I am co-creating this computer with a friend of mine. We are also creating a Live Journal construction log of our Progress over HERE that will be updated over time. Included is a summery about us here. We will also update this thread with our progress reports. Day 0 - The idea, and how it came about The Idea comes from a combination of places, primary of which is the name of our clan. the ^BM Beer Monkeys, a group of avid gamers, numbering roughly 8 people large. At Fragapalooza 2003 (two years ago), I (Bram) decided to mod my case. I thought about putting it in ANYTHING other than a stock case. Since we were the BEER monkeys, and I knew my way around woodworking, I came up with the idea to put my computer into a wooden Keg. I thought that it would be cool if I could set it up with a reservoir to hold liquids of some sort and have a spigot attached to the front so I could have drinks 'On tap' as it were. This idea is being DEEPLY considered, but the idea of putting liquids, especially carbonated liquids around my computer... is moderatly nerve-wracking... We decided to orient the Keg in a horizontal position, and find or make some sort of stand to put underneath it to prevent it from rolling off. This will allow us to consider adding a tap on the 'front' Image Googling "Wooden Keg" found a picture that illustrated what we hoped to do. Sans Computer (more or less) Day 1 - The Keg, and the First Incision Since I first came up with the concept, the only real reason I have not started it before was that I could not find a suitable Barrel. I could find Napa Valley Wine Barrels that weigh around 110lbs EMPTY, and I found LOTS of half-barrel water planters. Neither of which would work for obvious reasons. I managed to find one the other day. This barrel in question was bought from the Grocery store I worked at. They were using them to hold up wicker baskets full of apples and such. Ironically, I had passed these by two years ago due to the design. I had been hoping for a cleaner and larger one. However, I decided that if I didnt buy it NOW, I would never get around to starting this mod. It looked big enough to fit my motherboard with room to spare for the other components. The manager offered to let me borrow the keg, under the condition they get it back. I bought it from them for $50 Canadian. Here is what the barrel looks like. It is a Slack Cooperage barrel, 30 Inches long, and about 18 inches across at its widest point, made by Brooks Barrel Co. After bringing it home, we used a mock mobo to guesstimate how much space we had to play with (the keg was closed on one end, and recessed in about 5 inches on the other) and things looked quite good. We were ready for cutting it open to access the inside. ------------------------------------------------ GAINING ENTRY Since the barrel would be horizontal, we opted to have cable access through what would become the bottom of the case. We used a drill and Jigsaw to remove a plank section between the metal banding. Our motherboard would be mounted vertically over this hole. We sanded the edges and tossed the extra piece. 12 inches of hole! Booyah! We both knew that there was no hope in hell of using this single point of entry for installing the entire computer, so we had to remove one of the ends. By removing the recessed end, we gained a considerable amount of interior space as well as opening it up. We used a drill to start the hole, and a Jigsaw to cut the rest, but due to the radius of the desired circle and the curve of the side of the barrel, we ended up having to cut several odd shaped cuts out of it. Afterwards, we used a coping saw to clean it up. Hint: Keep your coping saw SHARP. dull ones do not work worth ********... remember this Alex! The front of the barrel half finished. at this point, we went and found MY *sharp* saw. We left the ring in as support so the side of the keg didnt collapse in on us. Our next task will be finding a way to mount the most important part of a computer... my Gigabyte K8N-Pro.
nice idea! are you just going to have some sort of beer reservoir, that will allow you to have beer on tap? i've got this image in my head of this really interesting device, where you slot in say 4 cans, and it pierces the bottom (or top) as you slide them in, and empties the beer into a reservoir (which could even be surrounded by watercooling... to keep the beer cold!) and then that reservoir leads to a tap on the front. do you see what i mean? I've got the image in my head, it's always difficult to find the words to put it down on paper...
now THAT is an interesting idea... having a device that empties beer cans. We are hoping to yes, have a reservoir if we end up with enough space when the computer is finally put in place. however, the idea we came up with is a little more mundane, and MUCH lower budget. (I have to do this on the cheap). We have to fine-tune the thought process, but we will post all about it when we start (attempting??) to implement it! As for water cooling, I am not going to buy Water Cooling due to cost, and the fact I have never played with that kind of toy in the past. I have a big Zalman heatsink that will keep the computer at a reasonable temperature (I hope) once everythings in place. We have also taken into consideration 80mm fans. but we have no idea how much space we will have to play with when its all said and done. This is the kind of layout it will look like, but THIS IS NOT MY KEG. Cable access will be through the bottom. Thats all we have planned in and set in stone so far. We are still problem solving some important issues...
hmmm very interesting, I'm building a Wicker Picnic Basket PC myself.......hmmmm i thinking summer computer mod cook out, you bring the keg i got the food j/k
I'm confused. I thought the keg 'o chaos was already completed and used at fragapalooza this year...I'd swear I saw it because it was at the end of one of the tables and easy to spot. Was that a different keg or are you just updating as you find the time to post pictures? Regardless, nice work.
