He's going the distance

Like a ghost, it peers out from the darkness

When last we joined our hero, he was unsure whether or not he had enough spray adhesive to complete the remaining panels of his case.  Did he have enough glue?  Was the project delayed?  Will the RoadRunner ever be caught by Will E. Coyote???

* drumroll * 

There was enough glue!  After laying out the strips, I tried to spray down the pieces as fast as I could, making sure to cover the surfaces but get through it without running out.

The last eight inches of the final panel was when the can begun sputtering and the spray dropped off.  A few more vigorous shakes of the can yielded the absolute last amount of glue possible, and was just enough to thoroughly cover all the parts.

At this point, all of the necessary pieces have been laminated.  The final four panels are currently under weight, and will be ready to work with after 8pm tonight.  However, I won't be doing anything with them until tomorrow morning, because tonight is movie night!

After cutting all of the side panels, I discovered that the piece that I was going to use for the front panel actually has too much of a curve to it still, and I'll need to use it for the back piece instead.  The front piece, while riveted all the way across the bottom rail, will have breaks in the top rail since it will have cut-outs for the latches, and thus the rail going across the top can't be relied upon to help correct the warp of the wood.

The back piece however will have continuous rail, and thus will help keep the board in line.

This means that all of the markings I did on the "front" panel for the latch cutouts are now useless, and I'll have to re-mark them on the new front panel.

I didn't take a lot of pictures last night, as I was in a hurry to make sure to finish all the stuff I needed to get done while the sun was still up and I had sufficient light to see the cuts.

However, here you can see the lid starting to get more and more assembled:

Doubling as a storage area for parts!

Tonight I will finish up riveting on the lid side panels, and the tongue and groove extrusion pieces.

Tomorrow is the final push to get everything done.  Stuff that still needs to happen: mark and cutout spaces for the latches on the new front panel, mark and cutout spaces on the sides for the handles, drill out and rivet the rails for the wall sides, seal the case together so I can ratchet clamp it together, install the latches, handles, and hinge, and then finish off with the lid clamps and nylon lid stays.

With any luck, the next blog post will be about how everything is completed.  My friend Craig already has a few ideas for cases he'd like, and there is the hallway corner linen pantry project that will be next up on the build list!

Sticky situation

Casterboards in the process of being attached

Things have been progressing really steadily!

As you can see by the images, I got the casterboards bolted onto the bottom of the case, and bolted the casters onto the casterboards.  While normally I'd probably want to hold off on adding the wheels until after the case had been finished, there was an importantly critical reason as to why I skipped ahead a few steps.

I took a "brake" for this photo

More on that in a moment.

Before I could bolt the casterboards on, I had to rivet the ball corners onto the bottom panel

The top panel for the lid is completely riveted, and ready to accept the side panels.

All lined up, ready to get fastened down

I still have to cut out the latch spaces in the front lid panel, but the rest of the panels are set to get riveted into the rails.

The lid pieces, ready to get finished

Once that is done, I can figure out how long the tongue and groove extrusions will need to be for the front panels, and start cutting those out. 

The big task I have on deck for tonight is to cut the side walls of the case to their final height, cut the ABS panels for them, and get them started on being laminated.

My current goal is to have the case finished before Saturday evening; I'm on the schedule to play drums the following morning at church, and I have to bring my kit to use for the pre-worship rehearsal, because we rehearse in a separate room from the sanctuary (where a permanent drumkit is already setup).  Since I'm close enough to completing my case, I want to put it to the test and use it to haul my gear on Sunday.

However, there might be a slight hiccup.  When I checked the can of high-temp spray adhesive, it feels surprisingly lighter than I figured it would for the amount of laminating I have been doing.  The manufacturer says that it should last through an entire 8x4 sheet of plywood and ABS plastic, and I'm certainly using less material (and thus a smaller surface area) than that, but I'm actually sort of worried that I might not have enough to complete the final four panels of laminate.  Should I run out, I'm going to hafta order some more from Reliable Hardware, and I wouldn't get it in time to finish the case by Sunday.

