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Antec Sonata Mod Worklog

not... doughnuts??? :eek:

i wish i'd had some krispy kremes for breakfast. instead, i had nothing. o well, i guess waking up at 11 tends to limit breakfasts.

mod looks good so far.
 
rogue_jedi said:
not... doughnuts??? :eek:

i wish i'd had some krispy kremes for breakfast. instead, i had nothing. o well, i guess waking up at 11 tends to limit breakfasts.

mod looks good so far.
Click to expand...

make no mistake, i woke up at like 1PM... but then i drove to a local krispy kreme and grabbed a dozen in the drive-thru :)

anyways, i don't want to derail my worklog with rants about yummy donuts, so lets get back on-topic :D
 
/commencethreadjack

so i was at my local 7-11 the other day, and i asked where the krispy kreams were. the lady told me they stopped selling them. :eek:

/terminatethreadjack
 
i guess these progress pics of the bondo are sort of boring, i will try to get some more cool pics soon :)
 
Wow, this case mod is coming out sweet. I love the black-case theme. Keep up the good work.
 
I myself have come to hate bondo with a passion. After working on my own mods "No pictures yet, will post once finish with paintjob" I now have bondo dust in my nose, eye's, and other places. My hands a pink color *moreso than thier usual pale white color* and now the floppy drive cover popped lose so all the bondo'ing I did to hide it has to be redone :(

So, once I get home tonight I have to rebondo it, dry, and sand, hopefully by Thurs/Fri I will be able to prime/paint my front and top, then start working on my side panels. To get a hint at what Im doing, this is what the front used to look like:

newside05.jpg


The top floppy drive will be fixed and covered over so it wont be visable, same with the small square at the bottom. And the little symbols above the lights and reset switch are sanded off as well.

Anyways, not to thread jack, your mod's comming along great! And for the amount of bondo work you're doing, I feel yer pain :)
 
hm, my hands haven't changed colors or anything like that... ive inhaled a bit of bondo, sure, but nothing too bad :p

i really like working with bondo now... i was scared going into it b/c i hadn't done it before, and that is partly why i took so long to get myself to start doing the bondo, but it is so versatile, you can do anything with it... i love this stuff. :) i hate sanding it, but i love working with it other than that :D
 
Bondo is an amazingly useful tool when used properly.

Perhaps you should practice more before using it in such a permenant project.
Here's a hint, don't sand the bondo too much. Make sure you're giving the bondo enough surface area to 'grab' onto.
If you're using bondo on a large area I suggest the type with fiberglass strands.

As for dust in your nose, I suggest a dust mask.
For your hands going pink, latex gloves. This dust on your hands isn't all that great as it acts like talcum powder, drying out your hands and making them very rough. (Trust me, my lady knows. :p )
As for the dust getting other places perhaps you whould wear better clothing.


Cheers and good luck on your future projects!
 
Well, brian thought of a cool name for the mod he's about to start a worklog for, and i decided i should name mine... after a bit of thinking, i decided i wanted to call mine Project Serenity because the whole point of my mod is basically to make it cool better but most importantly to remain silent... I even made a nifty graphic:

Project%20Serenity%20small.jpg


let me know what ya'll think :)
 
I've been watching this worklog since you began. I just joined though. Forgetful me forgot to join. :p


Great work on your mod. I've never liked the way a Sonata looked, but you've turned it into a masterpiece. I love the black frame for your case. Makes me wanna tear apart my computer and mod the hell out of it.


Oh and uh, you got any krispy kremes left? :D
 
CBR: lol no sorry, i ate them all by the next morning :)


Over the last couple of days, and tonight as well, brian and i have been messing with the door of my case trying to get the perfect paintjob... so far we have come close, but have been unable to get it perfect without any fine scratches from rubbing compound...

we are determine to figure out how to get it right, because all of our future mods' paintjobs will depend on it...

meanwhile, i have been working on the front of the case as well, and am trying to get it perfectly smooth with bondo spot putty before priming / painting it. I'm also not yet sure if i will make the front reflective like the rest of the case or just a flat look. reflective would probably match everything best... anyways, i'll keep ya'll updated, i haven't stopped working on the mod...
 
okay, well like i said we've been experimenting here with painting, and today i decided to go get some Dupli-Color paint. I got some filler primer, metallic black paint and some plain glossy spray paint... Dupli-Color cans apparently all have fan spraying nozzles which makes painting the case way easier when you have a large surface to work with and want a consistant coat...

