Scratch Build – In Progress Project: Hush!

The turquoise patina in those last shots was from trying to get the copper shiny chemically with a hydrogen peroxide containing liquid. That didn't work. Did look quite nice though in a way, but it's shiny we want!

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It's a dusty business this sanding, and I'd need a spray booth for the lacquer. I made a spray booth with 12 x 1m long16mm diameter wooden poles, some cheapy cast aluminium 16mm pole corner connectors, some thick polypropylene 2m wide sheeting and heavy duty tape, and two cheap high speed 8" extractor fans, ducted to exhaust to a large 170 litre plastic storage trunk half-full of water (the idea being much of the dust would be caught by the water) with the air ducted down to flow across the water surface by sheets of thick polystyrene, exiting the top of the large box via a large hepa filter (~25cm x 35cm) , followed by an activated charcoal filter layer (both replacement filters for air filter units) added after that as final stage when needed for volatile organic compounds from cellulose thinner use and spraying). The wall of fans is 9 x gentle typhoons to blow across the sanding surface or help ventilate the room when needed.

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One of these and good ventilation still needed!

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The rotary sanding disc/wool pads got the central bit up to a mirror shine. The tubes and between them on the copper wall part was done by wrapping fine grit sandpaper around a 6mm square bar of tool steel, and the pipes by using perhaps 2-3cm wide strips of microfibre cloth soaked in brasso and flossing the pipes wrapped between pipes like you'd imagine a system of pulleys.

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Click on pics above for videos.

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I hadn't seen this log before, the looks epic!

 

I noticed you back about a month ago and was wondering if we would see this rig again. I NEVER thought you would polish it. It looks fantastic.

 

Hehe. More to come!

 

There's a good reason why you thought that - it's absolute insanity!

 

So, the back wall and pipes was tricky to polish with the sanding/polishing pads on the drill, and with polishing the pipes with sandpaper strips and brasso on strips of microfibre cloth. The radiator fins and pipes inbetween were another matter - the gaps are too small to get power tools in to sand easily, and flossing the copper pipes of the backwall only involved 96 of them.

I had tried using sanding discs on a dremel to sand the radiator fins/plates near the surface, but the handmade slightly wonky nature of them from making the radiator meant they were often slightly off perfectly flat so this didn't really work very well.

I found this handy mole clamp- think it's meant for clamping for welding, but works very well for straightening wonky 0.9mm copper fins!

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The gap between the fins is around 9mm - I used sandpaper wrapped around a long 6mm square bar of tool steel to sand between the fins, and strips of sandpaper of p1000 or p1200 around 7-8mm wide, cut from standard 230mm x 280mm sheets of wet'n'dry paper with a paper guillotine.

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Not perfect, but the sanding with the wet'n'dry-wrapped bar did get the fins nice and pink in the centre.

It's actually quite quick to thread the wet'n'dry strips around the pipes, and the sanding for each one took maybe 10-15 seconds. There's 48 6mm diameter pipes running between each set of fins, and 74 fins in total, and sanding each needed sanding twice (up and then down from the other side. Thank God for podcasts and audiobooks: This took a while....

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(Vid)


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That's all for now folks

 

At least we know WHY you were gone so long now. You didn't really have it in storage. You've been sanding this whole time.

 

Curses, rumbled!

 

Impressive sanding session indeed

 

Crazyyyy project! Very nice to see updates!

 

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So after polishing everything it was time to spray it with Incralac lacquer to keep it shiny. I got a lovely second hand mini spray gun called the Iwata G6, thinking this would be better for a smaller more precise spray pattern to get between the fins and pipes, but unfortunately this didn't work for spraying lacquer - it's too thick for the small 0.6mm diameter nozzle size, causing cobwebbing (needing too high an air feed pressure and spraying dry strands as a result). I then got a cheap spray gun with a larger nozzle and it worked much better.

Wrapped up for spraying the pipes/back wall:

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I don't have any pics of spraying, as it's all messy and a case of 'open window with fans blowing out, do spraying, seal up spray booth and leave room and shut door!'

After:

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Videos:

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Next up is sorting out the 2 cast polyester-coated water distributor boxes that the 48 copper pipes connect to, at the top and bottom of the case. In making them originally, I had made a mold from acrylic sheet to cast the polyester resin, and the heat from the polyester resin had heated the protective sheet on the acrylic so much that it shrunk and caused wavy valleys in the cast polyester.

