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Originally Posted by BiscuitSlayer
IN -
Your stand looks fantastic! I love the way everything came up square and true. Planing all of that wood looks like it paid off big time. Skinning the stand and doing the finishing work should be a snap since you have a great base to work from.
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Dang, sorry I did not see your post on my refresh and would have responded sooner. Thanks so much for your words of encouragement. I think the finishing is going to be really easy, but then again never have done it before so we will see how much wood I screw up!
Quote:
Originally Posted by BiscuitSlayer
Are you kidding me? LOL  All of the defending of the screw strips we have done and you wind up not using them. Oh man, how are we ever going to live this one down. LMAO . I wonder why you ran into this issue. Did you possibly try to attach both outer legs to the screw strip prior to letting the upper and lower frames sit on them? I'm just trying to figure out why they presented the problem that they did. Obviously they aren't needed for the construction and you did a great job getting everything level and square. It just bothers me that it actually hindered the assembly for you. |
I know, I felt very let down when they started causing all the issues. Now maybe I was just not using them correctly. I put a scrap piece of 2x4 down and rested the "floaters" on them and them clamped them to the bottom frame. Then added the legs and clamped them in place, and then added the top frame to see how everything looked (should have take a picture with all 12 clamps on there!) and that is when we saw how off kilter it all was. More than likely it was that the scraps were not square or something else was throwing those off, so we decided to simply drive a single screw into each leg and alternate (like tightening lug nuts on a car) and go around until the bottom was down. Then, added the top and used face-clamps to line it up and did the same tightening process once screw at a time. What did I do wrong with the floaters? Who knows, we may use them as legs for the other stand.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BiscuitSlayer
As far as getting the two stands together, what is the end goal here? Do you want to get them attached to each other prior to doing the final finishing work? I would probably sit them in their final resting spot prior to doing anything else and get them level before doing anything else. Once you do that, just drive some screws from one frame into the other. If nothing else, that will give you a refrence point for the final attachment. I probably wouldn't do anything hard core because you wouldn't want one stand to mess with the integrity of the other stand. That might be catostrophic. My first thought was carriage bolts, but then I was thinking about the integrity factor and kind of leaned away from it. I would rather have a simple break point that allowed simple failure but also keeps each stands integrity good. Maybe even using a simple trim piece to cover up the difference between the two stands to give it the appearance that it is one stand.
Keep the updates coming man! Your frame looks awesome. I hope my frame is as square as yours.  |
Thanks again, I will keep updating as I come up with new SketchUp ideas and my plumbing and electrical decisions.
As far as joining the two stands, I am not going to fasten them. I am simply going to butt them up against one another, and like you said, use a piece of trim to cover any inconsistencies. In my Sketchup Drawing it does not show the gap that will be there between the tanks (the plastic tank trim makes it where the tank glass will not sit flush). I will have to use trim or something to cover the gap or ruin the sense of a single tank. I also share your worry about one tank causing an integrity failure or something in the other if they were connected. Lastly, if I ever want to move the thing, it would be best if they were separate.
So hopefully more to come soon. My next drawing will have the canopies and trim on the tanks to get a better "real" world look.
Thanks again for all the encouragement!