It is finished. We didnt post it before due to my computer being splayed across the dining room table like a surgery patient, and afterwards due to the LAN. I have just recently managed to find a bit of time in my schedule to edit the pictures and formulate writeups. On this note, I AM trying to do this as quickly as possible. please be patient with us. We feel that part of a casemod is how you showcase it when it is done. I believe people would be more interested to see how it progressed as we saw it, as opposed to just seeing the finished project up front. So, I bring you our next update.
Yes, I am aware I spelt Mitre Saw wrong... So it comes to the motherboard mounting struts. Since we had decided to mount it vertically over the hole we cut yesterday, we had to find some flat serface to attach it to near the center of the barrel. We decided that the easiest way to do this was to install some sort of rafter system out of 2x4's that spanned the width of the Barrel from the side of the cable hole to the immediate opposide side. I found some suitable wood in the firewood pile and started to measure it out to length. Luckily we hava a mitre saw handy that allowed us to cut any angle we so desire. If you have ever seen the inside of a barrel, you know that it curves in two directions, with differant severity the closer you get to the ends. Attempting to explain the angles I needed to cut (I think I made some 9 cuts per end of the 2x4... I stopped counting after a while) would be fruitless, as it was entirely done by trial and error. Luckily however, they fit near perfectly. We predrilled holes in both the brace and the keg's exterior and ran three inch screws in, directly from the outside - two screws into each end. Hopefully you see what our objective is from here, more or less. (The piece of wood sitting on the barrel in the first picture is not part of the plans) I wanted to get as much woodworking done as possible before we started with the hardware, so the next step was the stands the barrel would sit on... I REALLY didnt want the barrel rolling around while we were playing with important computer parts. We found a nice 2x12 which we split down the center to make two 2x6's. We took a belt sander to the edges, taking off a horrid brown paint, and proceeded to cut them to shape. The curve along the top was VERY difficult to measure, so we relied very heavily on sanding to get it to fit around the side of the barrel. A drill mounted sander was used fairly easily for specific troublespots allowing us to use trial and error for that as well. To mount the stands to the barrel, we simply placed the stands on the garage floor, placed the barrel on top, and screwed in some more 3 inch screws from the inside. The barrel is amazingly sturdy, and could easily support 150 lbs sitting on top of it without wobbling. The shape of the stands worked very nicely as well, not too tall, and far enough apart to avoid looking awkward. The new and the old. The new Bottom from the side So we have a handsome, freestanding barrel with no computer inside of it. Obviously not a very useful case at this point. Next time we got together, we would try mounting the Motherboard to the supports. thankfully Alex solved a problem I had been having and came up with an ingenious design for attaching the Mobo safely to wood... however, to implement it, we needed to do some shopping and get some sleep...
Ok, as a reminder, you can view our complete log from beginning to end at Our LiveJournal site. Since we were mounting the motherboard onto a set of two by fours, we obviously needed wood screws. Since I didnt want Wood Screws through my Mobo, Alex came up with a really good idea. We would use plexiglass, vinyl nuts and bolts, and wood screws. Here's how we did it. Using a sharpie, we placed the Motherboard directly onto the plexi sheet (We had thought to use an anti-static bag wrapped around it, but forgot to put it back in place) and marked where the holes were. Then we used a drill to make holes where we had marked. Four more larger holes were drilled for attaching the plexi to the wood. All the holes were countersunk. I like my power tools! The vinyl bolts were attached to the 'back' of the plexi to provide a thread for attaching the Mobo. We used a hot glue gun, as Plastic glue was WAY too messy on the Vinyl. We also attached four metal nuts to the 'back' of the plexi to provide spacing between the wood and plexi. The concept idea is below. keep in mind all the Bolts between the Plexi and wood are glued in. The Concept Green is the glue holding the vinyl nuts in. There are still more to put on. The vinyl bolts fit nicely through the holes in the Motherboard, so we had no problem on this stage. Just put the bolts in, and attached a nut to the end. We left them loose enough to still be able to rotate them. We test fit the Mobo onto the plexi to make sure we hadnt screwed up TOO badly, and it fit VERY well. No unaligned holes, no spacing issues... After it was in place we cut the Vinyl Bolts to length. We were ready to attach the Plexi to the wood, which was only a matter of putting the right screws through the right hole so that the Sheet was properly alligned with the cards facing down. Our idea allowed the relativly easy removal of the Mobo, by simply removing the Vinyl Bolts, since the plexi would not move. When attaching them together, the bolts find the holes quite well, and the only difficulty lies in reaching in and placing the screwdriver in the right spot without scratching anything. Big problem solved. Next time, I will show you how we put in the Hard Drives!
