deal with it... but the other part of me is saying wait, because you need someone to flip the tank on the front because you won't be able to drill a vertical hole, and you're going to hate those overflows if you use them. So I'm thinking no tank setup until after MACNA...
And school started last week, which isn't a huge deal time wise, but it is always stressful as I'm looking out for my classes to get cancelled for low enrollment, which is a HUGE hunk of money out of my pocket. One already was cancelled a week before the semester started, I did get a replacement class but that one may be cancelled too so I'm kind of biting my nails to see what happens in the first couple weeks. But more importantly waiting on knowing before I commit to spending "lots" of money on a stand, or very little. In the mean time I can do all the little things... hopefully, my wife still expects me to look after the kid when she does housework and the like... like hello! tank important!
Update is not much happened, 2 weekends ago went to Santa Rosa to some kid's play/museum and what normally is a trip that is just over an hour, well there's some construction on 101 up there (making lanes wider or something?) and that turned that trip into nearly 3 hours, and ditto on the way back and to put that into perspective that's just about a trip to LA worth of driving in one day, needless to say I wasn't feeling like doing much that day, and just a bit more than nothing on Sunday. Last weekend took the kid camping up at Russian River, now if you don't know that's in the same direction as Santa Rosa.... yeah that sucked, leaving San Francisco was farking horrible even took nearly an hour to get to the GG bridge, the highway traffic was not as bad as Google maps rerouted me through Petaluma city streets to save 20 minutes (so it said), so that weekend was a no-go for work. Unfortunately came back and heard a family member passed away, and that funeral service was this weekend over in Concord, so yeah practically lost another weekend.
I did however do some light sanding various things, not picture worth, I tied the other end of the sink's plumbing into the main plumbing. So I did get some stuff done.
My experiments with wood did not give me terribly happy results in that it took a lot of work to do a little bit of cutting with my router, and one little goof up ruined a piece, these were just scrap pieces as I wanted to get a feel for how much sawdust I'd end up making
Decided to think about the 8020 stand again, priced out stuff, around $300 for the alumnium, plus another $80 for shipping *UGH*, but whatever I can eat that cost if I don't have actually build it... then I added in all the fasteners and that bumped the price another $100... *SMH*. I might do a slight redesign of the stand I want too... which goes to the next point.OVERFLOW!
So the tank has the "standard" Marineland Cornerflo (megaflo?) who knows type of overflows in each corner. In a nut shell I'm not a huge fan of these at all, like to the point of actually hating them. Each corner is ground to top plastic overflow, quarter circle foot print. But the circle has a radius of about 8" (tank still has cardboard around it so can't get exact measurements), which for me sucks, because I want a side to be viewable and even if I cover up the outside with something black, that takes my 36" wide tank and turns it into a 28" wide tank. Also each megaflow has 2 - 1" holes drilled in the bottom. 2 doesn't allow for many options as far as overflow piping, bean animal needs 3, as does most "quiet" ones (herbie, flooded stand pipe, etc) and the reason it needs 3 is the emergency, plus 1" hole? Dafuq! Ok so all of that I could possibly deal with in some way. But the real kick in the nuts is the overflows themselves, the teeth area where stuff drains is not the entire perimeter of the overflow, it's a very small part of it actually and actually has a channel inside the overflow plastic to pull water from about halfway down... now I'm not sure if it's just me, but I thought the point of a overflow box was to skim the surface NOT just allow water to come from the tank.
So my solution was quite simple, I was going to get a new overflow. Actually one from Modular Marine, who makes some really nice super low profile similar in function to the Synergy ones, considerably cheaper for similar size but more importantly they have a range of sizes you can get. Then when the good members of BAR help me move my tank, we'll flip it on it's front, I can drill the back and people can watch in awe at my marvelous hole drilling skills or cringe in agony if Marineland decided to put a piece of tempered glass on the back for some reason and it shatters into a million bits. However the store decided to take the month off, vacation or whatever, won't be open until Sept 12th. So if I want to go this route... I need to wait until after MACNA. before tank even moves. So yeah... POOP! Part of me wants to say screw it and just use the stupid Cornerflo and deal with it... but the other part of me is saying wait, because you need someone to flip the tank on the front because you won't be able to drill a vertical hole, and you're going to hate those overflows if you use them. So I'm thinking no tank setup until after MACNA...
