Thread: Fish Tank Stand WIP - Slow Progress

Good work Christos!

You are game... a 1/4 ton of weight on MY stand would make me nervous about "did I design this right?????? "

Good work, it all looks spot on so far.

Glad to see the epoxy tinting went well.

I have goldfish and Koi (outside, in the cold), if your tank in inside then you should be able to have many more fish species as options than I do.
Bristlenose catfish are something I cant have.... they eat alge like demons (or bristlenose catfish ) and look rather cool.

You didn't tell me you had a bandsaw!
We could do a material v/s bandsaw use swap. ?

Some more progress today. I was preparing the stock for the doors. The wood that I have is a little cupped and it needed to be planed down flat so that I could put this throught the thicknesser. I originally attempted this a few days ago but ran into trouble as I could not get things quite right with the plane.

Today I figured out the problem with the help of some of the forum members and planed away. Took a about 2 hours to flatted the pieces, then I put these through the thicknesser. I left about 2 mill from final dimenion so that I can see how this wood reacts. I expect it to be pretty stable but I though that better safe then sorry.

I finished cleaning up the epoxy on the holes that I filled and made another batch for the ones that sank a little. Also started on some of the back ones but no one will see those once this is all put together, just a way of using what I had left of the epoxy.

Will get some photos when time permits.

It's looking good mate.

Here are the photos of the stock for the doors.

Attachment 140650

Really nothing special as most of this is straight grain. I need the doors to be 528mm in width so from these pieces should be able to get that. I have stacked these flat to see what if anything happens in terms of cupping and twisting.

This picture is of the holes that I filled with the epoxy with a black tint.

Attachment 140651

Christos nice progress good to see I am not the only one who measure twice and still has to make another one on occasions.

Not sure about using MDF near water unless its well sealed then again kitchen, bathrooms, laundry's .

Looking good Christos!!

That looks to be about the same dimensions as a similar sized unit my neighbour had. He had no problems and it was made from radiata.

Hi Christos, you are going well mate, waiting to see Nemo swimming around on his lovely new tank stand.

Originally Posted by wheelinround

Not sure about using MDF near water unless its well sealed then again kitchen, bathrooms, laundry's .

I have though of this and do have a plan. I will be doing some testing to see what the results will be in a couple of weeks. At the moment just trying to get to the next stage of the build and that would be the side and back panels.

Will need the grooves done to the thickness of the panels. Looks like I am going to need more wood.

It has been a little while since I had been able to do some on this stand.

I have been working in two stages at the moment. I prepared the stock for the doors and left them stacked to see what if any movement. Well these are pretty straight and flat.

The second stage I was working on the panels for the sides and back of the stand. This is the piece that I select.
Attachment 142074

This piece was cupped and had some splits so I have some work to do in order to get something useable. I crosscut it into three pieces, then ripped them into another three pieces. Getting rid of the cracks and splits that I came across. Ran them over the jointer and then through the thicknesser to clean up the surface.

From what I had I needed another 200mm. The thickness that I had in these boards was 20mm, thus the most logicall option was to bandsaw them in half. I am making the panels only 6mm thickness. So I have some play in error.

The fence on the bandsaw is short and I knew that I could not be able to cut very well. Found some scrap that was at 90 degrees so I clamped that to the table and got what I needed. Again throught the thicknesser one at a time until all pieces were at 6mm thickness. This is what I got.
Attachment 142077

Some have already been used to make this.

Attachment 142076

And this.

Attachment 142075

Then I should be able to get both together to make one large panel.

Attachment 142078

It is just that I ran out of clamps. While waiting for the next lot to dry.

It has been a week since I managed to get back to this project. There has been a lot of rain over the last week and the panels that I have glued up have started to warp or more like cup. I am guessing that this was because of the glue up and I might have taken them out of the clamps too early.

Well the truth is bugger if I know.

So I stopped and switched to a different tack. I router the grove where the panels are going to sit in. Sides and back. I found a crappy router bit that came with a router and started to use this. The first test cuts were good and the panel thickness was about right with the router bit. Picked up the first one and started the first pass. It was getting harder to push so I switched off the router and found that the bit was much higher then what I originally thought I set it at. I checked the settings and found that nothing moved. Only thing left was the router bit might be coming out. Checked to see if this was tight, it was. I squatted down next to the table and turned on the router, watching the router bit. Started to come higher. Switched off the router and put this bit in the bin.

Started looking for another bit and found one. Cripes bits coming out of everywhere. I really do need to do a clean up. Tested this to ensure it was not going to move. Router on, off, on, off, on .......etc. Just one more way of upsetting the neighbours.

The grooves are now completed.

During the time that I was gluing up the panels I also started on the drawbore joinery. This was my first attempt at doing this type of joinery to complement the mortise and tenon. Well more like the fact that I had tight joints to begin with and after squaring up the corners the joints were no longer tight. Personally I am going to look at it this way. Just one more skill to bugger up. Couple more holes and checks and that will be done.

Will post pictures soon.

Christos a laugh of a read.

Ok whats the router you have if its a GMC small one they were renown for spitting bits so please be careful one fellow on here had to turf his router it snapped the housing.

This weather is terrible for working wood, rain what rain ah yes Sydney near airport ain't you.

The bit was from a gmc router. The router that I am using is a Triton.

This morning I managed to get back into this project. I had a plan of doing the glue up of the side panels. Not very stress full as I was going to use drawbore joinery. The first thing that I needed to do was sand all the parts going through with the various grits of sand paper. I then set about doing a dry fit for the final sizing of the panels.

To my surprise both sides needed the same size panel. I did have to take off a very slight pass through the thicknesser. I knew that I was going to get snipe so a very light pass from the inside.

Another dry fit and this time the panel actually floated.

I completed the final sanding of the panels and I was ready for the glue up, clamps, rag, wax paper, masking tape, sticky tape now what did I do with the glue.

Yeah I found it.

I am just going to divert a little. The male portion of the population have created an image of not reading instruction. At least that is what we tell the female side of the population. So all females reading this please stop here. In reality we do read the instruction, we just don't tell or allow the females to see us reading the instructions.

I read the back of the glue bottle and found that I needed a temperature of at least 13degrees Celsius. I check the tho-mentor and found it was 14 degrees Celsius.

All females reading please continue from here.

As the weather was colder then I would like I thought that I would just swap to epoxy. For some reason I find that using epoxy is a little less stressful as I know how long I have before it sets. I am using the cold weather hardener for the set. I will try and take a few photos on Sunday when I take this out of the clamps.

Originally Posted by Christos

Will post pictures soon.

I will also post a few pictures of this when I do the next lot of pictures.