Project FiveWood

Welcome to the Project FiveWood Build Log!

entries
The hold outs	Stuff I didn't post when I was working on it.
concepts	The concept images create before, during and after the project
The wrap-ups	The final work up to the end.
06.04.08	Feet, chassis base, polycoats and more
05.25.08	Polycoats, side door work, drive bays complete, power / reset button work
05.17.08	Side panel # 2 plus other work
04.25.08	Front panel work
04.07.08	New rails, front panel begins, T-slots & backplate work
03.29.08	New drive bays (third and final edition)
03.20.08	Fan guards, PSU enclosure, wire-way and sander
03.07.08	Barkley panel, drive bays and top rails
02.28.08	More on the Barkley panel
02.25.08	Working on the Barkley panel
02.23.08	Adorning the new drive bay and beginning of the dynamic side panel
02.17.08	New drive bay +
02.07.08	More back panel and motherboard tray gets finished
02.01.08	Top panel, mobo tray and Dr. Brown
01.26.08	motherboard tray and bottom panel, back panel and top panel
01.19.08	motherboard tray and templates and things
01.14.08	5.25" drive bay work
01.13.08	concepts and 3.5" drive bays
01.09.08	mock drive bays
01.06.08	frame work
01.05.08	wood piles and blocks

01.03.08

Okay, here comes my first mod/build for 2008.

My last build, PhaseIII is complete and will be making it's first magazine appearance in about a month.

While I am a big golf fan (I play 2 to 5 times a week), this project has nothing to do with golf despite the name.

The name is derived from my desire to use as many different types of wood as possible in this project.
The following types/kinds of wood will NOT be used:

-any type of pine
-ash
-MDF
-plywood
-veneers

The wood types I know I will be using include:

-mahogany
-white oak
-red oak
-figured walnut
-maple

That covers at least five to justify the name anyway. I imagine I'll be mixing in some other types as I go along.
My intention is to use wood in almost every part of the build.
I won't use the waterjet for wood cuts. Wood tends to swell on the waterjet anyway.
This was to be Project Bubinga, but at $14/board foot. I would have to make the case very very small.

Why?

As I mentioned above, I just got finished with the Phase III project.
Lots of metal work there and it was my FIRST project with that much aluminum.
Granted, it utilized the waterjet a lot and I love the waterjet, but I found out how difficult it can be to prep and finished aluminum.
I'm glad I did it, I learned a lot, but I've been missing my wood working projects.

Another thing I'm going to do here is "shoot from the hip" a little more.
I usually do a lot of design planning, but I am going to do what's necessary up front and then let the creative "juices" flow.
This means I'll probably wind up with a book shelf instead of a computer case, but it will be a nice one.

01.04.08

As I said, I'm doing the bare minimum for design planning.

Here's where things started:

It doesn't look like much, but it let me get thinking anyway.
I used my regular software (Lightwave3D) to get dimensions so that I know things will fit:

mockup A

mockup B

mockup drive bays

These are all mocked up for dimensions and I imagine I will change these as I go along.
I intend to connect the parts together using dowels so that I can 'tack' the parts together without permanently gluing anything until I have to.
This allows a lot of flexibility in the build.

01.05.08:back to top of page

The good part is when I've got something to do in the shop. Now that I have some idea of what I'm gonna do, I can start making saw dust.

Here's some of the wood I'll be using for this project:

It looks like a pile of scrap until I get it cleaned up.

rough plane it:

Split it up:

Here I have the frame parts cut up and planed down:

Here's one of my favorites, the cracked walnut.
This wood comes in bricks that are 5" x 5" x 10".
These are pieces too small to use for gun stock so I can get them for about $4.
This one I have planed on four sides to clean it up:

then split it up:

I'll use this for accents and decorative parts of the front panel.

01.06.08:back to top of page

I started to get the frame pieced together so that I can get the marks for the dowels so I can start drilling holes.

What I'm going for here is just the frame itself:

Here I'm just fitting stuff together to check the cuts:

I've got the bottom and top pieces framed up:

Here I've got the frame "framed up":

Here it is just pieced together using dowels with NO glue. I'm avoiding glue as long as I can.
If you look here, the frame has verticals that are mahogany and horizontals that are white oak.
I plan to keep the wood selection mixed up this way.

Well, I've caught the build log up on this project. As I progress, I'll keep posting updates.

