Is that materials and labor, or just materials?

Labor baby!!
He may be easy but he ain't CHEAP!!

Whew! Just got in under the wire last night and ploughed some dadoes into four of my enclosure panels. Things should keep rolling now that I've broken the ice. Would've done more but I also wound up rebuilding a loose and saggy cabinet and I had to dig through a coupla' mounds of odds 'n ends heaped up on my table saw to gain access. Included the cabinet and saw pics to take up valuable forum space. Sitting here reflecting on last nights work it occurs to me to ask do you notice anything interesting in the cabinet pic? I also spent around 20 minutes trying to find my dado set but couldn't turn it up. I wonder if I loaned it out? Wound up using a couple of stacked blades to speed up the process.

The cabinet:

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The table saw:

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The panels (note my new logo I'll try to include in my pics from now on):

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Ah poo. Forgot to mention I installed my new dual-core as well. Seems to help a lot with the post-processing.

WOW!!!
Its Radioactive!!!!!

Is it?...Could it be?...Is that PROGRESS I see?

Guess I better get my butt in gear, other wise you will finish that thing before I have completed my space shuttle..

BTW, I like your shop...

Careful. Don't jinx me!Smart money is on your shuttle. Once I've gotten it rearranged and cleaned I'll pop a few more pics into my plog. It's a shambles now. But I've seen A LOT worse - names witheld upon request.

OK, I know my shop was a mess but I have cleaned it up, I can even walk around in it, LOL. I noticed the table saw you have looks like its not on that wide of a base, is it stable? looking forward to seeing your completed PJ one of these days.

Oh yeah, quite stable despite the appearance. It's a very heavy old Craftsman unit not at all like what you might find these days at Sears. I intend to put some anchors into the floor ultimately but that's even farther down my list than the projector. My workshop has been in flux since I moved into the house but the table saw almost certainly will stay right where it is. Also on my list is building a cyclone dust collector and selling off my current Grizzly unit which has served me quite well. The corner of the basement holding my power tools is where everything "without a home" winds up. Things started out completely opposite that since I had to have access to all the tools as we were bujilding but as we gradually settled into the house things got turned around just the opposite. I've been throwing away a lot of "junk" the past couple of weeks and also moving stuff to outbuildings when possible and the workshop and laundry area are the two remaining basement areas to "finish".

I too, have been trying to purge. Finally got to the point where the house reached critical mass and threw up all over itself...(yick!)
Yesterday was the "Sock Rampage". I collected ALL of the socks in the house , matched about 50 pairs for me and Kath and 50-60 pairs for the kids and then promptly threw the rest out...

...and then declared my self "King of the Endless herds of the North American Socks"!

Dont even get me started on my shop..."Redophobia" has set in...

shoulda seen all the stuff I threw out, old payphones, old phone systems, old satellite dishes, old fax machines, metal fencing, dog kennels, just a ton o junk I will never use or be able to sell. I still have a bunch of HD antennas abandoned here when Voom went bust. so much nicer to be able to work in my shop!

More mundane photodocumentation of my meager progress.

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BrainChild oak???

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This enclosure's gonna be the size of a small car. At least no one will be able to walk away with it.

British Colombian oak?
I think they look fine. So how big is this thing really going to be?

I hope you don't want another Snickers for that!!!??? Something like 54 inches tall by 22 x 32 inches. Those are rough numbers. I haven't done set-in-stone drawings nor do I intend to. It'll have scads of room for getting in and adjusting things and future upgrades/mods. At least that's the idea.

It's to house my HTPC as outlined way up in this plog. The way I intend to use it I don't care about how big it is.

I'm really envious of all the sleek, sexy designs out there but there's just no way I could devote the time to anything even remotely pun15her-esque. Yah, he's my hero just like most others. Of course, I've been poring over my Harry Potter books to see if I, too, can conjure up a house-elf.

Hopefully it'll all turn out okay in the end.

I really, really, reeeeaaaalllllyyyyy want to get it running within the next coupla' months. I don't care if it's not all finished and polished - just projecting.

Aw,shucks!
Thanks D-man.
That looks like some really nice oak ply.It should make great enclosure.
Looking foreward to seeing it come together.
Cheers P

Of course.....

He offers no clues on the DIY House Elf.......




Later!

The D-Train rolls on !! nice.

BTW, I used some of those screw inserts into the edge of some plywood this weekend... those things are great ! ... very easy to install/work with...

cheers,
gs

Now that's good news. paladin justifiably noted it may be a tad tricky getting those enormous threads to bite into the plywood without damage. Wanna offer any tips or was it really very easy?

Ironed on and trimmed some edge banding last night.

Mind-designed my actively-cooled ballast compartment.

Scavenged a commercial, pleated air filter to make into custom filters for my projector (see pic).

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We used to drill holes a tad larger ( and I do mean 1 tad...) and then clamp on either side with some scrap to keep it from splitting during the base mount. If its possible, get some glue in there before you screw in the mount to reinforce the plywood.

That is nice ply , BTW...

Pretty much PRECISELY what I had in mind.

The glue worries me a bit. Don't wanna muck up the insert. I'll figure it out.