This would be aggravating (I am an extremely impatient type), but as they recommend a very specific high-temp spray adhesive, and I've had excellent results so far with the stuff I'm using, I'm very reluctant to switch to another brand of glue out of convenience just to get the case finished by my arbitrarily set deadline.  Ultimately, I'd rather have to wait another few weeks to actually use my case in action, and have it finished properly, than use some other glue out of desperation and risk it not working nearly as well.

(ways glue can not work properly - Reliable Hardware did a number of tests with the Keyston Hi-Temp spray adhesive they recommend, and another "leading brand" glue, which I can only assume is 3M.  Their tests showed that when exposed to an hour's worth of direct sunlight *after* the glue has cured for 24 hours, the panels glued down with the "other" adhesive puffed up in the middle as the glue and ABS expanded due to the heat - something I do not want to have happen to my case)

We'll see if I have enough.  I fear that I was perhaps too liberal on how much I applied to the first few panels.  Then again, I've only laminated two large panels, and four smaller strips.  I'm holding out hope that I'll have enough glue to make this all stick.

The reason I didn't apply laminate to the side walls of the case until now is because there was a very crucial test I needed to perform: when I made my initial case measurements and determined how large it can be to still safely fit into my trunk, I neglected to consider the diagonal clearance that the case has when it gets angled into and out of my car.  There wasn't really an easy way for me to check that beforehand without a lot of complicated math, so I came up with a slightly less complicated solution:

I'd get the bottom and top panels of the case completed, and take the side walls that are currently 9" in height (having had 3" removed for the side panels for the lid), attach them to the top and bottom (but not rivet them down), clamp it all together, and see if it can get in and out of my trunk.

Fits PERFECTLY!

When the entire case height is 9", it fits into my trunk with ease.  Even with the extra height of 1/4" that the lid extrusions will add, I still am able to get everything in and out of the car with a tiny amount of room to spare. 

However, the original case height of 1' simply won't work.  At that height, it's too tall to fit through the clearance of the trunk opening (but would still have room to stand upright if it managed to get IN the trunk).  My test proved that I need to cut the case walls down to 6", and keep the lid sides at 3", for a new total case height of 9".  The loss of three inches of vertical space isn't going to impact the storage abilities of the case, either; my current bag is only 7 inches high when completely filled, but is less than a foot wide.  Since the case is a foot and a half in width, there is more space horizontally for everything to fit.

Keep your fingers crossed that I have enough adhesive to be able to finish off all the side panels, and when next I update, I should have loads more done!  In addition to the laminating, I need to cut double-angle extrusions for the sides of the lid panels, trim down the extrusions for the larger case walls, and cut the last of the tongue and groove extrusions for the front side of the case.

Completion is near!

This stuff is riveting!

Big Bottom, I got 'em

Behold; the first panel that is finished!

When I got home from work on Friday night, the bottom piece was ready to have the weights removed from it.   Eager to get started, I attached a side rail along the top edge of the board, and began drilling out the rivet holes.

Prior to riveting, I put the rails and corners on so I could see how it would look when finished

Here's what it looks like with the casterboards on

After that was done, I decided to try out a test rivet on a scrap piece of rail first, just so I could get a feel for the process and what to expect.

Sacrificial test rivet

Once satisfied that I wouldn't mess things up too badly, I picked up the rivet gun and set to work.  The first rail I did ended up being a bit of a learning experience - when I drilled into the metal rails, I didn't realize that I needed to drill at a slight angle instead of straight through.  Hence, the first set of rivets weren't completely even and some didn't end up having enough clearance to have washers on them.

In case it's hard to tell, the top row of rivets were the first I had done

Before I had started on the rivet project however, I sliced out a piece of laminate for the top panel of the case, got it all slathered up with adhesive, and stuck it under some weight for twenty-four hours.

