Project: Yuugou

[greensabbath]

Hey everyone, I usually post on Bit-tech but decided to post here also to reach a wider audience and get more advice, thanks in advance and I hope you all enjoy this worklog.

After many months of planning and a little bit of actual work, my second custom case is ready to begin. This case is called Yuugou which roughly translates to "fusion of two things". I want this to be the ultimate combination of tradition and technology

The case is based on a few of my past furniture projects along with what i learned from Sangaku. This time it will be watercooled and the components will be fully stealthed and sound deadened for something that should be amazingly quiet.

The main material for the interior frame will be aluminum which I'm not sure how i'm going to finish. The main woods will be maple and hawaiian curly koa.

I originally wanted no buttons on the case and just touch sensors but that is up for debate now.



As for hardware, i'm waiting until the end of the year for the Conroe stuff to be cheaper.

Without further delay, i have some sketches of the case itself which ill need to draft up and make full sized drawings of:

Sorry for the crappy pics, i don't have my usual camera since i'm at home for spring break.
Another part of this case which i am very proud of is the amount of hand work that i will do. Every single joint will be entirely made by hand and i invented a new joint for this project to do what i wanted it to.

The joint, shown below, requires no glue, is solid as a rock, and can be taken apart easily.

Here it is with the pin taken out:

This is the main thing holding this joint together, the little nubbin thats cut out of this piece:

Here are the peices for the joint, there will be 8 of these on the case:

Here is the joint put together outside of the main post:

I also hope to not use any glue/nails/screws for any of the wood parts of this case since the joinery will be enough to hold it. The outer case will slide over the inner frame this time. The inner case actually functions as an almost complete computer case on its own but the outer frame should give it a look similar to Sangaku but more modern looking.

More to come once i get back to school and have access to the aluminum milling equiptment.

I'm done with the first major project of my architecture studio this quarter so its on with the modding. i recently had my birthday and that means one thing, new tools, so here they are: two Mitsukawa dozuki saws, one for rip and one for cross cut. I've already used these for one project so far and they are amazing..and pretty:

The support shop i work at caught on fire so i thought it would be a while before i could get back in but luckily, it didn't get in anything important so i was able to get some of the wood cut and ready for the planer:

I wanted to use cherry but the gods of proportion frowned on me and i was forced to use my large stockpile of rock maple which will give the case a completely different look but should turn out just as good, except for the fact that its hard as rock and i'm doing everything with handsaws and chisels :blah:

After i planed the peices down for the main frame, my bedroom looked like this:

that bag behind the main pile is filled with shavings too.

here are the peices all done with planing and ready for the next step:

This doesn't look like much yet but i promise it will get more exciting. Since i'm using maple now and i still want to black powdercoat the aluminum frame, i want to bring the darkness of the front to the side panels which i plan to do with some curly koa wood shown here:

This wood is amazingly beautiful in person with a tremendous amount of curl on the koa. The maple also has a bit of figure to it. Tomorrow i'm going to work a bit more on this and get everything ready for joinery. I'll also have the front and side elevation of the main frame that i drew up (by hand) and eventually i'll start the aluminum frame which i'll be working on simultaneously.

In case you're curious, this is where the hand woodwork is being done:

This is the area of my architecture studio that i've taken over

Before i started on the joints, i found it useful to draw them up full size just so my dimensions would stay constant. Here are my two hand drawn drawing of the main joint from two different views:

This is from the top looking down:

This is from the inside front looking out towards the side:

After cutting and planning all the wood to its final dimensions, it was time to cut the wood to length and mark the peices for the tennons. To do this, i used my engineer's square and a marking knife to mark a line all the way around the peice. After that, I used my marking guage to mark the tennons themselves:

The first cuts to make are the shoulder cuts. These are the cross cut using a cross cut saw up to the line of the tennon:

Once that is done on both sides, i cut the cheek cut using a rip saw which has different teeth especially for ripping and a wider set so its easier to steer but the cut is less smooth:

After a few days, i ended up with this:

I screwed up on one of them which turned out to be about a 1/16th of an inch too small which might not seem like a lot but in order for this joint to work, the tenons need to fit quite snuggly.

 

[greensabbath]

I've been juggling with two projects going on in the same place at the same time, one being this case, the other being my stupid architecture projects, ack, school sucks but i've been working a lot on this.

