OMG! You actually captured the ever elusive cooties? ;P

Okay, I've been jumping all over the place. I'm still on target to get this project completed by the end of February. It'll be a push, but I won't have to be a hasty push.

Here's my plan for the top of the case. The top will have two panels. This will be the bottom-most panel.



This requires maple with holes. I couldn't find any maple with holes in it already, so I made my own.



I used the hole cutting bit to make the holes and here, I tried to use it to cut rings. Looks nice in this picture, but didn't turn out so well.



As seen on TV, I want to have a walnut stripe down the center of this panel. These fit well and it will show once I level everything.



I also headed back over to the frame to start figuring out how to mount the motherboard. This WILL work somehow.





Here, the motherboard tray is 'pegged' into place. I should be able to mount the motherboard tray without glue. (That's a good thing)



And while I was at it, I decided to trim up the top panel on the band saw. While doing so, the brand new blade I installed went BOOM!



Here's a sight you don't want to see. That's my blood on the blade. When breaking, the blade must have whipped over a wnet into and back out of my ring finger. This happened so fast that I almost didn't know it happened. That was until I felt the pressure and saw this nice set of 14 mm lacerations on the end of my ring finger.



Enhanced by a lot of drippy blood!



I would like to show you a picture of the lacerations, but I HAD to leave before I could take any pictures. Plus, my other hand was busy applying pressure to the wound. After a trip to the doctor and a half dozen stitches, I'm back to normal. Well, actually I've got this big dumb bandage on my finger and it is begging to get caught in some other piece of equipment.



I practice safety strictly in my shop. You just have to. Shit does happen. Safety glasses are a pain to keep up with, but so are seeing eye dogs. Gloves get in the way, but can be the difference between bad lacerations and accidental dismemberment.

While this wound was certainly no life-changing injury, it did occur to me how close I may have come to losing a digit there. I love every digit on my hands. I play guitar and I play golf among many other things that require great digits. My first thought was to leave the band saw as is and make due with my other equipment for a while. So, I changed the blade on the band saw (I'm taking the other back) and finished trimming the top panel. I got it trimmed, but this friggin bandage sticks out like a sore ....thumb?! It is in the way. Anyway, I got right back on that horse.



Next time.



CC

Okay, while it may seem that I cut my finger and quit working. The truth is that I have made some progress on Project FiveWood, but I have been working on some shop related things that got in the way. I quickly built a cabinet/stand for my table saw so that I could better catch the saw dust it expels. This was necessary before I moved on with wood cutting in the shop.

Additionally, I have been working on parts of the FiveWood project that I will show later (surprise!) There are parts of this project that I will spring on you when they're closer to done. This will insure 2 things; 1) I can actually do these cools ideas I'm holding back on and 2) I can get that WOW impact I'm always looking for

Well, enough of that blah, blah, blah. I got a little hung up on the back panel. Things are coming along.




I've done more work to get the motherboard tray finished. This is the backside of the motherboard tray, what will be seen from outside the case. Here are things placed before gluing.



Here I've got it a little closer to complete.



Much work has gone into the bottom tray/panel of the case. Here you see the recessed bottom.



Here's the cover plate for the bottom panel/tray. We'll see what that recessed area is for later.



I threw things together for a mockup to get some inspiration. Instead I ended up saying, "what the hell was I thinking here" and so forth. Looks like I may be re-working some things.



I have moved the completion date up to February 25. This is earlier than my last prediction of March 15. Why? I don't know other than I want this rig into competition for March 1. I'm not real confident I can make that date. We'll see.



I'm busy working on this thing now, so I expect to have more up soon. While I have moved the completion date up, I have also possibly taken a few steps back. I've spent the evening mocking up another drive bay cabinet for both 5.25" and 3.5" drives. Based on the results of this mock-up, I may scrap the drive bays I have and go with the new design. I'll post that effort next time.



Until then....



CC

damn,
be careful man.

is that a story you wanna tell a grand child one day?
you lost a finger building a custom computer case?
well, at least by then itd be an antique and maybe worth some cash . .
but still, not worth loosing an appendage.

Better then telling your grandkids that you lost several fingers building cabinets for rich people.

I love a nice Wood case. This one has to be the best one i've ever seen.

CC first off great job on the wood case. I have made several wood projects but never thought of a PC case and so beautiful. Keep up the great work after your finger heals a bit.