Gluuuuuue

The panel with guide rails laid over top

You may notice that I laid two strips of wood across the top panel.  This is a clever suggestion by the Reliable Hardware people - when you are ready to lay the laminate over the plywood, especially for larger pieces, they recommend that you lay out strips of wood so that you can lay the laminate on top of those boards while you position the ABS laminate over the piece it's going to be adhered to.  Because the glue only bonds with itself (after tacking onto the surface of whatever you are gluing), the laminate won't stick to the strips, so you can position the laminate and line it up before you press the two pieces together.  Once they are together, it's supremely difficult to separate them if you make a mistake.

I didn't actually have a lot of time to work on the case that night, so once I finished the first rail, I went to go eat dinner and relax for the evening.

One rail out of four done

The next morning I finished off the other three rails, drilling them out and getting them riveted on.

Spent rivet mandrils

Only umpteen bazillion more to go!

From there I moved onto cutting out the side panels for the lid, and then carving up some laminate to go on top of them.

Making the cut

In between getting the lid panels ready to be laminated, I also began drilling out the mounting holes onto the casterboards that the bolts that attach them to the case bottom will pass through.  I'm going to end up going with six bolts per casterboard to secure them.

Ready for glue

While I was waiting for the adhesive to tack up, I began putting all my tools and stuff away.  Since the bottom panel was already riveted, and the top panel was still curing under weight, I didn't have much else to work on at the moment.  The only aluminum rails I have left to cut are the tongue and groove for the front of the case, but I will need to hold off on those until I have measured out where the latches will be installed, as the rails along the front edge of the lid won't span the entire length of the lid since they will have spots cut out for the latches.

Side panels with laminate

As you can see, the laminate doesn't completely cover the lid side panels from corner to corner; this is intentional.  The laminate expands slightly as it bonds to the wood, and the wood that is visible currently will be covered up by the aluminum rails once they are installed, anyways.

Give 'em the clamp!

Since these side panels were small enough (and the lid panel still had time left under the sandbag weight), I used my ratchet bar clamps to apply pressure to them while they cure.

All the lid side panels curing

With all the side panels getting their laminate on, I finished cleaning up, closed up "shop," and headed to the cinema to watch some dinosaurs totally wreck shit up in 3D.

Hold onto your butts!

Stuck in the middle with you

ABS laminated plywood

Last night I "finished" the first panel: got the ABS laminate glued onto the plywood for the case bottom!  It's currently sitting in my garage with about six and a half hours left to go before the adhesive has cured enough and I can remove the weight from on top of it.

These sandbags had some pressing matters to attend to

One of the casterboards needed a little touch-up paint around the edges, so I masked off the top of the board (which doesn't need to be painted, and it wouldn't hurt to have paint on, but I'm an OCD perfectionist) and gave it a couple more blasts.

The other casterboard however looked good enough that I fished out two casters from my parts box, and bolted them on.

The casters got a little physically attached to my casterboard - Ha cha cha cha cha!

This was a touch premature, however.  I mostly did it for my own edification, as I'm going to remove the casters from the board, and drill two sunken holes under where the casters go to install the bolts that will attach the caster boards to the bottom of the case.  A third bolt for each casterboard will be installed in the dead center of the boards for additional support.

My reasons for doing this, as opposed to just installing bolts on the surface of the board are as follows: as you can see in the pictures, the space between the casters is not enough to install three bolts.  Two would be a stretch, and the load for them really shouldn't be that far in towards the center.  Putting a bolt each under the caster mounting plates in sunken holes, and then a third bolt in the middle of the board will ensure that it has enough support, and also make the board look that much nicer.

Ready to roll!

The only concern I have is that having the bolts that hold the casterboard to the case bottom be directly in center with the casters might mean that any traumatic force applied to the casters/casterboards might transfer directly up the bolts that are in the bottom of the case and result in damages to the case bottom, which would essentially defeat the purpose of the casterboards entirely.  They are installed primarily to provide a smaller point of failure should anything happen to any of the casters, instead of that damage applying to something much harder to replace, like the bottom of the case.

The only alternative is to install two bolts almost next to the casters, and hope that the sheer forces of anything damaging would not compromise the case bottom.