You should make the components waterproof and fill the keg with beer, working computer with beer inside
Ok, it has been a while! Here is the next bit Remember, our comprehensive log can be found here RAID goodness! Hard drives were perhaps the easiest to do. After playing around with the idea of mounting them behind the motherboard, we opted to place them on the only flat surface remaining, the back of the case (the old bottom of the barrel) We used some of the plexi that was used in the Mobo mounting solution to mount the HDDs. We cut some rectangles approximatly 6 inches long, and maybe 4 wide. We found a Butane torch in Alex's garage, and eventually got around to using on the plexi. We softened the pieces so they could fold length-wise at a 90 degree angle. Holes were marked to align with the HDDs, and some more were drilled for mounting on the wood. One for each side. HDD #1 Alex enjoys sticking his head in barrels 0_o All in all, it is quite simple to do. There is even a bit of clearance between the wood, and the bottom of the drives to prevent Burning, and allowing Airflow. We then proceeded to mount the Motherboard into its place, since we had to find a place to mount the rest of the components. We placed the Video Card, and Sound Card in to give a guideline regarding the amount of space we would have to play with. Power supply is next.
Ok, I've been overburdened with University, so I've been a little slow about updating this. But here we go. THE POWER SUPPLY With the motherboard and hard drives in place, we needed to find somewhere to put the Power supply. Since we had plans for the front of the keg, and the bottom was taken, the only space left was 'above' or 'beside the Motherboard. The thought of mounting a heavy unit such as a Power Supply along a surface that is curved in both directions mildly neaseating, but we had no other ideas. Since we had yet more plexi, we used it to make a frame that would fit over top of it, which we could screw directly into the wood of the barrel. Unfortunatly, it didnt work out that simply. On the left, you can see the flap which we had hoped to put a screw through. On the right, you will see that we underestimated the angle it would need to be at, so it decided to snap off. At this point, we would simply put four screws into the wood that would squeeze the plexi frame tight enough to hold it in place. It felt a little insecure, so we added a couple eye-hooks to either side and strapped some sewing elastic over it as tight as possible. This was taken before we discovered the sewing elastic, so we were using some Vynil strapping which didnt work worth ****. At this time, I began to wonder about Alex. He appears to have a fetish that involves sticking ones head into the inside of barrels. [/img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v724/JCSL_Canadiana/HDD-Mounting4.jpg[/img] The Optical Drives Having discovered the difficulties with the power supply, we decided to use a similar, but mildly improved form for the optical drives. We would use plexi again, but have the flaps that would be screwed into the barrel, underneath the drives, allowing a gentler bend in the plexi. (they plexi was shaped similar to the HDD mounting rigs). And two Extremely tight straps of elastic were then bridged between the two. We chose to place them slightly recessed back from the 'front' of the barrel, so we needed to cut a space in the wood ring to allow the Data and power cables to plug in. We also opted to place them on either side, since we had plans for the center section of the front. One of the two Optical drives. the other is opposite this, sitting right in front of the Power supply. THE FANS I had two 80mm Fans to play with. Since there were spaces between the slats in the sides of the barrel, and a hole in the bottom, we opted for positive pressure inside. (both fans blowing IN) We opted to put them on a flat surface, as neither of us wanted to use a hole saw on a curved edge. We were really disliking the curves at this point! We removed ALL the components, and borrowed our friend Dave's (SiThY of the ^BM Beer Monkeys) 82mm Hole Saw. There was space beside the HDDs, so that was were they were destined to go. Purple squares indicate the general area where they belong. The one on the right goes behind the Struts. The hole saw made me nervous (SO MUCH TORQUE!) but I eventually prevailed and ended up with two holes. We used 1Inch #10 wood screws to attach the fans and grilles (grilles were stolen off my old case) Then we vacuumed out all the sawdust, and replaced all the components in their spots. We are getting close to a working computer now!
