Daplatapus's upgrade

[reefwars]

12mm glass will be good to block the old holes , you dont need to fill in the hole at all just the square piece of glass laminated over the hole. make the glass squares a fair bit larger then the hole (if hole is 2 1/4" use a 6" square etc.)and use construction grade silicone to adhere the glass, lots of silicone and trim what drys and squeezes out after with a razor blade

looking good dom lots of progress if you need any more help just pm me and i will be glad to help any way i can

cheers

denny

[daplatapus]

Well, sometimes old houses have some issues Worked through supper to get my stand done for the 210... WOOHOOO!! Progress!

Built the bottom frame and set it on the floor. Had to shim the front left corner almost 1/2" to get it level. So I scribed the whole frame and planed 'er down:





An hour later and a half a garbage bag of shavings and sawdust later this is 100% contact on the floor and a 6' level



Then goes the legs and top deck and Houston, we have touch down!





The plan is to do a single sheet of plywood on the front from the left wall to the corner of the stand with 3 squares cut out of it. 2 will match the holes in the stand the 3rd will make another cabinet door between the stand and the wall. This left side of the cabinet will go 18" higher than the tank. Then make 2 cabinet cubes that will slide into the holes in the frame. Skin the side with another sheet and trim out the one corner and have the matching base board wrap around the bottom to make it look totally built in. I'll also carry matching crown mould across the top and matching window sill around the bottom of the tank.
That is, if everything goes according to plan....

Stay tuned...

[H2o2]

Looking great and that bit of sun that will shine in at certain times of the year will be cool if it shoots through the tank.Well doing ( not done yet)

[lockrookie]

Angle grinder with a diamond blade will chew it away nicely

When I did my 180 I did this to my euro brace 1/2" glass



And cut the straight line freehand slowly with the angle grinder to get this



Now I won't lie their can be a bit of chipping but you can smother it a bit with a belt sander and water carefully

Another option is to use this on a router and set a straight edge again with slow careful motion I used this when I built my 50



And got this result



I never worried about the rough edges as I covered that side with black acrylic to make overflow teeth.

If you have question don't hesitate to ask

[daplatapus]

Well probably the biggest concern in this tank is DONE!!!! Some of it went well, and other.... well you'll see.

A couple months ago I was asked to do a job with these sheets of marble to do a tub surround. The sheets came 24" X 84". Well to do a 5' tub wall one of those sheets had to get cut in half and look like a factory cut. So I got me one of these:


Cut that stuff like butter, so I thought, "hey, I wonder if this would cut glass?" Does it ever

So to start I cut 2 - 1 3/8 holes. I was told to cut 1 1/2" but I didn't have one and figured an 1/8" ain't gonna make a difference. So 2 holes on either end with the wife pouring water on the bit while I drilled and presto, hole on the left:



and hole on the right:



That was the easy part. So in part to procrastinate a bit more, I prepped the side panel so the base of the saw wouldn't scratch the glass:



At this point the wife couldn't watch so she went back upstairs and turned the TV really loud. Not sure if that was to drown out the noise of the saw or so she didn't hear my screams if I screwed this up

10 min later and 30 gallons of water spray later:



And the tank:

[daplatapus]

From there, a few cuts here, and a few cuts there, and we have a piece of glass:





The start of the cut and end were a bit rougher than I liked so I just took a regular 1/2" drum sanding thingy for my Dremel and watered the glass down a bit and sanded the tiny rough bits off. This was the result:





But here is where things started to go awry
Just when I was feeling all proud of myself for making it this far and not have to go buy a bunch of glass to re-build the tank, I grabbed a bunch of rags to sop all the water up from inside the tank and wipe the glass down. Guess what?
Did you know that when there no glass to support that trim it's really brittle
So needless to say you really shouldn't lean on it. Argh. Yup, SNAP! Du'oh!!!!!





Not sure what I should do now. Build a brace that goes over on this side? Glue an ABS sheet 24" long 2"-3" wide right on top?
Pull all the bracing off and Eurobrace with glass? For some reason this option scares me a bit.
I don't know. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Anyway when you stand back and look at it, it looks good

[lastlight]

that cut turned out great. i'm pretty sure they say one piece trims offer some strength while the frames that are 4 pieces glued together offer none. but i highly doubt that trim did much of anything before. you should be fine but maybe smarter people can chime in.

[ScubaSteve]

I haven't crunched the numbers to prove it but a decade and half of engineering tells me that ABS did a whole lotta dimp for structure other than hiding someone doing a sloppy job in finishing the edges of the glass and cleaning up excess silicone. My vote would have been to remove the trim anyways. Go modern, go rimless.

[lockrookie]

I went 4" on mine as a 180 so with yours just for safety I'd say 4.5 should be strong enough .5 will be the overlap on the glass leaving you with 4"

[lockrookie]

I will round up pics in the am