Nice ply? Coming from YOU that's high praise indeed!!!

Errrr . . . is there a conversion factor from tad to inches?

SJ is right on the money.

The glue acts as a lubricant as much as a reinforcement when it dries.
Clamping the edges is highly recommended esp. with plywood or MDF.
Also don't worry about glue mucking up your threads... if you get a little on them, simply inserting the screw will clean the threads out when dry. You know the whole metal surface tension thing and all. The dry glue will just flake off.

Looking good Mr. D. look forward to more.

Yeah, what he said!
Actually its really nice to see this start moving. Im looking forward to it!

SJ

Glue as a lubricant. Now ain't that a novel idea!?

Kinda like silicone to lubricate an iced-in car tire??

And don't worry . . . y'all have a few more years of suspense AT LEAST to enjoy looking forward to my finished projector.

bahaha.. that comment originally got a whole lot of

when predrilling, just make sure the bit you use is larger than the center of the insert, just as if you were predrilling for a hard wood... you really only want the threads to bite into the wood, you don't want the center part of the insert "pushing" the wood apart. using a drill press made it easy for me as well. as always a test piece is always a good idea.. My inserts were also hex driven so were very easy to put in using a hex key... others i've seen are installed using a flat tip screwdriver, which would likely not be as easy...

I don't think you'll need glue (ha! there I said it !) but it all depends on how tight you plan to tighten those screws. Glue will do as Rem and SJ indicated by strengthening things up... my Dad always gets on me for not using glue though... I just have a hard time taking that step as I always think... "what if I want to do this in the future" ... i'm hopeless that way...

[clink, clink]

gs

Sounds crazy, I know, but IT WORKED!

I wasnt about to risk my 300 US (each) rims...

The main reason I use the glue is to keep the layers of ply from splitting. Those hex mounts arent really designed to go into a laminate sideways. With the glue and the side clamps it allows the threads to bite properly. Once they are in, the glue fills the cracks and voids from the shifting core layers, thus making it behave like a single piece of wood once its dry...

( dont'cha love the word 'Thus'...)

SJ

GS says dry, SJ says wet; no wonder BigD can't finish his PJ - what a conundrum!
The politically correct answer, half each method.

Ok Dad. ... I hear it all the time, and although I know it's the "right" way to do it... I just don't...

ps. wet is better.

gs

Ya shounta' spent dat much on rims anywho.

It was a package deal. Besides They upped my top speed by 7 mph....

Gadgetsmith: Wetter is better....unless its a sleeping bag

Now you REALLY got me goin'. Package deal eh? Sell 'em on ebay and buy some vanilla ones from the salvage yard.

Couldn't the car already go the speed limit? Wet + sleeping + bag. Sounds like mine after too long in the hot tub.

Edit: Yah kids. THIS is how you get to be "omniscient".

What kind of car?

... well "most" of the time that's true...

ok, ok, I can't take it anymore... D. use the glue... please, for the love of god... USE. THE. GLUUUuuuuuue. !!!!

CRX-Si Captain Midnight Edition
Seems like a lifetime ago since I owned that car, but she was fast and the only shine on her was the machined alloy rims. Everything else was jet black. Had the front/rear addon spoilers, flares, extra wides, +1 tires, and was just a fun little pocket rocket.
Some jerk who couldnt be bothered to fix his turn signal turned into me when I passed him and that was pretty much the end of "Windy". She did do one last thing for me though. She stayed clean while we were going sideways about to smack into a 100 year old pine tree and I got her out of the ditch and back on the tar.
She wasnt quite the same after that. Sold her to buy a Saab turbo.

.... I was trying to read this page at work... it tripped the word filter so the firewall banned the page... I think it was some combo of "hard, wood, wetter, lubricant, faster, wet"....

Your firewall does innuendo too?

or the admin has a dirty mind

O.K. So I'm two away from 100 posts! Here's one.

And here's two... What happens now???

Nothin'... :angry:

Still just a fanatic. I can live with that!

And now I'm gonna tell the admins to reset YOUR counter so you'll NEVER be omniscient.

DOH!!! Foiled again!

Are you doing with out the lexan since your using the hot mirror for IR/UV protection? Is this the hot mirror your using Rosco Permacolor Glass Filter - Hot Mirror - 5-1/4" Round?
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller...oughType=search

Yep. No lexan. The hot mirror is an effective UV filter as evidenced in this test I did.

I seem to remember I got the 6.3" round because IIRC it's the best deal per square inch and that little extra just makes for a more convenient build.

Thanks I'm building a 17" vertical with the Osram HQI 400w/d for a light source and I read some where the uv damages the polarizer of the lcd. So I'm going to build a light engine with the hot mirror to contain the heat and uv in it and give it a seperate intake and exhaust.

Sounds good. Kind of what I'm doing as well. Best of luck!

Some guys have run their projectors for quite awhile and report no noticeable damage when NOT using a UV blocker but I'd rather be conservative regarding possible UV damage.

Just a quick post so as I'm subscribed.

I've looked at bits and pieces of your plog before, but I sat down and read the entire thing tonight. Had the best laugh in a long time while reading the middle bit.

Love the light engine and I too can't wait to see more woodwork!