The fight against plain black and beige boxes continues. This time around I'll do better. (1) List of parts and materials: 2x 800x300x18mm glued laminated birch 38.00€ 4x 1000x70x15mm kiln-dried, planed beech 62.00€ 1x 125x40x20mm brass billet 28.60€ 24x Stainless Countersunk bolt M5x25 4.63€ 4x 30mm spring clamp 4.80€ 1kg Clear Shellac-flakes 39.35€ 1l Etasol denaturated alcohol 5.60€ 0.5l Emulsified carnauba wax 7.20€ Total: 190.18€ Certainly, I made plenty of mistakes with Seawolf. It was (and is) horribly difficult to break apart and put it back in one piece. Moreover, trying to use it as my main rig while building it was an even worse mistake. I'll use this new build as my main rig so I can finish Seawolf at a later date. I've been thinking about a wooden project log for a while now. The concept is to make a system that is pure, clear and shows the materials as they are. No paint and no covering sleeving. The shape is symmetric on many levels. As Seawolf is so hard to maintain, I want to make every panel and rail detachable. The first two pictures are early renderings of different concepts for the case. The actual case won't look like either of them. As you know me, I'll only show teasers at this stage. The PC will be an aircooled mATX. The planned size is about 40x30x30cm. I don't know about the exact hardware. So far I've bought the wood and the brass for the case. The wood came from Kodin Terra. I found the rails from a pile of about 50 pieces of beech. The 4 pieces that I picked most resemble quarter sawn. In quarter sawn boards the grain is perpendicular to the surface. This limits twisting and warping due to changes in moisture. Also, quarter sawn beech has a lovely wavy surface texture. The panels will be made from glued laminated birch. I chose boards that had the least knots and other defects. I also ordered 5kg of brass from metallstore.de. The postage to Finland was about half of the total price. I'm only going to use a small portion of the brass on this build. The brass and the wood will be finished with a coat of bleached shellac and some carnauba wax. The most tedious work in this build will go into shaping the brass brackets. I started by cutting them to size and started filing away. This filing is taking forever. Don't hold your breath.
Really wood brass, I like. Maybe the front and top of #1 with flat sides. Oh this looks like a good start.