I fell asleep and forgot to take pictures of a lot but its time to drill for the mortises:

A while later and they look like this:

Once i remembered i needed pictures again, i took this:
Here are the peices i have so far in various stages which i'll go over

After finishing the main mortise and tennons i realized that each joint really has two mortise and tennon joints which means i need to mortise the longer peice to accept the shorter one. its impossible to see in this picture, but the mortise for these peices is smaller than the mortise in the main post. This is so the side rail can lock into place:

Next comes the fun (and harder) part in making the tennon that locks into the inner mortise. With the cheek and shoulder cuts done, this is what it looks like compared to where its going:

The next cut is the diagonal, leaving me with this:

Into this on the flat side i need to cut a notch to lock into the inner mortise. The far side of this notch has to be right on or else the joint can move axially and therefore will be crap. Needless to say, i cut it a little oversize and fine tune it later.

When i first cut this joint, it didn't fit and i almost gave up :sigh: But, i kept at it, trying to figure out more how the joint works (its bad to change critical dimensions especially when the tolerances are next to nothing) and eventually at 12 am, I finally got one of them to fit

So, a bit more fine tuning on this one and only 7 more to go but they should go faster and be of better quality. Here is the joint with the lower rail just put in to make it look like i'm further along:

After the first joint, they went a bit faster. The first one took some 3 hours to get right and i did rest of them in about 10 hours yesterday.

Here it is half done:

Close up of the bottom joint:

Its off center like that to accept the inner frame

And the top joint:

You'll see what i plan on doing with this

Here;s what the complicated part looks like

The case actually locks itself together when all 4 sides are connected:

Here are the two sides with the connecting peices. later these will be 4 panels when i finish the next part:

And Finally, Its together:

and with a scale giving element...yes, its large

Closeups:

That's it for now. Thankfully that was the hardest part of the case and its now over, the only thing left to do is tonnnnnnsssss more work, but compared to those 8 joints, it won't be too bad. Thank you and comments are welcome.

 

[greensabbath]

The Summer is quickly approaching and i should be studying for finals but this is more fun so I'm doing this instead. I made another 12 mortise and tenon joints in total, fun times. They were actually quite a bit easier than the last ones.

After the first 8 for the sides, i ended up with this:

Putting the case together again:

I like to multitask, watching my favorite movie:

Next came the two smaller ones on the front. I'm not sure if the back will get these too as i doubt there will be enough room for them, but we'll see.

Here's the front panel:

and put together once again:

And a detail:

Next will be the curves. This will give the case the feeling i am after and should look quite amazing when i'm done with it. The only problem is i don't know how i am going to do them. My tool of choice would be a shaper and patterns so i get the same curve, but alas, i don't have a shaper so we'll see.

I'll leave you with pictures from a school project. This is the structural model for my "dance studio" project. The building is made out of cherry and the base is Russian Birch ply

The quarter is finally over and to celebrate the end of all teh grueling schoolwork, well, i did more work of course.

Its time for the curves, so i blew up the smaller drawings 400% to make templates out of paper and then hard board:


Here's a little sneak peak of what they might look like

Awhile later (sorry no progress shots i was in a bit of a hurry) i end up with all of this:

and some detail shots:

aw, the curves make it look so much better, i was very happy everything turned out like i wanted it to. Next up, either aluminum, or a bit more wood

After a while of trying to figure out what to do next, i finally did something. My goal for the summer is to finish all the wood and paper, etc, and have a lot of the metal done.

The first step is to cut groves in the front and back panels to accept the aluminum inner frame. This is the only place where the two frames meet.

Since i'm back home, i get to use my crappy tools including this lovely thing. Anyway, i have a brand new CMT router bit so things should go nicely.

The groves are really small but its better that way:

Awhile later, all the groves are done. I purposefully made them oversized to allow for the finish on the alu, either powdercoat or paint.

this actually worked better than i thought, here is the back panel frame:

You can see how complex these peices are getting. this is the inside top of of the front frame:

and the outside front:

The next part of the wood will be the huge channel for the koa wood shown here:

I'm going to put the case together and mock up all the lines to get an idea of how its gonna look but so far i have this for the koa:

and here are the front and back panels with their 3/16 inch aluminum in them. cutting that alu on my table saw was less than pleasent so i'm getting a specialty blade to make it a little easier.

 

[TimG]

wow, that looks amazing so far. i love the look.

 

[walwalka]

OMG that looks awsom so far

 

[Rufus P Tumbeltin IV]

Looks really good, but running a planer in your bedroom?