And school started last week, which isn't a huge deal time wise, but it is always stressful as I'm looking out for my classes to get cancelled for low enrollment, which is a HUGE hunk of money out of my pocket. One already was cancelled a week before the semester started, I did get a replacement class but that one may be cancelled too so I'm kind of biting my nails to see what happens in the first couple weeks. But more importantly waiting on knowing before I commit to spending "lots" of money on a stand, or very little. In the mean time I can do all the little things... hopefully, my wife still expects me to look after the kid when she does housework and the like... like hello! tank important!
sfsuphysics
Supporting Member
Well the problem is that my class was cancelled and they added a new class, but that class was added a week before school started so it was not there when all the other sections were getting filled over the entire summer.
rygh
Guest
Fix the overflows now. It will drive you nuts long term if you don't.
I think they did the "overflow" that way to make it quieter, not caring about it being useful.
A set of polarized sunglasses will usually tell you if glass is tempered.
Birefringent material theory might be something fun to teach in your physics class?
I do hope the classes go well.
I think they did the "overflow" that way to make it quieter, not caring about it being useful.
A set of polarized sunglasses will usually tell you if glass is tempered.
Birefringent material theory might be something fun to teach in your physics class?
I do hope the classes go well.
sfsuphysics
Supporting Member
Yeah I get the whole testing for tempered nature of the glass, just don't know if I have my old pair of polarized sunglasses still, they pre-date me wearing actual glasses.
That said funny story. First spill is out of the way. How did I spill with no tank you ask? Well I have a talent for that! As I was hooking up the plumbing to the main lines (well main pipes in my house), using Sharkbite connectors which I've never done before, always been a copper kind of guy but I really liked the idea of not having to solder ANY joints along the way which is why I went with PEX tubing, and holy crap those no-solder fittings are super awesome, just push in and done.... but anyways I go to turn the water main back on and run back in to make sure the fittings don't leak... they don't but I heard a loud splashing sound... as it turned out the faucet stub out fittings were turned to the open position so at least I know water is flowing to those places! Upside is all the water spilled on the subfloor, the subfloor was relatively clean (i.e. no dust to turn it into a big mud puddle) and the water didn't flow in any one direction (translation the floor is friggin flat and level!). Shop vac + towels + fan blowing on it later we're good to go, and happy I didn't use OSB as a subfloor
I will say though part of me just had a bad thought... I should have hooked up the plumbing before I sealed the wall up and painted it, just in case there was a nick or a puncture in PEX tube, not that I'd expect it with my installation but when people return crap to Home Depot it's not like they really check to see if it's new/unbroken before throwing it back up on the shelves. Here's hoping all is good... of course the way the concrete pad slopes I think I would have seen a trickle of water by now.
That said funny story. First spill is out of the way. How did I spill with no tank you ask? Well I have a talent for that! As I was hooking up the plumbing to the main lines (well main pipes in my house), using Sharkbite connectors which I've never done before, always been a copper kind of guy but I really liked the idea of not having to solder ANY joints along the way which is why I went with PEX tubing, and holy crap those no-solder fittings are super awesome, just push in and done.... but anyways I go to turn the water main back on and run back in to make sure the fittings don't leak... they don't but I heard a loud splashing sound... as it turned out the faucet stub out fittings were turned to the open position so at least I know water is flowing to those places! Upside is all the water spilled on the subfloor, the subfloor was relatively clean (i.e. no dust to turn it into a big mud puddle) and the water didn't flow in any one direction (translation the floor is friggin flat and level!). Shop vac + towels + fan blowing on it later we're good to go, and happy I didn't use OSB as a subfloor
I will say though part of me just had a bad thought... I should have hooked up the plumbing before I sealed the wall up and painted it, just in case there was a nick or a puncture in PEX tube, not that I'd expect it with my installation but when people return crap to Home Depot it's not like they really check to see if it's new/unbroken before throwing it back up on the shelves. Here's hoping all is good... of course the way the concrete pad slopes I think I would have seen a trickle of water by now.
sfsuphysics
Supporting Member
For behind the tank, aka fish room, shower drain membrane to a french (channel) drain, then cover that with plastic/fiberglass (whatever) tiles so all spills are not an issue... and if I really wanted I could siphon straight to the floor for water changes. For the rest of the room that's not fish room, just some simple engineered click together floor boards that they sell at Costco, in fact it's been sitting in my garage for going on 4+ years now. This way I can have industrial usage behind the tank where the dirty stuff happens, and the front can be "nice" area to relax in where about the only water might be drips from scraping the front glass or something, this way if I ever move/give up/etc I can pull the fish stuff out, and use remove those cut pieces in front of the tank and just tie directly into that to fill in the "fish room" space and call it a day like nothing ever was there...