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What looks like spiders webs there is scoring with a craft knife/scalpel to aid with the new resin bonding to the old.

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The mold is acrylic panels, attached and sealed with silicone glue, or with Copydex (latex glue - much less messy and easier to clean-up and remove afterwards). Holes and slots were blanked with Copydex or Bluetac where needed, and the aluminium rubbed with candlewax to aid release after casting.

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Lots of bits needed recasting of resin to tidy up and then sand down to flat and sharp edges to then veneer with walnut (with pressure-sensitive adhesive backing). To get the veneer to sit flush with the copper ports the surrounding resin was sanded 0.4mm deeper than the ports, and similarly for the resin box sides to sit flush with the aluminium angle 'legs' of the supporting frame.

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To make sanding easier I made several plane sanding blocks by gluing a roll of p280 sandpaper to a large thick steel plate (~50cm x 10cm) and a smaller 1cm thick piece of aluminium plate for more delicate bits.

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Sanding to get flat surfaces and sharp edges for tge veneer:

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Disassembled aluminium wall with IO/PCI slot bracket.

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Below: Making a veneer skin for the wall the IO panel attaches to. I decided to make life difficult and cut holes for all the countersunk bolts, partly to keep the slightly industrial look of countersunk bolts, and partly to allow disassembly, and partly because I found a cheap manufacturer of grade 5 titanium bolts to replace the stainless steel ones, and machined titanium bolts are very attractive. To make the holes in the veneer I used hole-punches (8mm diameter for m4, and 6mm diameter for the m3 countersunk bolt heads). The next issue will be getting the countersunk bolt heads to sit flush with the ~0.4mm thick veneer - either with countersunk collars for the bolts or by sanding down the whole aluminium sheet by 0.4mm.

To mark out the hole positions etc for the veneer I used a sheet of low tack plastic adhesive sheet, which I could score the edges of the countersunk holes to cut the holes from the plastic sheet, then transfer to veneer to guide cutting and hole-punching. (On that board is a test veneer piece of rosewood stained with Shellac/French polish - didn't like the colour).

Low tack sheet on aluminium i/o wall, to transfer hole positions to veneer.

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Large 25mm diameter hole punch for cutting holes in the veneer cladding for the copper g 1/4" BSP ports to poke through/sit flush with, on a test piece of veneer.

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One of the veneer pieces to clad the resin boxes. Fiddly!

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Mock-up of the veneer on the top resin box - that's the fill-port with a gold plug screwed in. Quite finickity cutting the walnut veneer precisely - probably need to redo this one as I shaved off a little too much at the bottom right. I also need to sort out the gap in the aluminium sections by milling the thicker plate (it was unfortunately milled a little short for the step for the right-angle aluminium in the bottom right to sit flush, and is a little inaccurate anyhow)

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Below: Early mock-up of unstained and unattached veneer panels for a rough view of how it will look.

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The veneer looks fantastic.
...You got me wanting to cast plastic agian.

 

Some sweet looking fittings (Barrow) work really well with the radiator a beautifull choice.

How long does a polish job like this last before it has to be redone, Is there a way to protect the finish?

 

Don't do it Cheaps! You've been clean for months now - do you still have the number for your casting anonymous buddy?

 

Copper stays shiny at room temp pretty well - weeks before dulling after polishing if left cool and untouched- it's a pretty unreactive metal, though it's not like aluminium (which forms a thin impermeable protective oxide later to prevent further oxidation unlike say iron rusting).

All of the copper fins, pipes and large copper back-wall has been sprayed already, except the 'fittings' copper port parts shown in the latest veneer pics, which will be spray-lacquered with incralac lacquer before gluing down the veneer

https://cameo.mfa.org/wiki/Incralac

So hopefully (!) won't need to repolish anything!

 

Realised with the large number of images in the past update and difficulty uploading to flickr ("nah, I don' t feel like letting you upload photos atm") I missed a few...

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I've basically talked myself into polished copper pipes (14mm OD 12mm ID) for the water loop with golden fittings (https://www.corsair.com/uk/en/Categ...oolingColor:GOLD&text=&pageSize=#rotatingText

Changing the loop is going to be a pain!