Scratch Build – In Progress Project: Aerodyne

Thats spot on Jeff. Another wooden master piece to add to your ever growing collection. Have to say it looks very, very right. A perfect representation of what it is. Art deco for 2012.

Top modding.

 

A beauty!!

 

Simply gorgeous rep again if I can can't agree more than what Jeff said, happening a lot that lately .

 

lovely mod, giving me inspiration

 

sweet build mate to you

+rep

 

Thanks Jeff!

Thanks!

Thank you Wayne. I appreciate that.

Inspiring people is a very cool thing. Thanks.

Thanks peteski.

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Some fun and hopefully better photos using my old camera. After 8,000 pictures it still rocks. Like going home.















"Where's the optical drive?" Here I'm loading Windows 8 with my itty-bitty 8GB Crucial USB drive.

The new mahogany doesn't look great. A lot of orange and yellow hues. Over the next year or two the color will change to a deep red.

 

Made Engadget for the seventh time. This is a message to those sponsors who never give me the time of day....Suck it. Suck it hard.

Anyway...here are a few extra photos. This is a Foxconn H67 motherboard, Intel Core i3-2105 CPU w/HD3000 graphics and a Scythe Kozuti heatsink and fan (fan's under the heatsink). I left the PSU out for a cleaner photo.

 

mumma on the inside... nice article btw!

 

Hahahah awesome You tell em looks absolutely perfectly packed in there skip & congrats on another great engaget article & hope you do well in selling some of these, I think you will probably even end up with too much work, nice one .

 

Congratz on the article man!

 

This is amazing, i want to try to build an exact replica, more or less. I suppose i won't get the same finish (unfortunately), but it seems like a fun project, and finding a decent looking case isn't very easy, at least not for me living in little Norway.

One thing i looked at in your project that i found a bit odd, is that you placed what appears to be the power input so high up, wouldn't it be more practical to have it closer to the bottom? (Saw your own comment on this)

I also read that you used 1/32 inch mahogany veneer, is that correct? That equals 0,08mm, and a quick google search gave me 6mm veneer which is pretty heavy stuff compared. (Me converting to cm, not mm, lol)

I also thinking of maybe redesigning it to be laying down instead of standing up. I'm afraid that will ruin it's elegance, but it would be more convenient as i want to put it underneath my television as a HTPC. Oh, and i would have to insert a IR receiver in there somewhere, probably different hardware also, thinking of the newly announced AMD platform (don't remember its name, Brazos?), or maybe Ivy Bridge.

Anyway, i've always been a fan of your projects, and this one is truly amazing. Unfortunately, i can't start on this project for a few months as i am about to move and all my tools are stored spread out in my family's houses, lol.

EDIT: Went trough this post a bit more throughly now, and it cleared up a few things. However, it would be nice to have some more info on measurements. Of course i can assume some of the sizes based on the images, and i'm seeing some sketches on the plywood. 1/4" wooden sticks with 3/10" spaces between them in the grill? diameter of the sugar canister? is that also the measurement for the emblem? All the handy small wooden pieces you put together, are they precut, or do you slice out small handy wooden sticks at first? And what was the finish on the grill and emblem, gray silverish paint?

Sorry for all the small questions, i just really like your work and want to make one myself.

 

OK. Thanks for that and welcome to the forums.

"However, it would be nice to have some more info on measurements."

I don't do drawings and generally don't measure stuff. When I do measure I write it on the wood surfaces I'm working on. I've never recreated a project and have never seen any reason to make it easy for anyone else to. Just in case...I know where my wife keeps the sugar canister. Cheers.

 

hehe, cool

I guess i'll figure out a lot of the dimensions myself as i go on with the project. I've also thought about putting the motherboard on the "bottom" instead of the "top" (sorry for my poor vocabulary). By "bottom", i mean the bigger board where the usb connectors and power button are located. Dunno if it is beneficial, i also see a potential problem with the back bracket.

I did read trough all three topics about this project on the different forums, but i never got what type of finish you used for the grill and emblem, so that would be interesting to know.

Do you go more into detail on how you work and cut the veneer in any of your other projects?

Once again, thank you for sharing how you did this, and for doing it so awesomely. It's so inspiring and i'm dying to get started on this project!!

 

Haha @ those sponsors who ignored you! good for you Stephen, and well deserved admiration

 

Thanks Owen! One of the great benefits of being an amateur/hobbyist is getting to be brutally honest now and then.

 

Great work, sir.

 

Like it .

 

Anyway...my amateur status is intact. After receiving 100 or so e-mails asking for quotes for a copy of Aerodyne the results are in. No takers. The quote was based on my labor valued at $20 an hour which I consider way less than reasonable. The only counter-offers I got didn't cover the cost of the equipment. I'm not disappointed. Instead I'm relieved. I'm not surprised either because I always knew that there was no market for this kind of thing unless it was made in a Chinese slave labor factory. Hopefully certain people won't bug me anymore about turning my hobby into a business. Hopefully.


(......rides off into the sunset.)

 

I think what happened there is the people who look at the articles are used to £20 to £300 cases or something so base there ideas on what prices should be from that disregarding if it's a hand made piece put together with great skills & care or not.

I look at the £50 to £500 retail cases & use that kind of amount as my budget for materials & bits I'll need so end up with a really high quality good looking & functioning case & a lot of good experience at making things.

Interior designers are the crowd that need to see your kind of work mate, not the masses, the masses want cheap thin metal & weak plastic like you say ridiculas low prices where the makers suffer making a loss.

 

Aerodyne has been showing up on some fairly high-end web sites like this one. I've also been talking to a firm that sells only to CEOs. Believe me, I have given this a good try. We live in a world where our gadgets end up in a land fill in five years (or less) so why spend the extra money?

The idea of a collectible or heirloom computer is foreign to everyone. If what we do is truly art (like some say) then it has to be collectible or it truly isn't art. That's my opinion anyway. In 50 years will photos be all that is left? Or will there be survivors traded by collectors in an established market like all true art has? Time will tell, blah, blah.

I'm sure there was some French guy in the 1880's who passed on a Van Gogh picture because it was too small to cover the stain on his wall. And for the same price he could buy three pictures from that guy named Dell down the road.