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!