I made a slight mistake when cutting the first piece of ABS laminate off the roll: I cut with the textured side down.  This is fine, and didn't mess up anything, but the recommendation is that you cut with the textured side facing up, so that the blade of your safety knife won't tend to wander from the line you are cutting.  I ended up using my straight-edge guide to make the cuts anyways, so it was no big deal.

Shiny plastic!

I didn't have access to enough cardboard at the time to lay out on the driveway to protect the entire roll, and even when I OCD sweep the hell out of my driveway, there is still enough shmutz on the ground that I didn't want the side that would have glue applied to it getting all crudded up from the ground.  I'm probably going to make all future cuts with the excess of the roll hanging off my work table, and cut it on the table with some cardboard underneath.

Adhesive getting all tack-ified

When I sprayed the plastic with adhesive, I think my pattern was a little too tight.  I can probably spray from a little higher up and not use quite so much, otherwise I'll run through my glue before I am finished.

There wasn't really enough light out to take a picture of the wood, and the flash on my phone wasn't enough to make the glue really visible on it, so I don't have a picture here.  But basically, the glue adheres to itself strongly, so what you do is spray both pieces, let the glue tack up, and then sandwich them together.  Once that's done, you need to apply constant weight/pressure across the two halves so that the glue is able to cure over twenty four hours or so.

After I had set the panel up to be squashed for a day, I moved onto the final task for the evening: cutting another set of tongue and groove rails for one of the sides.  At this point, I have half of the tongue and groove extrusions cut out for the lid.  The new blade on the hacksaw meant it took me only a fraction of time to get these two pieces cut and ready.

This image is rated R

Tonight I need to address cutting the lid side panels (a task I keep putting off), and after checking the bottom panel to see how the laminate is doing on the surface, I may start drilling out rivet holes and begin riveting the rails to the bottom of the case.  The sooner I do that, the sooner I can work on getting the mounting holes for the casterboards drilled into the bottom of the case, and the sooner I can undertake an important but CRUCIAL task: making sure that the case WITH casters on will be able to be loaded and unloaded from my trunk, or if I will need to trim down the side walls to add extra clearance.  Exactly HOW I will do that is a topic for a future post!

What progress looks like

Paint it black

Due to a number of mitigating reasons, I ended up not getting to do a whole lot of work on the case last night.  There were other matters that I felt required my attention far more than this.

However, I was able to get *some* stuff accomplished; chiefly, I applied a coat of paint to the caster boards.

Kinda hard to see (it was already dark out), but they are painted

As you can see in the picture (or rather, NOT see terribly easily), most of the paint dried pretty quickly on the boards even though it was night and the temperature was dropping steadily.  In this photo, the long straight sides haven't been painted yet, but I hit those with a couple blasts after this shot was taken.  When I looked at them under the light in the garage (spray painted these outside on the driveway for ventilation purposes), it didn't seem like I would need to use a second coat.  I'll have a better idea in daylight when I get home from work.

While those were drying, I stood and contemplated the box itself, wondering if I should begin disassembling it and prepping the panels for laminating.  As it was already dark out, and there was a slight breeze, I decided to hold off on getting everything sprayed down with adhesive, and instead measured out and began cutting the tongue and groove extrusion rails for the lid of the case.

Making a mitre cut on the tongue/groove rail

I managed to get one piece cut when I decided to swap out the hacksaw blade, as it felt like it was getting dull.  The second piece was sliced much quicker, and they both mated together perfectly.

A match made in a workshop

That was more or less quitting time at that point.  After gathering up all the tools and shelving them, I took the new tupperware containers I bought at Target and dumped the rivets and washers into them.  Previously they were just sitting in the bags they came in, and I wanted to have them secured in sealed containers to avoid losing anything while I'm working.