01.09.08:back to top of page

My plan is to keep the frame in "mock-up" form and work on the inside structure for this case. So I've started with the 3.5" Drive bay.

The rough design is as so:

I started with a mockup. I cut 2 different side panels and cut single slat rails for the drives.

After the glues dries, I cut the side panels apart and trimmed the edges:

I then put it together with quick clamps to test the concept and measurements:

This will work. So I started with the mahogany:

Here I've got the walnut worked into the center:

I've still got to do some trimming and sanding and add more accents of walnut.
Here, I've got maple rails rough cut and placed to check measurements.

I'm going to go back and work on the side panels a little more before gluing these in.

01.12.08: back to top of page

Thinking some more about the final look. Here's Some updated concept images.

01.13.08 back to top of page

More work on the 3.5" Drive bay. This build is going to take more time than I originally planned and this is okay. I just need the extra time to be able to spend the time necessary to make everything right. With wood projects, I always take a little longer. I'm pushing the expected completion date (ECD)out to 3.15.08

Here I am cutting the top and bottom pieces to fit on the 3.5" drive bay.

I'm using the old technique of cutting plastic templates to cut the wood by.

While working on this, I also started on the 5.25" drive bay. Same deal, just wider and shorter.

Here I've got the parts rough-cut and pieced together.

Once I have the sides of the drive bay ready, I make the rails twice as long and glue them to both the sides sitting next to each other. This way, I can cut between the two side panels and the rails will be better aligned.

Here I've got some stand-in optical drives to check measurements.

01.14.08 back to top of page

Progress? Not much, but I did get my Sony D717 camera back. This is a 4 year old 6 mb digital that is my favorite of all digital cameras. I've been using a few others including 2 Canon 6mb and 8mb cameras, bit this Sony takes better pictures. The CCD went out on it about two months ago. I checked the Sony web site and the were supporting a recall on this camera. I sent it in and viola! They sent my camera back with a brand new body! So I did a few things to warrant taking a couple of pictures to post.

Here's where the 5.25" drive bay stands now.

and the 3.5" drive bay (nothing is lacquered yet)

Here's a part of subproject "sunshine". This is what I am building to test some ideas I have for a very important part of this build. Can you guess what that may be?

01.19.08:back to top of page

I've been kind of jumping around on things for this project. I've had to do a lot of little test items to see if my ideas will work.

Anyway, I decided to knock out the motherboard tray. Again, I am building a component without really knowing how this will mount into the case. I had planned to make it up as I go and this will work out fine I'm sure.

Here's the board I built from joining red oak and mahogany. I used my surface planer to get to about 0.20" thick.

I pulled out some polystyrene for making a motherboard template. When I was cutting these things with a waterjet, it required that I measured out the motherboard and make a CAD drawing to cut from. This time, I'm going analog.

I'm going to put an eVGA 780i motherboard in this build. I used my spare 680i to mark out the template. Both are standard ATX form and identical in almost every way physically.

Marked up polystyrene

Cut and drilled polystyrene

I marked it up for future use.

Marking up the wood for the cutting!

and here is the rough cut motherboard tray. I always leave a big hole behind the CPU so I can easily mount CPU cooling without having to remove the motherboard. After this step, I tested the strength of this tray before subjecting it to sanding and....

...I broke it in half! Alright! So, I'm gluing again. Oh well, that's why I tested it.

I also have a CALL FOR IDEAS: I am contemplating how I will connect the motherboard standoffs to this wooden motherboard tray. I've though of a couple of things that I don't want to do. Please let me know if you've got a good idea for it. Thanks.

I thought I'd take a moment to show off an old 'mod'. In my shop at home, I needed a computer. Why? I don't know, music, podcast, internet access, we always need a PC nearby right?!

Here is a shot of the monitor. I took an old 15 inch LCD I had and tore it apart. Right down to nothing but the screen and electronics. I had a frame I had made that fit it nicely. I then mounted it over this workbench.

I've got an old laptop (PIII 933 MHz with 512 Mb RAM) mounted below the workbench with an on/off switch extended out for easy access.

I took an old (yes, everything's old) keyboard tray/ monitor stand and extracted the drawer portion. I mounted this under my workbench so I can tuck it out of the way.

Viola!! It's nice to be able to have this running in there. I have it on a wireless NIC to get on my home network. Not exactly an extreme mod, but quite functional.

Allright, I'll have more progress soon.

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