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The Complete Noob's First Project Thread - (No Theme/Name yet...)
walterg74:
Hi!
So, after bothering a lot of people on my briefly infamous "Building Basics" thread (which can be found for your pleasure right here: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=118557.0), I decided to take the plunge and start the attempt at building my very first cabinet (Took ya long enough!).
So being a complete noob,I'm pretty sure that many more questions will keep popping up, but luckily there are a lot of experienced folks around here willing to help a noob out :)
Also, this thread will be progressed a little as a tutorial and as a made by a noob and for noobs, in the hope that many others that like myself have absolutely no clue of woodworking and building these cabinets in general can maybe find it easier to start (I do admit I now do have one or two clues after starting :) ).
Like any guy with a new baby, there are lots of pics, so here we go...
First thing I did was get all the tools I needed. No pics of those but I bought:
Circular Saw
Jigsaw
Router (+ some bits)
Drill (already had it)
Like I was told, these are not *all* necessary but are nice to have if you can, so buy them if it's within your means,or rent them, or whatever if possible.
Supplies:
Glue
Screws (1 3/8")
Sandpaper (got several to test out, 60, 100, 150, 220)
Small Drill Bit (3.25mm) to make pilot holes for the screws
Clamps:
This should do it for now...
And of course, safety first boys and girls, so here's a small little starter's kit:
Following the Verticade's plans, and after calculating how much I needed, I ended up buying 1/4 sheet of 12mm MDF, and another 1/4 sheet of 15mm MDF (no 16mm where I live). Also, since here in my country sheets come in 1830mm x 2600mm size, 1/4 was more than enough for this build.
Besides this, I also bought a 2.44m stick of 1"x1" (which was actually 22mm x 22-23mm), for the interior moldings. Would you believe I ran short by about 10-12 inches (that's what she said!) and now I have to go back to the store since I missing the 2 little moldings for the monitor..? :angry:
So anyway, that's it for post #1, take a look at post #2 for starting to actually do something! :)
walterg74:
Ok, here we go with post #2... What did I actually do so far? Good question...
Started out on friday night, and the first thing I did was to *try* to copy the plans onto my nice MDF square...
Just as background, the 16mm 1/4 sheet mdf (1830 mm x 650 mm) was cut by the place I bought the wood from (they do straight cuts for free) into two 650mm x 650mm squares, and a remaining piece of 530mm x 650mm.
The 12mm 1/4 sheet I just took as-is since I didnīt know if I would need to make adjustments to it, and also to get some practice with the circular saw (more on that later...).
So anyway, like I said above, first thing was to get the plans onto the wood:
Not surprisingly, this did take some time (hello, noob here remember?), specially for getting the curves done right. And speaking of curves, trying to find out how to do these exactly, I came into a lot of posts that said "well, that's easy enough... just take a nail and a piece of string as long as the radius, moron!", and then I was like: "uhmm... ok, so how do I know where the center should be to actually place that nail??" among many other questions I had like how do you know where the circle is supposed to go through exactly being that many times the points where the curves stem from are *not* tangent to the circle.. but I digress...
What I ended up doing is simply drawing circles with my handy compass onto a piece of paper, and then cutting them out. With that nice little circle I just played around with it on the wood until it looked right, and like the plans. Only isue with that approach was when I had to do the big R67cm curve... that screwed me.. :) For that then, I ended up taking the advice I found on other posts, and simply use my handy flexible 1m steel ruler to place it between the two endpoints, and trace a curve I liked and that looked to me something like the VertiCade one :)
(Well.. actually, being the anal jerk that I am, I really ended up making a quarter circle -not enough to make anything more- out of cardboard, and attempting a new curve, which surprisingly was very similar to what I had already drawn ::) )
So.. had to wait until the next day for something called light to come up... Next day then, took the square outside and readied to cut:
Now I'm really sorry but I seemed to have lost the pictures where I first:
- Used the circular saw to cut of an excess slice to the left, and another one to the top of the square
- Used the jigsaw to trace-cut the shape of the side
Once I had done the above, I simply placed the cutout piece on my second square, traced the shape with a pencil and did the same as above to have the second side cut out. Again I lost that pic (last one I lost, I promise.. :) ) but just so you know (specially if you'rea noob like me) what I ended up with was two sides that were *pretty* similar but had their differences (one had more wood on some places than the other, etc) but all in all fairly similar.
Before I end post #2, this is what I looked like before actually starting to use the circular saw. Yeah.. before I knew I would be covered up to my ears in sawdust after hitting the trigger for the first time... ::)
Coming up in a few minutes... post #3
See ya then!
walterg74:
Ok, moving on...
Last post we were stuck with two *similar* pieces of wood that are supposed to be the sides...
One of my questions on the building basics thread was "how do I get them to be the same"? (or at least pretty darn close). One of the answers I received (and saw in ither places) was sanding. I honestly did not think I was going to be able to get away with that having never done it before. So I asked "what about routing?" The answer to that was that it could be done and I would be better off leaving the pencil mark when I cut out the second piece, so I would have some extra material for shaving from the second piece.
Now even though that's what I *tried* to do, it was hard enough to try to follow the line with the jigsaw for the noob, so even though there *was* material to shave off, it wasn't exactly what the person that gave me the answer had in mind I bet :P
So anyway, I kinda knew what I wanted to do, and that was to use the router, with the flush trim bit (for us noobs, is just does a straight cut on the edge of the wood). Naturally I was *not* going to try out my theories on the freshly cut sides, so I got some scrap wood to do some tests, and voila!:
Here is a closeup of the bit I used:
Noob explanation, here's how I did it: I clamped both pieces of wood together, aligning them by the two common sides that were the same, placing the piece of wood that was "bigger", or with excess material, on top. The "Ring" on the bit "rides" the bottom piece, in a way that the bottom piece os the "guide", and the blades will cut off material from the top piece. Since the blade is not large enough to cut the *whole* width of the top piece, once you do a first pass, you need to adjust the depth of the cut. The "ring" will no ride the lower part of the top piece, but since that's already cut to size and the same as the lower piece, no problem! ;) You will then have the two sides at the same nice size:
Pics on sides starting, and processed:
Easy right?
Coming up: Some sanding gets done! :cheers:
wol-nz:
Off to a good start - I'm just wondering... steal shutters and iron bars covering that window...you would hope that isn't an exit point in an emergency :laugh:
Ond:
That's some clean router work for a "noob" you might want to reassess that title :)
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