Scratch Build – In Progress Project Quintessence - 29Jun-She's Live- CPU Magazine!

very groovy!!! nice wood work!

 

Thi is looking awsome. Keep up the goog work...

 

Really nice; I have to use poetry (though I have private reasons to quote that).
Considering your past work (which I liked very much) I must say:

. . . the best is yet to come . . .
the last of life for which . . .

I much prefer rounded corners.

 

Tool modifications, awesome woodworking skills, a lot of patience and skills, if this doesnt earn a place in the podium of MOTY, well I have to start fishing instead.... Mod on man, just mod on!

 

I've said the same about gaming before now about taking up fishing .
This is shaping up to be a beautiful mod voigts I highly approve .

 

Thank you!

I'll keep plugging away at it.

I hope I learn a few things along the way that improve what I am able to do. Every mod presents new challenges, and those require learning new ways of figuring out said challenges. For instance, I've spent a lot more time working with alu in this mod so far than I've ever done, and I've never attempted so much scrollwork before. Of course, I'm also wondering, what in the world was I thinking when I came up with a design that has this much scrollwork...

Thanks Alex. I continue to appreciate your enthusiasm and encouraging attitude. As for MOTY, I'm just still floored that I got selected for this year's contest. Of course, at the rate you've been modding, I will be doing good to have just one mod to go up against the who knows how many mods you'll surely crank out this year.

You better not start fishing. You probably would be like me and just drown worms. I gave up on the idea a long time ago. Funny story- when I was a teenager, I used to go fishing with my sister. I never really caught anything. One day finally did me in on the sport. We were on a 15' or so wide dock on a lake. We both had the exact same poles and exact same bait. She caught like ten fish. I got like 5 worms stolen off of the end of my hook without so much as a single tug on the line. I never went fishing again, and that was over 20 years ago.

Thanks. I'm working on it.

I caught a throat/sinus thing and was sick several days last week, and had to go out of town this weekend, so not much has happened in about a week. We are forecast to get like 4-6 inches of snow tonight/tomorrow, which in TN means that everything will completely shut down. This is a major event here. It is going to be unusually cold this week also, so I'm not sure how much I'll get done. My work building only has a small kerosene heater, so its hard to work when its really cold. Then again, my mother in law is staying with us this week wallbash, so I may just layer up and brave the cold just to get out of the house.

 

Looking goood.

I couldn't help but notice the lack of insane amounts of sawdust.

 

thanks Cheaps. As for the dust, my shop vac is my friend. Scrollsaw work and filing really doesn't produce that much dust comparatively speaking like for instance table sawing does. I keep vacuuming with the shop vac while working to try to keep it down. Now that I've got a new router, putting that onto my new-to-me table saw with the shop vac hooked up does a wonderful job of sucking up the dust.

I do wish I had the space for a full fledged vac system though as the dust really can become a bear to control. As soon as I can cough up the money, I plan on getting an Oneida Dust Deputy Cyclone for my shop vac. I've read nothing but good things about these things and think it will help keep from having the problem of the shop vac filter getting clogged up.

 

Top Panel Scrollwork Sanding Done

I have for the most part finally finished sanding the scrollwork on the top piece. The scrollwork isn't perfect, but I think I've managed to get most of the flaws down the point where they are very minor. I spent I think about 10 hours off and on working on sanding this scrollwork on the top piece. The variable speed multitool really sped up the work on this.

It was a bit cold out today so my flannel shirt made it into the bottom of the picture.





On a personal note, my wife, daugher, and I had a bit of fun last Saturday. We drove to Detroit, MI (took the mother-in-law back home ), and while we were there, we went to the annual International Auto Show. I'm not a car connoisseur really, but it was fun to see what is out there. I've never been to a show like this.

They had some very nice Bentleys on display. Talk about expensive. The top model has a base price of $285,000 – ouch!



Ford has a neat new car called the C-Max.



Here are a couple of concept cars. The first by Honda, and the second by Toyota.





This shot is probably the only time I'll be getting behind the wheel of a new Mercedes convertible. Sweet car.



