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!