Anyways, first I primed a steel plate we had lying around, then painted 3 coats of the metallic black. after waiting about an hour (maybe longer), the paint was fully dried, and i taped the plate off into quadrants. I then wetsanded one quadrant of it with 2000 grit sandpaper until it was extremely smooth.

Next, I used TurtleWax Rubbing Compound (red stuff) to get out any scratches. I did the rubbing compound twice.

Then I usded Turtle Wax Polishing Compound (white stuff) to make the surface reflective. I did this three times over. With moderate pressure the first two times, then light pressure the third.

After wiping it clean, here is the result!

When reflecting a spotlight, there is still some very slight swirl scratches left behind by the rubbing compound (much lighter than it was on the krylon paint), and the surface is very reflective when you look at it from any non-straight-on angle.

The red stuff you see on the thing is some left over rubbing compound on some tape, don't worry about that.

138.jpg

139.jpg

140.jpg



Now, next I am going to try the plain glossy black dupli-color paint to see if that turns out nicer than the krylon and then i will decide whether to go with that or the metallic. Right now I'm thinking I will do the metallic, and repaint the entire Sonata with it (exterior included)


i'll post pics of course on how the glossy black dupli-color turns out, but so far what do ya'll think of the metallic? :D
 
Are you going to use the wax/ polish on the final paint job? That looks pretty good, I've been thinking about doing that but I didn't know if it would turn out okay.
 
yeah i would follow the same steps

/this is kurtis, i forgot to logout of brians acct...
 
okay well i wetsanded the black gloss paint with 2000 grit sandpaper, did the rubbing and polishing compounds, and here is the result:

141.jpg



black gloss reflection:

142.jpg



metallic black reflection:

143.jpg




Well, I like the metallic paint more, so I think I will probably be painting the whole casw with that. The black gloss just also shows more imperfections than the metallic, but overall im pleased with how it came out.

Now I know, Dupli-Color is Krylon's daddy :D


Let me know what ya'll think about the paint...
 
*cough* thanks for the feedback on the paint *cough* ;)

Well, last night and today I worked on sleeving the PSU wires and switching out standard connectors with uv blue ones... didn't finish completely but im about 60% done...

Also, today I finished up (hopefully) the front of the case's bondo duct work... I primed it and have already put a few coats of metallic black dupli-color on it.

I also sanded down the shell of the case and have done a couple coats on it already. I just wetsanded it a little while ago with 1000 then 2000 grit sandpaper to smooth it out before doing the final coat(s).

I may have some exciting pictures later tonight :D stay tuned...
 
Well I don't know about anyone else but the pic's quality kind of sucks so I can't really see much of a difference myself. Maybe load up so high res ones?
 
yeah those pics do sorta suck i guess... but by the end of this weekend i hope to be done painting everything...

I thought i was going to be done with the front of the case, but i have to sand it back down and then do a little more bondo work because it still has some imperfections which can clearly be seen through the paint :(

but aside from the imperfections the front looked awesome, just need to get those imperfections out...

anyways, i'll keep ya'll updated with my progress of course

/oops this is kurtis, forgot to log out of Brian's accoun again :p
 
Wow. We need more. I spent 30 minutes reading all of this mod here at work. I just couldn't do it on the 56k at home. WOW!

I don't know what I can give for advice or anything else of the sort.

That case is the sex. Keep it up. I want to see your future mods. Right now me and CBR are working on our own mod. We are doing that ugly Chenming case. EEEW. Ohh well. Great work dude. Awesome mod.
 
