Log Reskinning my Dan A4-H20

[mikejmcfarlane]

Hi folks, hope you are all well. Been a bit of a brutal year laterally, and not had much time for builds, or commenting on your amazing builds, but I have been enjoying reading and being inspired by them.

I've been enjoying my first SFF workstation, based on a Dan A4-H20, that I built earlier this year. But after finishing the build I felt that perhaps I had made the wrong finish choice, and that I should have gone for the silver case finish.

I've thought about stripping the powdercoat/paint off for a while, but there was no time for it. I bought a Mac studio recently and this big chunk of Al, sat next to the big black box, pushed me to want to do something about it. And now I have some time and space in my life, time to think about a design, and time to create something.

Part of what has kept me busy this year is a full house internal insulation retrofit project, and i had some lovely white oak skirting left over, along with some offcuts of a dark hardwood from the kitchen worktops after they were refitted to the now slightly smaller kitchen.

Brushed alumunium and lovely hardwoods. I'm inspired.

 

[mikejmcfarlane]

Last night.

First to cut down and glue the various bits of wood together.

Sometimes you just don't have the right clamp and need to improvise!

 

[mikejmcfarlane]

Day 1

Having left the glue to set overnight I've got a nice solid block of composite woods that I can work on to make a new wood front panel. I want the wood front panel to be flush with the side panels, and not much deeper than the existing Al front panel, almost a veneer, but I don't want to see the Al front panel. I want to try and keep those beautiful crisp lines that makes the Dan cases so distinctive and elegant.

I don't have a CNC machine, but I do have a hand router. So it was a day of building jigs to support the router, and making careful cuts to hollow out the front panel. And going slowly and remembering to breath, cutting nice wood this finely is a bit beyond my normal skill level.

A support jig for the router made from a wood offcut and the router tool. Bodgy, but it worked and kept the router stable when there was little else to support it. Despite the careful cuts, I nearly went through the bottom wall :-(

Finally, by lunchtime it was hollowed out and lightly tidied up.

Time to cut down the Al front panel. I've deliberately cut the front panel a bit smaller than the hollow in the wood to allow for adjustment alignment to the case. It's a bit messy inside, but it will be hidden. Perhaps with more skills, or a CAD model and CNC cutter I could have done an exact fit. I'm happy though, this was a difficult set of cuts and it's looking good so far.

 

[mikejmcfarlane]

It took me most of the day to get this far, and the sun was going down and I was tired, but I wanted to get the black powdercoat/paint (or is it anodised?) off the Al panels.

It's hard work, even with power tools, to strip metal down, and it took a few attempts to figure out the right tool (belt sander), the right technique (only go in one direction), and the right way to support the thin sheets of metal (clamped them with a large piece of wood to the workmate bench). Somewhere whilst I was figuring this out I managed to tear one of the panel fixing pins off. Grrr.

By the end of the day I had the coating stripped off the panels, had experimented with a matt (brushed) finish, and roughly assembled the case.

The panels are a bit warped from the heat and tool pressure, so they will need straightened later. The 80 grit belt sander has quite deeply gouged the metal, so tomorrow will see me refinishing the panels to a better finish and trying to flatten them out. Then I can glue and align the new wood front panel.

Overall, I'm pleased with the project by the end of day 1. It's coming out how I wanted, a nice mix of industrial raw metals, softened and visual interest added with some strongly grained wood. And by leaving the internal frame and holes with the original black coating it adds some contrast and shading to the paler tones.

 

[mikejmcfarlane]

Day 2

Today I learned some things about finishing metal. Not really done much metal work since tech college 30 years ago. With a bit of patience and lots of rework I learned that metal finishing is much like painting an old house! Huh? Mainly to get some good light and then to work with that, using the tools to create a metal finish so that it flows with the light, and there is nothing to catch the eye! Really enjoyed this part of the build today. I also learned that whilst Al is a common material and often treated as disposable, it is capable of real beauty.

I started again with a belt sander and 120 grit paper working in a single direction, gently pushing the sander back and forth to remove most of the gouges from yesterdays coating stripping. I wish I had taken a more care with the stripping yesterday and worked in a single direction as some of the scratched from my rough treatement are just too deep to remove without leaving the metals panels wafer thin in places. So the idea today was to start to add some light "grain" into the metal, almost like a brushed finish. Once I had a nice soft "brushed" finish which softly blended in the deeper scratches from stripping, I switched over to the mouse sander which has a multi direction action. Whilst brushed metal is nice, what I wanted was a very matt finish, almost like a shot blasted finish. It's probably something I could have done commercially locally for a more consistent result. Starting with 60grit on the mouse sander I gently worked over the whole of each surface, again in a back and forth motion following the previously created brush finish. Switch to 120 grit, then 240 grit and I'm starting to get a lovely matt finish that diffuses the light beautifully. Still a few scratches catching the light, so back to the belt sander and do the whole thing again.

I'm in love with the result. Having been a photographer for 20 years, my eye and brain loves light, and the way the light moves across this aluminium finish really pleases me.

Time to glue the oak front panel to the metal front panel. The PC made a great weight to hold the parts together whilst the epoxy cured!

Tomorrow will be sanding the wood, then lightly oiling it. Oh and Christmas! Happy Christmas to you all.

 

[mikejmcfarlane]

Day 3

I managed to find some quiet time on Christmas day to go to the workshop and finish my Christmas project off :-)

It's not without a final annoying gotcha! After the oak had been oiled and sanded a few times then dried out the whole front panel warped slightly so it didn't fit correctly onto the case as it had before oiling and was popping off the case. Oak is a strong "determined" wood and I'm not sure if the warping was a result of being wet from the oil then drying out, or something to do with "tension" in the wood grain from glueing under pressure that was then changed with the light sanding between oil coats or something else. Any ideas?

Anyway, I couldnt resolve it with gently shaping as I had with the metal side panels, the oak was too strong compared to the Al panel it was bonded to. So in the end I used a g clamp in a support jig to really overbend the front panel which cracked one of the wood joins and left it overnight so the wood could fully finish drying from the oiling. This morning it is now bent slightly too much in the other direction, but going to leave it that way for a week or so and see if the strength of the oak will correct the flatness itself. At least at the moment the front panel isn't popping off itself.

Overall I really now like the look of my reskinned Dan case. It looks and feels right for my tastes, and it's fun to have customised the looks in this way myself as part of my first SFF build.

Thanks for reading.