As for cutting the aluminum with a table saw, use a carbide plywood blade at least 80 tooth and run it backwords. Wax as a lube also helps.

 

[jackofalltrades]

I had the same success with the blade on correctly not backwards.

 

[u8myrice]

Holy crap that looks amazing.

Sub'd!!

 

[greensabbath]

Thanks a lot guys. Its actually a lot further along than what I have posted so far. I also bought an aluminum cutting blade too and it works amazingly well. Running a planner in my bedroom is defiantely a bad idea, especially since my last case (Sangaku) didn't have dust covers at the time anyways, thanks again guys, i'll update again soon.

 

[cudaman73]

Subscribed

Fantastic work.

 

[mpgalvin]

subscribbled fo shizzle.

though i would like to point out that your planer has the triforce of POWAH on it, and might be more suitable to another location.

 

[uzor]

Shiny.

More please.

 

[greensabbath]

My main goal has been to get the koa installed and to do that, i needed to make grooves in the maple to accept it. To make this possible with the cuurves i needed to level it and i did it with hot glue and scraps:

I used this bad boy to cut the grooves. Its a 3/4 inch straight cutting bit.

I thought i took more pictures of the process but i guess not. This part sucked, but here are the results.

The next even more nerve racking step was to cut the koa to size. this step took me about a day to get to this:

then with a jigsaw

which left this

And to make it smooth and uniform, i made a plywood form and used a flush trim bit.

I purposely cut the koa thicker than the slots, partially for strength and partially because i felt bad about making the koa any thinner given that it cost 40 bucks a board foot. I needed to get everything like this:

That was easy enough for the sides but i decided to taper the sides so i came up with this.

and after i cut it, it looks like this.

the taper was because due to the curves, the groove is tapered too. It looks like this.

After a bit of sanding and such, i put everything together and the side looks like this:

And after more sanding, the front looks like this:

and with 2 sides together to see what it looks like, here it is:

and some detail shots:

On to the next challenge, bending the koa for the kumiko (the slat things for the sides that are normally straight)

And my tool of choice:

I'm testing this out so far but the plan is to flash steam the wood in the microwave by wrapping it in wet paper towels.

I forgot how hot steam gets. When it came out, it was slightly wet but much more pliable.

and i put it in my test form:

right now its drying. Tomorrow i'll see how it turned out and i might work on some other stuff.

 

[walwalka]

hey I've did that before sometimes it works other not

 

[Rakinos]

such. insanely. cool. joints. must. have. case.

Great job so far

 

[SnOof]

damn thats nice the treework is awsome, are u building it in your school or something?

 

[jackofalltrades]

My grandfather was a true craftsman with wood I thought there wasn't any left but I was wrong rock on man!

 

[greensabbath]

damn thats nice the treework is awsome, are u building it in your school or something?

Thanks a lot guys. Part of it was built at my school until it got to summer. Then I moved my stuff back home, and then back to school again. Its a big pain in the a$$ actually.

@jackofalltrades- sweet man. the true craftsman are getting harder to find these days but some do still exist. I'll be doing this my entire life so i have a very long way to go.

 

[Electric Boogaloo]

I always love worklogs like this with a bunch of custom fab'ed work by someone who knows what they're doing, be the material wood, metal, acrylic, or whatever.

Great work, gonna definitely watch this one.

 

[fenton06]

update?

 

[br0k3nman]

Stunningly beautiful craftsmanship. Keep it up.

 

[greensabbath]

Time for bending the koa. This was a huge pain and i never want to do it again..but i will have to in a bit, but anyway, I cut most of the koa strips (kumiko) and started to bend them in the form that i glued up. I mocked up the kumiko just to give a sense of what they look like and to figure out the layout.

Long work days are paying off and this project is moving along.

I'm working on getting the side panels complete, starting with the main koa frame. For this i'll be using half-lap joints and mortise and tenons.

Half-lap half done.

Mortise and tenon

bottom 2 first

side 4 joints

top 2 joints

done with number 1

Awhile later and i finished both of them

and a closeup

Next are the inner sections and routing out the groves and rabbets for the plexi windows,


Putting everything together from the last update, we're left with this:

and a huge hole on top

something must be done, something like this

after some cutting, we get this

This is the next step for later

once the inside stuff was done, it came time to connect it to the frame but first came laying it out

then came cutting the tennons

and eventually i got this

Putting it all together:

This thing is really going to lock itself together once its done so from now on, i can't put it entirely together, that's why that gap is there. from now on, i'm going to work on the sides indivudually, finish them, and put them all together. Next i'll make the inner koa details, stay tuned.