There are a bunch of clouds in the sky, and the forecast is predicting rain, so there may not be a whole lot that I'll be able to do tonight.  While I was hoping to begin laminating some of the panels one night this week after work, it looks like now I'm going to have to wait until at least Friday evening, or even Saturday before I can begin tackling that.  Before I can, I need to cut the side panels for the lid.  I might be able to get away with doing that in the garage should it be raining out (turns out there is a patch of floor that is just level enough for one table to stand on without having a sickly lean), but failing that, I'll work on cutting up the remaining pieces of tongue and groove extrusions for the lid.

If the caster boards don't need a further coat of paint, I will probably bolt the casters onto them to mark them as finished.

For no good reason, a picture of a caster!

The big debate I'm having right now is whether or not I want to paint the inside of the case black, or leave it bare wood.  I decided that I'm gonna leave it up to my readers to help me decide (even though I have no idea how many unique visitors I actually have).  The bottom of the case will either have carpet, or a piece of foam inserted later.  As for the rest of the inside, that's up to YOU!  Answer the following poll below, and help me out!

feedback surveys

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'

It's been far too long!

Our weekend trip to Disneyland was most excellent!  It definitely ranks up there in the top five trips we've taken (and we've been there a LOT).  I'd go into lots more detail about the trip, but...

This blog is about BUILDING things!

We chose to drive home on Monday (instead of Sunday) for several reasons: it gave us an extra full day to spend at the park, we would be driving home during daylight hours instead of in the dark, AND.... I got to swing by Reliable Hardware to pick up the remaining components for my case!

Shiny!

When I found out that they were located in North Hollywood, which we would conveniently pass by on our way home from Anaheim, I decided not to ship the materials and save the delivery cost by picking them up in person.  On any future road cases, I will either have to time my projects to fit around trips to Southern California, or pay the shipping fees. 

(Additionally, it turns out that all of the parts that I ordered from DIY Road Cases came from Anaheim - for future cases, I'm going to see if I can pick up stuff from their warehouse there as well, instead of paying thirty bucks or more in shipping costs!)

The parts that I picked up from them were as follows:

• 3' long piano hinge
• 2 - 3" swivel casters (no brakes)
• 2 - 3" swivel casters (with brakes)
• 8 - Ball corners
• 8 - Corner clamps
• 2 - Recessed handles
• 2 - Recessed latches
• J-Roller (used to smooth out ABS once adhered to the plywood)
• Keyston Heavy Duty Hi-Temp spray adhesive

 AND most importantly

•  1 sheet of black ABS laminate

 Once it was all loaded up in the back of the truck, we hit the road and headed home.

We got home late enough on Monday evening that it was too late to really resume any work on my case, and was exhausted from driving for most of the day, so I put all my new wares into the garage and went to bed.

After work yesterday, I ended up needing to run a few errands before I could work on anything.  First up was a trip to Home Depot to buy a replacement set of drill bits, as I managed to break the ONE drill bit I needed to use for drilling out holes in the aluminum and plywood that the rivets will insert into (KIDS: remember to ALWAYS remove a drill bit from a power drill you are not going to be using for a while.  Failure to do so will guarantee that you will break the bit when the power drill invariably falls off your work bench onto the concrete floor.  It turns out that drills can survive such abuse; the bits not as much).

I also picked up a set of tee-nuts, bolts and washers to use for the caster boards.

My next stop was to pick up dinner for the wife and myself.

After mealtime, I headed out to the garage to continue work.  Since the caster boards are already cut, I decided to focus on them first.  After laying down the casters and marking where the bolt holes will need to go, I drilled out the holes and filed away the splinters around the drill holes.  Next I took the tee-nuts, which are little receptacles for bolts that have barbed teeth on them to latch into the wood, and hammered them in using my rubber mallet (which won't damage the metal or the wood).

Teez Nutz

Caster bolt holes drilled

Tee-nuts installed

Once that was done, I took one of the casters and tested it out by bolting it to the board.  Everything fit perfectly! 

Caster bolted on

After making sure that everything would sit good and tight, I removed the caster from the board. 

I'm going to be painting my casterboards black, but it was too late into the evening to drag out some cardboard and apply a few coats to the boards.  Instead, I put all the tools back on the shelf, and headed inside to get some sleep.

