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!