As far as keeping safe, I have been there with the finger caught in a wood working tool...ok many other things as well. Take a look at the end of this thread, this is where my..."coincidently"...ring finger got caught in a wood router bit for just a split second:
Please do not go here if you have a weak stomach or do not like graphic gross sights.
http://www.themodnation-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=2663&highlight=

I was safe for the most part but I was taking a chance by using the incorrect bit because I wanted to get what I was doing finished instead of driving 10 minutes away to get the right bit.

I'm gonna tell them I got it saving a bus load of orphans from a firey trip over the edge of a BIG bridge!



Wow, thanks! I hope I can live up to that! I may tell them I was building a computer case for homeless people.




Thanks and OUCH! That looks painful. Certainly worse than mine. You can see mine in it's grossness here [gross warning!!]

http://www.tccook.com/library/stitchesblade.jpg

The image on the right shows how the blade traveled through that portion of my finger!!

I'd love to builld a wood case, but it won't be nearly as good as this! Beautiful craftsmanship Chris! Your creations are always pushing the boundaries.

Yeah yours is not the pretty either, I hope it heals fast so you can get back to work. I am really looking forward to see how this turns out.

Question: Have you built a wood case before? What about heat, does it tend to be hotter in a wood case or do you really just keep the air moving well?

I like wood cases too although I don't have the wood working skills to due one justice. I like what I see so far. I hope your finger heals up soon!

Thanks Bill!

Thanks Bigal!

Thanks mbrocketry!

I've got to say that words of encouragement certainly go along way. Especially when I just spent the last two hours re-working something that I spent about 6 hours on before. The way it stands, I may have wasted about 8 hours on this one part of this project and still need to come up with a solution for it. I'll post that work next.

I'll keep this in mind as I go encourage others to keep up their good work. It helps!


As for the wood case and heat. The depths of my experience in wood cases is posted in this work log (read ZERO).

My line of thought on this (and by no means does this indicate I am correct);

Since the case temps seem to range from the low 30s (C) and high 50s from what I have measured so far, I think it is important to just maintain flow. I do not see why a wood case would be any different than any other material (somebody enlighten me if I am wrong here).

My solution is the 3 'roof' fans I am putting in this design. These fans will be rheostat controlled so that they will crank up based on the temp in the center of the case cavity. Heat rises, so the I am counting on those dynamics to keep the case vented.

These are the ONLY case fans I am putting in (I think 3 is a lot).

There will probably be a 120mm fan on the CPU HS (Typhoon for now).

The 2 - 8800 GTX also have their fans as well as the Northbridge fan on the motherboard.

Geez, now that I write this out, there's just too many fans in this thing.

I know, water cool it right? I could and I can. I've got another complete set of components to do a water coolant system in this rig, I just hadn't planned it and I don't want to change that plan now. Simplicity is the main reason. This rig will have an Intel QX6700 in it and even overclocked, this chip doesn't get so hot. On the other hand are ALL of those fans. Hmmmm, now I'm thinking again. That never leads to anything good.

Again, thanks for the props!

Bingo! You are correct sir! The case material makes no difference in temps!

I wouldn't fret about the 3 blow hole fans since you can always turn them down.

Not entirely true, if u were to build a case out of insulation foam i think you would have some heating problems..

As long as there is adequate air flow threw the case the case material doesn't matter.

Cooling used to be a big issue when I started building machines in 2000. Back then the norm was 80mm fans and home made fan controllers (there were early examples of rheostat controls for up to four fans available). Now we have fans in all sizes, 60mm up to 250mm. I prefer 120mm as they move lots of air with slow moving blades that equate to quiet performance. Fan controllers have come a long way too and there are lots to choose from.

I have yet to build a water cooled machine. I haven't found it necessary to get the level of cooling I need, even after building two machines with SLI videocard configurations. What is important is getting the air flow across those cards and the chipset / memory on your motherboard. My favorite solution for the videocards is a side panel fan, and for the motherboard I really like Cooler Master's Cross-Flow fan (designed for the early Stacker cases). See my current project ( www.themodnation-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=2544 ) for picutres of how I mounted a Cross-Flow fan into a Cooler Master Cosmos case. I bet you could make a Cross-Flow fan work in this case and they are quiet when switched to the low position.