--- r e f l e X i o n ---

[Xion X2]

Ahhhh. Ok. I'm all settled. Finally. A soft, cushy couch has never felt so good.

Oh man.. you ever have one of those weekends where you spent every minute busy doing something but, at the end of the weekend, there just didn't seem to be a lot to show for it? Well, this was one of those weekends.

I've spent the last two days on hard concrete bent over a workbench and either sawing or scribbling over layout designs time and time and time again because something didn't quite fit. I won't get into the gory details now, but suffice it to say that deciding to mount the PSU in the bottom of the custom drive bay has proven more than a little tricky. I've had to redo measurements and layout several times to make enough room for the components without the design looking too cramped.

Anyway, enough on that for now. I'll share some shots below from the work that was done over the weekend. Some of it was simply experimental due to the fact that my workshop skills are quite rusty, and I have never worked with a bending brake. And I apologize in advance, because I've found out it's a lot tougher to snap off a crisp photo when you're holding a heavy power tool in one of your hands. So some of these may not be of the level of prior shots when I have the luxury of a tripod and softboxes.

This little guy was a lot of help and an absolute necessity for the project. You just can't beat a nice sturdy workbench, and the Workmate 400 was just the right size for the cutting I needed to do.



A look at the dimensions of the cutting I needed to do. I'm pretty sure these changed 93 times within the last 48 hours. But then, who's counting?



Somewhere around the 87th design layout, I think it was, I felt a migraine coming on and began to hyproventilate. So I decided to step outside and get some air.

The weather was kind of overcast this weekend with a low cloud cover. Here I am standing in the driveway looking at a nearby mountain just across from us.





Ahh, breathing in the fresh mountain air, and I'm starting to get a second wind.. feeling revitalized. I'm near the end of the design stage.. I can feel it. And I'm ready to start cutting. Finally. It's taken about a month and a half to get to this point, but I'm there. I begin walking back through the garden and up the stairs back into the house when the unexpected happened. I found this little guy hiding in the garden...



Ok, ok.. alright already... I'm going. Keep your shell on. A good build takes precise and proper planning, etc.

Wait .. am I actually talking to a reptile? Maybe it's not the best idea in the world to pick up a power tool right now...

Nahhhhh, let's go have some fun.


So, we're back in the shop again. And here we're beginning to measure off the 2x4 050 gauge ALU for the bay cover.



Sharpie's great for this. This sucker will write on anything that's solid.



It's go time.





Gentlemen [echo]gentlemen..[/echo] .. start your eng.. wait, hold on a second. Seems like I'm forgetting something.



Can't forget the lube, now can we? Need to have that handy.

This stuff made a real mess, but it did the trick. Graphite, right? Yeah, well it didn't occur to me, even though it said "GRAPHITE" clear as day on the side of the spray bottle, that it would come out black as tar. I thought most of this stuff was clear or like a white grease, but oh well. It kept the blade nice and cool whenever the metal started to burr, and that's what's important.

I'm afraid that I don't have a finished shot, but a straight cut was made on both the side and bottom of the ALU panel to size it down for the drive bay dimensions.

A jig is fun in its own right, but this little baby right here was what I had the most fun with over the weekend. It's time to get the bending brake on the bench.



More to come...