Coral reefer
Past President
Pex?!? Ewwww, gross. Less plastic for me please.
sfsuphysics
Supporting Member
Hey, I'm going to be washing out test vials and spraying out fish crap out of my skimmer, not drinking from it.
sfsuphysics
Supporting Member
tl.dr version: This post is is all woodworking porn.
Ok so finding it hard to get a free weekend here, between going to a play place/train exhibit with my kid, going camping with my kid, going to a family member's funeral, and MACNA, I pretty much lost a month of weekends. Don't get me wrong I'm not complaining about spending time with my kid, that's just time I don't have to work on Tankenstein, ok that's not fair it's not something kludged from various parts. MACNA was a hard one to swallow because not only did I "lose" Saturday, but Sunday my wife declared she gets a day out (sans kid), and then Monday she had some cleaning/reorganizing thing going on with all the crap in the garage (it doesn't look cleaner, more organized, in fact it looks worse!), but this weekend I lose as well as her friend (who's now pregnant) is coming over and going to get as much old baby stuff as she can fit in her car so I got that going for me and am happy to see it all go.
Stand
Well I made my decision for the stand, well I made it a couple weeks back, but I cemented the decision the stand will be made out of wood. While I absolutely wanted to do aluminum, and the black stuff too to make it look really slick! At the end of the day pricing out the cost of the "frame" in aluminum vs. wood it was just over $500 for the alumnium + fasteners versus $50 for wood + fasteners (and I'm sure I'll have some leftovers, $40 for lumber probably $10 for any screws I might need), and I wouldn't have any issues with a $500 stand I mean stands people get with tanks can be WAY more than that BUT that's the $500 build it yourself price and I just felt that wasn't worth the value at the end of the day, plus I'd still have the nagging feeling of whether or not I used enough fasteners, did I use them correctly, did I use too many?
So what kind of wood? Standard dimensional lumber. As kiln dried as I could get, going through the piles at Home Depot was certainly "fun", for about every reasonably straight board I had there were at least 5 other boards that looked closer to hockey stick shape than a straight piece of lumber and for those that were nice and straight about about 2 out of 3 had a very noticeable twist to them. So after grabbing 15 boards, I tried to do the guys at HD a solid and actually put the other boards back in a nice "stacked" configuration, I mean I know they're only $2.50 each but geeze! These were 2 x 3 boards too, I wanted to try and keep it as close to the aluminum size as I could, and just for point of reference one 8 foot long piece of aluminum 1.5 x 1.5" cost more than all the lumber.
Of course the problem with big box store lumber is that while cheap, it does have imperfections to work around I did try to get as straight as possible or what I like to call "acceptably straight" or "fixably straight", it still might have somewhat rough surfaces, the corners are rounded, so I did what any good wood work did ... I threw them through a planer and made a huge pile of wood shavings!
This was only about 30 feet of wood too, effectively what is going to be my legs.
And here's the end result.
A planer will "plane" wood, but it doesn't fix them for straightness, you need a jointer for that (I don't have), you can do it with a planer by making a jig to level the board while it goes through, but I didn't want to go through that kind of trouble and I'm left with "acceptably straight"... except maybe that one right on the top, but I can figure out what to do with that piece later. Just as a matter of reference, I only took off about 1/16" from each side which was more than sufficient to square up the corners leaving me with 1-3/8" x 2-3/8" boards (FYI, nominal size for these is 1.5 x 2.5" in case you're wondering how I cut a 1/16th off each side and had my "2x3" down to that size)
The biggest thing I wanted at this step though was the cross section of all my wood to be the same size, while a 2x3 is 1.5" x 2.5" and for the most part that's fairly accurate, there could be variation one way or another due to how dry it really is, throwing these through the planer makes them all the same size.