 

[dementer]

Holy crap! this thing kicks ass!

I am a bit of a wood butcher myself, i built my desk and my coffee table that doubles as a bomb shelter, i didn't want it to move, so its BUILT, wish i had a pic of it with me...

I have great respect for the work you are doing as that does take a lot of time and energy, but it looks VERY nice!

Keep up the good work!

 

[fenton06]

woo hoo...that was a hell of an update! MORE! MORE!

 

[SevenWords]

bump. hoping for an update, perhaps?

 

[lozaning]

your work is trully amazin, i wish i had even 1/27 of your mad woodworking skills. while i do love those sweet bling acrilic cases with more fans then years i have been alive, your case is so much nicer and less ricer. you should try to get it published in a magazine when your done, you could easilly win first at any contest you went to.

anyway looking sweet and bump for an update

 

[xX_Jack_Carver_Xx]

KOA is unreal. I had some speakers made by a company called Cizek years ago. Made of solid KOA.

On finishing, they used very very fine steel wool, then a cloth rag and linseed oil. The result was mind numbing, the wood looked 3 dimensional, like you were looking into a block of amber. No stain needed, the linseed oil worked into the KOA is just amazing.

 

[alkaline]

looks very sharp! props for the Seinfeld, my favorite show of all time.

 

[greensabbath]

Hello everyone, thank you for your comments. I just got back from the Geforce LAN party with my old mod:

and we had a blast. I also have another update that i hope you all will enjoy:

I've been chugging along with this thing and finally finished the rough cutting of the panels today (by rough i mean before the hours of meticulous sanding and such.

Here are the inner kumiko:

Which need to go like this:

And there we go:

I put the paper behind the side to see what it looks like:

Today was very eventful in the shop for reasons i will get to in a minute but i got some work done too.

The next step for the sides is to route the inner back edges for the plexi.
Here are some details of the places that need routing

After the first bit of routing:

Here is what i need to do next:

Although i pride myself with doing the best work i can, i can still screw up and i demonstrated that very very well today. I also demonstrated why you should use the best quality tools that you can. The first routing i used my CMT bits which cut the maple like butter, but after that i used Mastergrip, which i hate now, here's why:

Somehow the wood and bit caught and the wood shot like a rocket accross the room, running into the door and narrowly missing the waterheater. Amazingly there was no damage beside the ding on the tennon. Also amazingly, i wasn't injured. My hands could have easily been severely mangled if i'd run them accross that bit....very scary.

But i kept going and ended up with this:

After routing the top i got this:

Testing with my acrylic:

And with the paper, ah so pretty:

Now i'm going to work on the top a bit and get those grooves cut somehow and start sanding the sides some more to get them ready for finishing. I also need to find the right acrylic to get the difused look i want behind that paper. I might go for translucent white or something like that but until then, stay tuned

 

[FrostBite]

Oh my goodness, that is amazing. The gears in my head are spinning because I am going to design a wood case after this inspiration. I hope to see your finished product to maybe finalized my thoughts of what to do myself. Great work and your detail is amazing.

 

[Klintor]

Words cannot express how beautiful those cases are/will be. You are truly a master.

 

[hehahohee]

It's great to see the warmth of wood brought into a computer case. I'm so tired of high gloss automotive finishes and super bright LEDs. I've been thinking about making a wood case, but I don't have the time or the skill. I'd offer to buy a case from you but I don't think I have enough money. Keep up the good work.

 

[m0nty]

freaking amazing!

 

[-(Xyphox)-]

HOLY GOD
That is Purely Unreal... GREAT WORK

 

[digital_exhaust]

I, well, um.... I struggle to find the words....

This is simply the most amazing, beautiful woodwork I have ever seen.
You sir, are a master....

I anxiously await further updates... I'm spellbound by this...

 

[Replicnt]

And that's why he won some kick ass gear at GeForce Lan in San Jose! Nice work!

 

[m0nty]

how much do you want for it

 

[Itay]

Amazing work! I liked your previous case mod, and this one looks even better. Will keep an eye on this for sure. /subscribed

 

[tylerdustin2008]

Damn fine work. Enough said.

 

[AlphexHunter]

wow you look like your missing a beatch infront of you when you open this computer LOL amazing job!