The "Saga of the Fish Cabinet" - Part IV

Ok, so after a few weeks of staining and urethaning all these damn pieces, my sort-of-stepfather FINALLY decides to take a few days to go fishing down in the Florida Keys, which means I have an almost 5-day window of opportunity to get this tank assembled before he gets back, right? Well, sort of . . . see, I messed up one cut with the table saw (the ONLY time I've done that so far!) and need to get one more piece of Ash to cut the last 2 pieces to finish the cabinet. Sounds easy in theory except that bad weather has kept me from getting down to the hardwood lumber supplier (it's well over an hour from where I live) and then when I finally call the guy to make sure he can have ONE board plained for me within 2 days he informs me that "There have been some changes around here and labor is now $90 an hour and I wont have it ready until Friday" (I called on Monday!), so, a bit puzzled I say "So what you're telling me is I have to wait 5 days to buy ONE piece of wood from you for over $100?" (remembering that ALL the wood we bought from them before came to $136!) . . . his answer: "Yes" . . . my response . . . "I'll call ya back!" . Anyway to make a long story a little bit longer I went ahead and put the blasted thing together anyway and will finish the little bit that's left after I find someone else to get that damn board from. (I'm certainly not the first guy that's ever had a tough time finding a good piece of Ash, right?)

Here it is in all it's former ugly glory! It had some curtains attached with velcro covering the bottom and top sections.

Here the main bottom casing is glued and clamped into place. I used industrial sub-floor adhesive to attach it to the metal tank stand and screwed the casing to the stand from behind in several places as well. It aint going anywhere!

I couldnt use screws on this section at all but that glue is mega-strong and I have zero worries about the glue-joint failing.

Here you can see the 2 angled cleats attached to the wall and how the large upper casing fits into it. Doesnt look like much yet!

The upper casing all assembled and in place. Beautiful grain on those Ash doors!

The whole thing as it looked this afternoon. If you look close you can see the smaller lower side casing still needs a top edge rail and the upper side casing needs the board that runs down the far edge and joins with the lower casing (That's the one I botched on the table saw, BWAH!). The uppermost top left-hand corner needs a small piece of cove moulding cut to finish that off and there are a few more coves to be cut to dress up the window of the tank, but all the really hard work is done and I was quite frankly amazed at how all this shit fit together so well and with very little fuss, especially seeing as how I built all the pieces 12 miles up the road in my shop!

The "Saga of the Fish Cabinet" - Part III

Getting down to the wire on the fish cabinet! After I took these pics, I disassembled all of the pieces so they can be stained and urethaned. This Ash wood should look quite nice with the Minwax Jacobean stain and a couple of coats of high-gloss polyurethane on it but boy I sure hate the whole stinky, messy finishing process!

The big bottom section with all the doors in place. Everything lines up and works perfectly!

The smaller lower section.


The big upper section. This will be able to be removed from the wall for access to clean the tank. Only that one door operates, the others are fixed. This will at least allow some cooler air to flow through during the summer.

Fancy-schmancy!!!!!!

The smaller removable upper section also has only one operable door. This one is to help with cross ventailation as well as enable the fish to be fed without having to remove the entire section of the cabinet to get at them. Hopefully some of them will still be alive by the time I finish this thing!!!

The "Saga of the Fish Cabinet" - Part II

Further adventures in woodworking . . .

Here's the main casing with the clamps removed. I'd love to say it's "perfectly" square but it IS very close!

The tenon on one of the joints fit kinda loose (I need more practice cutting those!) and the clamps pulled it out of aligment while the glue dried. Fortunately I used hide glue so I just steamed the joint by laying it over a pan of boiling water which reactivated the glue, I then reclamped it and now it's nice and straight!

Layout marks for a double tenon joint . . . oh i just KNEW that was gonna be fun!

Came out pretty good actually!

And of course the corresponding double mortise.

A nice snug fit, woo hoo!

Getting ready to glue up the smaller casing.

I wanted to make sure no misalignment happened this time!!!

Checking to see how the cabinet doors looked laid out on the main casing. We got the doors from Rockler dot com and the quality and workmanship are excellent!

To be continued . . .

The "Saga of the Fish Cabinet" - Part I

My latest project out in the wood shop is I'm building a cabinet for my "sort-of-stepfather's" tropical fish tank as an Xmas gift from my mother. No easy task for a number of reasons . . . for one thing it's HUGE, 55" long on the flat front section and another 32" long on the angled side section. Another thing, it isnt sitting squarely on its metal stand, but aint no way no how it can be moved! It took 4 guys to put the thing up there when it was empty, now it has i dont know how many gallons of water in it, so fughedaboudit! I'll have to shim the cabinet facing in varying degrees to sit flush against the edge of the tank which should be a nice little bit of hell no doubt! Anyway i started working on the main cabinet facing yesterday, a fairly straightforward procedure using mortise and tenon joints but I'm using Ash lumber that wasnt edge plained at the mill so i have to do that myself, by hand, yay! A bunch of the boards have a slight bow to them so it is taking some time to get a straight edge on them before i even think about ripping them to width on the table saw.

the main stiles with tenons cut, fun fun fun!

I cut the mortises with a dowel jig and drill, then chiseled out the rest, a really quick and clean way to do them actually!

not only is handplaining hardwood a lot of fun and great exercise but you get these pretty little shavings ALL over the shop!

a clean well-organized work area is essential for quality results!

The main cabinet facing glued up and clamped. I used W. Patrick Edwards "Old Brown Glue" (liquid hide glue) because it has a really long open time which give a slowpoke like me plenty of time to get the big old bar clamps in place before the glue sets up. I never thought I'd ever get excited about glue but this stuff is awesome!