Now we come to the next step, what I like to call "I wish I had a table saw, but since I don't here's the next best thing... a router jig" The whole point of this jig is to cut a half-lap joint along the entire length of the wood, I need it straight, and I need it perfectly smooth just like my other wood. Would have gone a lot easier if I had a full sized router, but this 1-1/4HP trim router with a plunge base works fine too, just maybe a bit slower.
The wood goes under that white painted plywood in the middle, and the two boards on top stop the router from going too far one way or another, and then it's a matter of sliding the router back and forth, lowering, back and forth, lowering, back and forth, etc... you really don't want to dig cut too deeply with a router. Needless to say, two passes on a table saw would accomplish more or less the same result.
Oh well, I think I got pretty good results
And here's the desired result for each of the 4 corners of the stand
It's a combination of a half-lap joint with a butt joint, I did the half-lap part because it gives it quite a bit more strength by having another part of the side that's also glued to it and the recess allows for the adjoining piece of wood to go to the proper depth so the outside edge is flush (or flush enough that a little sand paper can fix it). I haven't decided how to fasten these together though, I mean wood glue is an absolute must and to be fair that might be all the strength I need due to the precision of the cuts made, I might do some pocket hole screws on the inside to give it a bit of a mechanical fastening though. Fact of the matter is there are going to be quite a few overlapping pieces holding this all together that fasteners might not be necessary.
Here's the next part of the project, or what I call "I wish I had a table saw, but since I don't here's the next best thing... a router jig part 2".
This jig allows me to make dado cuts with my router. The idea is that you put the piece you want to stick into your dado between the plywood, then you push it closed, tighten up the bolts at one end, then remove that piece, and you put the wood you want to cut under, then swipe swipe swipe, and the wood on top prevents the router from going too far and bingo bango perfectly cut dados without a table saw + dado blade. But since these cuts go across the short side of the wood it should go a lot quicker, although there are a lot more of these to do, 10 pieces x 2 each for the legs plus 8 horizontal members x 3 each, versus the 4 I did for the earlier cuts.
Here's a couple scrap pieces I was using to test my jigs, want to make sure they work before I blow through a bunch of good lumber!
Those two pieces are being held together only with friction. The jig works very well.
The purpose of which is to put dados in all the legs, and slide in pieces perpendicular (obviously) that will end up holding it all together. But more on this in the next episode, still need to do some math to see how long to cut said perpendicular pieces.
And why don't I have a table saw? Well maybe when I get my workshop in order, but that's not a priority now, and when I do get time I need to figure out how to cram 10 pounds of crap into a 5 pound sack to get that to work.
Ok so finding it hard to get a free weekend here, between going to a play place/train exhibit with my kid, going camping with my kid, going to a family member's funeral, and MACNA, I pretty much lost a month of weekends. Don't get me wrong I'm not complaining about spending time with my kid, that's just time I don't have to work on Tankenstein, ok that's not fair it's not something kludged from various parts. MACNA was a hard one to swallow because not only did I "lose" Saturday, but Sunday my wife declared she gets a day out (sans kid), and then Monday she had some cleaning/reorganizing thing going on with all the crap in the garage (it doesn't look cleaner, more organized, in fact it looks worse!), but this weekend I lose as well as her friend (who's now pregnant) is coming over and going to get as much old baby stuff as she can fit in her car so I got that going for me and am happy to see it all go.
Stand
Well I made my decision for the stand, well I made it a couple weeks back, but I cemented the decision the stand will be made out of wood. While I absolutely wanted to do aluminum, and the black stuff too to make it look really slick! At the end of the day pricing out the cost of the "frame" in aluminum vs. wood it was just over $500 for the alumnium + fasteners versus $50 for wood + fasteners (and I'm sure I'll have some leftovers, $40 for lumber probably $10 for any screws I might need), and I wouldn't have any issues with a $500 stand I mean stands people get with tanks can be WAY more than that BUT that's the $500 build it yourself price and I just felt that wasn't worth the value at the end of the day, plus I'd still have the nagging feeling of whether or not I used enough fasteners, did I use them correctly, did I use too many?
