I got such an overwelming response from other images I posted here I thought you guys might like to follow this project. Let me just say, some of the logs here blow my mind, the international modding community is amazingly talented. This log has been posted elese where so i am cutting in the earlier posts and images first: This case project has been hanging out in my sketch books for about 2 years now. I have been waiting for a customer to come along who would give me absolute freedom to make this project as thier own. By now I am tired of waiting and I am just going to build it and get it out of my system. Sometimes you just have to make what your brain keeps smahing you over the head with. So instead I will be donating this case to Controlled Insanity.com to give away after it is completed as I really don't have a use for it in my own home, I hope one of you out there will enjoy it in yours. The Project Summnary follows with photos, here are a few things not shown yet so I will just briefly describe whats going to happen. The front bezel will be movable to allow drive access, how it will move is not decided yet, it may be hinged or operate on a slide moving up and down, time will tell. The new bezel is fiberglassed foam (think surfboard) with a handmade aluminum grill. The inside bottom of the case will be upolstered in a tuck and roll fashion in deep red faux leather, the idea being it would resemble the seats in the car. The flames will be hand painted, this is where the Satan part comes in, I am going for a twisted organic mass of tourtured faces/souls in various shades of red/orange/yellow, the pinstripes around the flames will be incorporated into the painting rather than just painted on over the edges of the flames. The unflamed parts of the case will most likely be black, but i might do somthing called interference black, which has a slight navy blue tint to it in varying light. Clearcoat covers the whole thing. the chassis will remain stock aluminum in color. The front side-byside 80mm fans will be replaced with a single 120mm front intake. The idea is for this case to resemble the hood and grill of a 30's era hotrod, the days of coffin hoods and flames. I chose this and the name based on my love of this era of cars. These body styles are among the most beautiful cars ever made. The bezel will be replaced with a grill like bezel and the top of the case will be bulked out into a tapering domed shape. The idea is not for it to look exactly like any one car make or model, but to be somthing entirely new borrowing from all. Both side panels are windowed with flames. The coffin shaped top panel in foam and fiberglass, the flames are symetrical and wrap over the top of the hood and down both sides. The hood top cured, filled and partially sanded. got the bezel sculpted and cored out, ready for skin.
New images, mock up and test fitting for the new front bezel. The bezel can be seen here partially covered in filler with its flange installed. The flange raises the bezel up and away from the drives a bit to give clearance for the bezel to move. sorry about the shadows, I took these outside early this morning and the sun had not come up all the way yet.
Finished guide coating, sanding and finishing the top of the case. The left side panel is 100% complete also. Work has progressed on filling the bezel/grill, sanding and guide coating follows. The side panel has been sanded smooth to remove burs and level the surface as much as possible for the primer coat. The front bezel has been filled on the top, left and bottom sides. All total about 30% of the bezel is covered in filler. The seams are a bit off with filler to allow the sanding step to level and match things up. On the top you will notice some blotches, that is part of guide coating. Guidecoating helps show areas that are not quite level yet and require more filling and sanding. By spraying your filler with a light coat of black paint and sanding with a sanding block, the high areas are shown and the low areas remain black. guidcoating is especially required when delaing with a large smooth area so the paint wont appear wavy once it is applied. Anytime you are dealing with stamped and folded metal parts you must sand them to remove high places around the edges. Failure to do this will result in sanding through your paint or clearcoat during the wetsanding/polishing step. You must use a sanding block for this work to avoid seeing wavyness in the final clearcoat layers because your fingers bearing down on sandpaper will leave high and low places on large panel areas. Body work on cars is done with long thin sanding blocks that look a lot like wood planes. these kinds of blocks are good for large, gently curved areas like the fenders on a 50's era car. For perfectly flat areas, a standard sanding block is best.
More work complete. I skipped all the boring sanding, guidecoating, sanding, filling photos/posts. So here is the bezel at 90% complete. The bezel has been guidecoated in grey primer in these shots, there is still a small bit of touch up here and there to do.
While not a traditional fan "grill" , this part is designed to fit a standard 80mm screw hole pattern. If this grill were raised say 3/4" with spacers from the surface of the case it could function just fine as a grill. It was designed and build for the Satan's Duece case as a fan grill for the rear 80mm fan holes. Unlike any other fan grill this piece is solid with no holes, elevating it with spacers should create some really cool lighting from the led/ccfl fans around the perimeter of the grill and alloow air to move out and past the part. This is a pretty thick part, it feels like a slug of lead in your hand, i dig that.
so i went ahead and tried the spacers and used a high tech measuring device to feel for airflow... my hand. Seems very good with the spacers and I think it will look kickass with the grills hovering up off the case on aluminum spacers.
Door is now hinged, I had some help getting it perfect from my grandfather, he used to hang doors in houses he built with nothing more than hand tools. Before doors came hung in thier frames from Home Depot you made them on site by hand piece by piece, yeah his skillz pretty much own joo. The grill rods are not mounted yet, just sitting in thier holes so the alignment is not perfect in the photos, I left the holes a little bit oversized so when the rods are fused into the bezel I can make fine adjustments with a spacer so they are all equidistant from each other. After we hung the door I went back to fine tune the seams as seen in the photos of the top seam. The hinges are spring loaded and hold the bezel closed without any kind of latch.
Holy smokes, wow. That's easily the best case I've seen that captures the essence of hot rodding. Don't feel that you need to tack on a bunch of crap, keep the design nice and clean, like in the sketches and you'll have an awesome case on your hands
woah, that looks sharp! a suggestion: you should get rid of those 2 fans in the front, for one bigger fan, would look way cooler.
holy **** your going to win every car show there is. Man what a great idea i wish i came up with it. i love it keep it up
Wow man, lookin wicked sick. I haven't checked in at CI in awhile, home on dial up Love the way its turnin out, the hinges look great.
Very, very, very, very nice... It really captures the slick, clean sweeping hot-rod lines. Very professional, really looking forward to this.