Well, as this is also my first time using bondo I found out something very important which in retrospect should have been apparent. After finally sanding and filling I got the front of my case to be perfectly smooth. So, in preperation to prime it, I washed it off with a damp rag. BIG MISTAKE! Little did I know that the bondo sucked up the water and when I layed down my first layer of primer, the primer actually caused the water to pull out a bit of the bondo, making the edges come out on my old floppy drive cover. So, I've sanded off the primer and let it fully dry and tonite I get to re-bondo, yet again, sand and this time Im using a tack cloth instead like I should have done hehe.
 
well, since the front of the case didn't come out perfectly (you can see imperfections in the paint from my bondo work), i sanded it back down, and i just finished putting a bunch of bondo on it... instead of just doing it directly around the duct, this time i made it cover pretty much the whole front, so i have plenty of surface area to smooth out over... this should cover up the imperfections, but we'll see how it comes out... after it sets i will sand it down, wash it, dry it, and then put another layer of bondo on, and then wash and dry again... if it looks good at that point, i will prime it again.

if the front looks perfect primed, i will paint it and then wait 48 hours, then wetsand, rubbing compound, and polish...

so much for getting it done this weekend, but this mod is nearing completion...
 
This is great I just reviewed the thread and enjoyed it - at some point I would link to do a similar fan set up but have concerns about the finishing of the duct and the face of the case - is there another material that can be used in place of bondo that will attach to the surface and not peal or crack away..?
 
TANKORR said:
This is great I just reviewed the thread and enjoyed it - at some point I would link to do a similar fan set up but have concerns about the finishing of the duct and the face of the case - is there another material that can be used in place of bondo that will attach to the surface and not peal or crack away..?
Click to expand...

the bondo will be fine once i finish it, you shouldn't have to worry about peeling or cracking unless there are strong forces exerted on the area often.

Fiberglass might work as well, but I haven't worked with that yet, and I think it's a little more complicated or something (not sure...). I'll mess with it sometime in the near future with Brian as he works on Project Aphex
 
Great work so far Kurtis. Inspired by your modding, I've started my own Sonata mod, which you can view here: Project: Pirate Sonata

I might someday do what you did and put an intake fan in the front, although I'll never go as far as cutting out the hard drive mounting system! :eek:

Lookin forward to seeing some more great modding from you! :cool:
 
I will be keeping tabs on this - I have exp with the dremel and cutting and finishing - looking forward to doing so more custom work - my current rig is a simple desert combat paint job.
 
Looking good. You seem a little dremel happy. ;)(Then again I only read half of it and skimmed for pics through the rest)
 
Right now he has a temporary job that takes a huge chunk out of each day, every day. I'm not sure how long until he has another update. I would guess a week or so, but it might be much longer due to 3 weeks of having to do stuff with visiting family in addition to his current work schedule.

Don't expect much right now, but it will eventually be completed. If I have to impale my foot up his a$$, he will finish it :-P
 
lol... yeah in 4 days i just put in 44.5 hours at this job... waking up at like 5AM, getting home at like 6-7PM... All I have time for when I get home has pretty much been to eat, chill for an hour, and sleep...

i just found out that monday and tuesday i am off, so i will have some cleaning around the house to do and then whatever time i have left will be spent on my mod these couple of days...

I may even end up adding some new cool stuff to the mod that I didn't originally plan, we'll see :)
 
yeah i may fabricate a hdd cage if i can figure out where to put it an make it easily accessible. a lot of people have complained about me taking out the hdd cage, so it would be cool to re-implement one elsewhere :) dunno if i'll actually do it or not, but it would be nice if i have the room for it
 
musssst haveeee moree updates.... ) or at least more all around pix - I can wait to start my new PC project - The last case I did in a desert combat theme - the current will be an airplane theme.
 
TANKORR said:
musssst haveeee moree updates.... ) or at least more all around pix - I can wait to start my new PC project - The last case I did in a desert combat theme - the current will be an airplane theme.
Click to expand...

family is visiting and stuff right now, plus im working a lot... but as soon as i get a chance i will finish painting and put the case back together and get back to bondo work and stuff... sorry i can't update more often right now
 
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