So what kind of wood? Standard dimensional lumber. As kiln dried as I could get, going through the piles at Home Depot was certainly "fun", for about every reasonably straight board I had there were at least 5 other boards that looked closer to hockey stick shape than a straight piece of lumber and for those that were nice and straight about about 2 out of 3 had a very noticeable twist to them. So after grabbing 15 boards, I tried to do the guys at HD a solid and actually put the other boards back in a nice "stacked" configuration, I mean I know they're only $2.50 each but geeze! These were 2 x 3 boards too, I wanted to try and keep it as close to the aluminum size as I could, and just for point of reference one 8 foot long piece of aluminum 1.5 x 1.5" cost more than all the lumber.
Of course the problem with big box store lumber is that while cheap, it does have imperfections to work around I did try to get as straight as possible or what I like to call "acceptably straight" or "fixably straight", it still might have somewhat rough surfaces, the corners are rounded, so I did what any good wood work did ... I threw them through a planer and made a huge pile of wood shavings!
This was only about 30 feet of wood too, effectively what is going to be my legs.
And here's the end result.
A planer will "plane" wood, but it doesn't fix them for straightness, you need a jointer for that (I don't have), you can do it with a planer by making a jig to level the board while it goes through, but I didn't want to go through that kind of trouble and I'm left with "acceptably straight"... except maybe that one right on the top, but I can figure out what to do with that piece later. Just as a matter of reference, I only took off about 1/16" from each side which was more than sufficient to square up the corners leaving me with 1-3/8" x 2-3/8" boards (FYI, nominal size for these is 1.5 x 2.5" in case you're wondering how I cut a 1/16th off each side and had my "2x3" down to that size)
The biggest thing I wanted at this step though was the cross section of all my wood to be the same size, while a 2x3 is 1.5" x 2.5" and for the most part that's fairly accurate, there could be variation one way or another due to how dry it really is, throwing these through the planer makes them all the same size.
Now we come to the next step, what I like to call "I wish I had a table saw, but since I don't here's the next best thing... a router jig" The whole point of this jig is to cut a half-lap joint along the entire length of the wood, I need it straight, and I need it perfectly smooth just like my other wood. Would have gone a lot easier if I had a full sized router, but this 1-1/4HP trim router with a plunge base works fine too, just maybe a bit slower.
The wood goes under that white painted plywood in the middle, and the two boards on top stop the router from going too far one way or another, and then it's a matter of sliding the router back and forth, lowering, back and forth, lowering, back and forth, etc... you really don't want to dig cut too deeply with a router. Needless to say, two passes on a table saw would accomplish more or less the same result.
Oh well, I think I got pretty good results
And here's the desired result for each of the 4 corners of the stand
It's a combination of a half-lap joint with a butt joint, I did the half-lap part because it gives it quite a bit more strength by having another part of the side that's also glued to it and the recess allows for the adjoining piece of wood to go to the proper depth so the outside edge is flush (or flush enough that a little sand paper can fix it
). I haven't decided how to fasten these together though, I mean wood glue is an absolute must and to be fair that might be all the strength I need due to the precision of the cuts made, I might do some pocket hole screws on the inside to give it a bit of a mechanical fastening though. Fact of the matter is there are going to be quite a few overlapping pieces holding this all together that fasteners might not be necessary.Here's the next part of the project, or what I call "I wish I had a table saw, but since I don't here's the next best thing... a router jig part 2".
This jig allows me to make dado cuts with my router. The idea is that you put the piece you want to stick into your dado between the plywood, then you push it closed, tighten up the bolts at one end, then remove that piece, and you put the wood you want to cut under, then swipe swipe swipe, and the wood on top prevents the router from going too far and bingo bango perfectly cut dados without a table saw + dado blade. But since these cuts go across the short side of the wood it should go a lot quicker, although there are a lot more of these to do, 10 pieces x 2 each for the legs plus 8 horizontal members x 3 each, versus the 4 I did for the earlier cuts.
Here's a couple scrap pieces I was using to test my jigs, want to make sure they work before I blow through a bunch of good lumber!
Those two pieces are being held together only with friction. The jig works very well.
The purpose of which is to put dados in all the legs, and slide in pieces perpendicular (obviously) that will end up holding it all together. But more on this in the next episode, still need to do some math to see how long to cut said perpendicular pieces.
And why don't I have a table saw? Well maybe when I get my workshop in order, but that's not a priority now, and when I do get time I need to figure out how to cram 10 pounds of crap into a 5 pound sack to get that to work.
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