Thank goodness for long weekends. I have made some progress on the stand over the last few weeks, but I have been holding off on the pics until now. Enjoy!
Back to the stand now, I had a chance to do some work on it, and I’m happy to report that it’s just about finished.
So, when I left off, I had just finished up the framing for the facing that will cover the two sides of the tank stand. I finished up the framing for the front of the stand (sorry no pics), and I attached everything together. The meat and bones of the stand is the spruce frame, and the facing is all ¾” oak plywood, which looks great and has allot of strength in itself. I simply glued and clamped the oak plywood to the spruce stand. For the corners I use solid oak to attach the two plywood facings together with dowels.
Here is a picture of the front right corner of the stand.
I moved operations in to the living room and the tanks future home. Here is the big picture, as you can see it will be visible from three sides:
A few days later and I glued the top together. This gave the facing frame allot more strength, but it was still a little flimsy. I also added some plastic wood to fill tiny gaps between pieces of wood of the facing, as well as my booboos.
and the front
A few days later I added some shelves and some braces to firm up the facing frame. It’s solid as a rock now. You can probably start to see what I am thinking for the sumps. I will have one holding my skimmer and CA reactor on the large shelf to the left of the main tank. just below that is where the sump/fuge will go. I used birch plywood for the shelves, and I think there is a little pine thrown in there as well that I had left over from another project. 4 trees represented in this stand so far.
shelves from the front:
and a shelf close up. The bigger one on top will be where my MH ballast and ozone reactor sit. The smaller one will be for fish food and water additives. Plenty of storage in this stand, like a fish pantry if you will.
Finally I calked all the seems between the spruce frame and the oak facing. I don’t want water to splash in to the little cracks and slowly rot the stand from the inside out. I will paint with my epoxy water sealant paint when the kalking dries a little bit. I think I am going to paint the entire inside of the stand to water proof it and protect it from humidity. The outside I will use a nice dark stain with a semi gloss varnish. Not sure if I’ll get around to that this weekend, but I’ll be sure to post lots of pics.
