3 Tier Stand

[jhenry]

Have you learned nothing from me about building a stand?

[Andrew_B]

Not at all sir - I used probably 3x the wood that I actually needed. Just compensating for lack of skill! Im sure everyone goes through their first tank stand jitters!

[jhenry]

Lmao don't hesitate to give me a shout if you need any pointers in the future

[Andrew_B]

One thing that's actually making it tough is that I bought a cheapo miter saw for this and it doesnt really have a set/exact place for 90degree cuts. The locking mechanism isnt great either. Seems like after every couple cuts, it gets a degree or two off which just messes everything up. Then with me and my "Ahh F it... it'll do" laziness... things become... lopsided!

[jhenry]

No that's the alcohol talking

[Andrew_B]

Touche Mr Henry... touche

[jhenry]

Touche Mr Henry... touche

[Andrew_B]

I worked on a new layout that I really like. I'll be 100% done with the framing early tomorrow. I'm really considering adding a skin, just trying to figure out the best way to go about doing it. This is the new design. The skin looks complex, but all but two pieces are just rectangles. I'll post a pic of the framing tomorrow, it's looking solid. At the very least, the 3 tanks will be aligned the same as the pics below, but with just the 2x4 framing.

Mr. Henry Sir, any reccomendations on skins? I'll probably have to buy another saw as well - Miter saw works for the 2x4s, but a nogo for sheets of wood. A jig saw probably wont work either. Guess I may have to get a circle saw and ghetto rig up a table to use for cutting.

[jhenry]

Yeah I've got one Recomendation. I like the design very nice. Please don't Take this the wrong way. But don't attempt to build this project with a jig or circular saw. The cuts need to be very straigt and square. If you want make a shop drawing with measurements or I can help you draw it out and come to the shop and I'll help you cut everything out so it will come out straight

[JasonC]

Looks awesome! You've got good SketchUp skills too.

[Andrew_B]

Yeah, that's something that really crossed my mind too - I'll probably take you up on that. All the dimensions are pretty square, to the half inch. I really didn't want to have to try pulling it off with a circular saw, I already knew jigsaw was out of question. What would be a good skin to go with? I know you use 5/8-3/4" plywood for your stuff - I may drop down to 1/2" just so it's slightly more flexible to make up some the couple slight imperfections with the frame. Not sure!

Thanks Jason! Man, I own 3ds max, revit, arch desktop, autocad.... but when it comes to modeling, I'll take sketchup anyday - can knock out small stuff like this pretty quick

[jhenry]

Always go with 3/4" plywood. Hinges are designed around 3/4" you'll run into many problems if you go with 5/8 or 1/2"


And yeah Jason this boy is bad a$$ with the 3D rendernings. He's got skills

[Andrew_B]

After stuff gets cut out - I may need to bribe you.. possibly with a bbq sammich and beer to help me toss the skin on. I'm sure it needs screws no exception and again, I'm too skrawny to drive screws properly. Tried again yesterday and went 10/10 with stripped screws

[jhenry]

Just let me know if you want some help sorry to say and Freespool will tell you that I will probably scrap what you got and start over. Give me a shout to set up a time to get it going

[JasonC]

I'm too skrawny to drive screws properly. Tried again yesterday and went 10/10 with stripped screws

You can always pre-drill for the screws. Helps stop wood from splitting too.

Are you a designer of some sort Andrew? I own a landscape design/build firm and we use a CAD based program called Dynascape. They (dynascape) recently integrated sketchup to work with it so that we can export a DWG file to sketchup and then use it to create 3D models of our drawings. Should be a great tool...now I just have to learn SketchUp