There were a ton of different cars there from about every car company to include ones I've never heard of.

Anyway, back to modding...

Thanks for stopping by.

 

Fantastic job, awesome cars!!! I wish you to own a Mercedes one day and also to keep on modding brother!!!!

 

I wish you'd stop telling us it's not perfect. I don't believe you.

The scroll work looks great & the corners square it up nicely.

I'm looking forward to more progress.

 

Agreed .

 

Bentley Continental GT... I love this car...

Your mod looks very nice. Good work.

 

That scroll works just to good. I'm a carpenter by trade but I just wouldn't have the patience to do all that. Top work dude.

 

You are more than welcome to make that Mercedes deal a reality Alex if you like

Thank you. I'm the type of person who when I look at something like this, I immediately see the imperfections and flaws before I see the overall picture. When I compare work done by me by hand to the CNC and CNC-like hand precision that I see around here, it is hard for me to settle with minor flaws.

Thanks.

As nice as those Bentleys are, I just don't think I could bring myself to spend that kind of money on a car regardless of how much money I had.

Thank you. If you are a carpenter, you should be somewhere nearby! I would love to pick your brain. Not to mention that there are a number of things that could use fixing around this house of mine...


I've been sitting here messing around in Sketchup trying to decide once and for all if I'm going to stick with watercooling or switch back to air. Its kind of hard to go back on air after watercooling for almost 6 years, but I've been debating whether or not the newer air coolers are quiet enough to keep me happy. I originally designed this case for air, but am working on a way to get 2 dual rads in there to see how feasible the idea is.

 

4500 miles door to door might be a little bit to far..lol

Air cooling is getting so good these days, unless you're running big overclocks it's probably not worth it. i say that now but it wont stop me from water cooling my next project.

 

Edge Trim

I spent several hours making the edge trim pieces. It is very important that these pieces are as exact as possible, as they effect the entire rest of the case. I was very meticulous to get them as straight and accurate as possible.

I first printed out a shot with dimensions from Sketchup.



When you use a router you need a flat surface on the piece being routed so that the piece stays square with the router bit. So, I first cut the curve for the edges before using the router to remove the middle material.



For the two top pieces, I also had to remove material on the bottom for the edge overhang. This took forever as the router bit would only cut about 1/32” at a time smoothly, and I had to remove 5/16” of material. I finished the removal with my table saw. I was using a 3/4” cutting bit, so I had to use the table saw to finish removing the width of the groove. I probably could have cut the entire slot with the table saw, but it is hard to get slots like this really accurate with a table saw sometimes, whereas with a router, you can get the depth exactly what you want.

I also cut the 45 degree angle on the ends. Here is an end view of a top edge piece. I had rubber nitrile gloves on with hand heaters stuffed in my palms to keep my hands from freezing as it was like 30f (-1c) outside in my workshed.



Here's a few shots of kind of how the pieces fit together. The trim will not be sitting directly on the front metal of the case. I am making a spacer that will move the trim 1/4” away from the front, and the front wood piece 1/2” away from the metal front to allow for lighting.







You will notice that the pieces are longer than they need to be. One thing I've learned when routing pieces is that you always want to make your piece larger than you need. When routing, it is very easy to damage the ends a bit as you pull the piece across the router bit. Also, if you make a goof in cutting angles on the end, you can just recut them.

I have to drill holes in the metal to mount these pieces, and then I can cut the front and top pieces to width and cut these to length.

Thanks for stopping by.

 

O M G!!! Fantastic work with the router there buddy!!!
And that freezing weather there sucks I guess, I hope the weather will change soon!

 

Cold hands are 1 thing, nose freezing up & then the mind is bad for modding (makes you slow & clumsy lol) so need to take a warm up break every few hours lol but excellent for tools that usually overheat used to love doing dremel work in the cold, it could keep going all day .

Great looking trim voigts , now off I go to do some more .

 

I just read the entire log and I'm like



Wow, +1 for you. Intricate design, love these type of builds.