Tonight after work I will be tackling several major tasks: I'm going to spray paint the casterboards (starting off with one coat, and see how they look and if I need to apply additional coats), and cut some of the ABS laminate and begin adhering it to the bottom panel and the top panel, which will be the first pieces that I will begin to rivet the aluminum extruded rails onto.  If I have time, I will cut the side panels for the lid, and also begin the process of measuring out the distances for each rivet to be installed onto the case (I'm going to install rivets every three inches).  If I have even more time, I may start drilling out the aluminum. 

As it stands, I may very well have this case finished by next weekend, depending on how much time I can dedicate to working on it this weekend.  Once each plywood panel has had ABS adhered to it, it needs about 24 hours of time for the glue to cure and dry.  With any luck, I should be able to get all of the ABS bonded to the plywood and the glue dried by Saturday, so I can begin the laborious task of hand riveting the side rails onto the case.

It's beginning to look a lot like Case-mas!

The box, mostly assembled!

Loads of progress made tonight!

Which is good, because this is really the last night I have to work on the case for about a week.  Tomorrow night my wife and I are going to go see Lincoln at the Oaks dollar theater, and then the rest of the week will be busy with Easter weekend stuff.

Earlier today I placed my order with Reliable Hardware, which will supply me with almost all of the rest of the materials I will need to finish this project.

Today I was also able to locate plank foam for half of what it costs through either DIY Cases or Reliable Hardware.  I may end up throwing some 1/2" thick polyethylene foam in the bottom of the case to help cushion the stands and protect the bottom from gear being dropped into it.

After a lovely dinner, tonight I managed to finish up cutting all of the double-angle rails that will attach to the outside corners of the case.  Until I have the panels riveted together for the sides, I won't be able to get a totally accurate measurement for how long the tongue and groove extrusions need to be cut, so I'm holding off on doing anything with those for a bit.

All twelve side edge rails

I need to file down the burrs on the edges

Since I had the rails done, I decided to do something whacky: put everything together!

I used one of my ratcheting band clamps to hold it all together

The side rails don't go up all the way; there's a reason for that

You may notice in the pictures that the vertical rails don't extend all the way up the sides of the case.  That was no accident or mistake.  The lid will be three inches tall, and the side panels for the lid will be cut off the tops of the larger side panels next week.  The point where the vertical rails stop is where the tongue and groove extrusion rails will be.

The warp of the panels is also fairly visible in these pictures.  Again, once the wood panels have been riveted to the aluminum rails, the curve should all but vanish.  Once I have bonded the ABS laminate to the plywood, I can begin the following tasks: measuring, marking, and drilling out the holes for the rivets along the aluminum rails, marking and cutting out the spaces that the recessed handles and latches will be set, and start riveting everything together.  

Now imagine a hard foam padding on the bottom

As of this evening, the construct is technically functioning as a case, as I took some of my drum stands, and placed them inside the walls of the box.  It's already doing what it's supposed to!

It's technically a case at this very moment

Now that I have seen the interior space of the case, I'm seriously considering inserting a divider wall to break up the inside into two separate compartments; one for the bases of the stands, and the other for cymbal boom arms.  Obviously, the section for the boom arms would be significantly smaller than the main chamber, which will hold the larger, heavier pieces.  I haven't completely decided yet.  Doing so would require ordering another special extrusion piece, which is designed to hold dividers in place and secure them firmly to the case walls.  This of course costs more money, and I'm going to be just squeezing this endeavor under budget if I do end up getting foam to line the bottom with.

Another thing I'm debating on is whether or not I will spray paint the interior of the case black, or leave it as the unfinished wood.  While I will likely put polyethylene foam on the bottom of the case to support the stands and protect the bottom, I am probably not going to line the case walls with foam.  

Since I won't be working on this project for the next few days, chances are good that I won't be updating the blog until I resume construction.  When next I post, I will be in possession of the last few components I need, and should ideally have everything finished up within a week to two weeks at the most!