THE IDEA

Like many of the more "out there" projects I've come up with over the years, this one started out with one (or both) of the phrases "can't be done / hasn't really been done before" and carried on from there. I was shortly to be moving from my bachelor pad (read as "pigsty") into a nice 3 bed house in the suburbs and it had been pointed out by the good Lady that my front room multimedia machine just wasn't goin to fit in with the new living room décor. :-o

After looking at the available cases around at the moment I just wasn't struck with any of them at all. Then I started to think about a bit of extreme modding on some of the available "stock" cases which then finally led onto the idea of stripping a case right down to it's steel chassis and creating a completely new shell to go over it. This then brought up the question of what material to do it in, and, as I'd been down the pub for a few, wood seemed like the natural choice. (well to me anyway, some others seemed to disagree!)

First I threw the idea out on the fragLANd mailing list to see if anyone had any experience with wooden cases' which resulted in a general response of "no, but like the idea though". Darkjedi posted back with some links to companies that professionally make wooden screen, keyboards etc which, although they look the business, are really very expensive.

GETTING THE BALL ROLLING

So, the first thing to do was find a donor PC to undergo this radical face-lift. This was fairly easy as I had an empty RM workstation case to hand which I was going to build up into a new pc anyway. The basic instructions I'd been given were that it wasn't to stand out, had to go with the décor and didn't sound like a 747 getting ready for take off. Also neon tubes and LED fans were right out as, lets face it, nothing kills off a romantic evening on the sofa quicker than blue neon flashing on and off in time with your Barry White CD.!

Much wandering around my local B&Q for ideas and drawing on scraps of paper did follow till I came up with the basic plan as shown on the scanned page here. (it's fairly basic so I wouldn't bother lookin unless you're really interested)

The donor case was stripped right down to its chassis and measured all over giving max dimensions of 407mm*490mm*192mm and the plan was finalised. (ish) :-7 After that it was a case of buying the wood and cutting it out into 4 separate pieces, these being the 2 side panels, a "roof" and the front panel. Unfortunaly all I had to hand was a large hack saw and a tenon saw so that took the better part of 3 hours (including tea breaks) on a Sunday afternoon.

Along the way I'll put in the occasional "handy hint" marked in talics. As most of you are probably more experienced in woodwork than me feel free to ignore these bits

Before cutting the wood was taped up with masking tape along the front and back of the lines I was going to be cutting along. Those of you who've cut plywood before will know that it has a nasty habit of splintering along the back of the cut and the tape minimises this problem. It also means you can use a pencil crayon to mark your lines and write yourself notes on the wood without having to sand the marks off later. Pull off the tape and "hey presto" the markings have all gone. (it cuts down on grubby thumbprints too)

The four panels were then assembled around the chassis to make sure they were ok size wise and roughly fitted (they did, yay) and then the square edges were all sanded to give the edges a softer look. (once sanded and varnished the edges of panels would be reminicent of the laminated maple wood used for 80's skateboards I had as a kid. As such I had no problems with them being on display so I planned the side and top panels to be slightly larger than the front panel so they could be seen, or at least partly)