So alittle more with the updates.....Hope your enjoying Flower!!!!!
I started working on the top eurobracing for extra support of the sump. I have taken the water level to 8", and the deflection (bowing) hasn't happen yet....but I know as the water level does increase I will see some, and with that said here are some pics of the process of building the router jig, and setup for the cutting of the eurobracing....I wish I was steady enough to cut free hand with a router, but not enough coffee or cigarettes could ever help my steadiness.....
Excuse the cutouts already on the MDF....I didn't take pics till after wards which is typically what happens, because I get so caught up with what I'm working on....Again I want a flat level surface to work with and the MDF works perfect.....You will also notice that I have little scraps of wood tacked around the perimeter....I did this because it's a pain to use clamps when doing router work, and having to stop once you get on a roll, somehow I seem to misalign something and the cut is off. To avoid using clamps and they type of bit I was going to be using for this cut, I decided I would place my solid piece of 3/8" acrylic on the MDF, and use the wood blocks and pinch(hold) the acrylic tight between the wood blocks keeping the acrylic from wanting to wander or walk away from me while routing......
Ok...don't laugh!!!!! I had some old cabinet doors laying around the garage I was stashing for a rainy day!!!!
They were perfect....A little big and wide, but a couple cuts on the miter and table saw they were perfectly.....I had to cut them down quite a bit, and used my pocket hole setup to join everything back together....Off the top of my head I think there might be 8 different joints in it to make it complete......I chose the doors for the factory radius cuts in the corners....This is an important key with distributing the stress that could be applied as the sump is filled with water. The radius cut or curve distributes the load/stress instead of squared off corners....If you happen to take notice to acrylic tanks built by most reputable fabricators you will see this detail in there work......
Again I took the pics after the cuts were already made, because I forgot and actually didn't want my camera out in the garage with all the dust and such......But this give you an idea of how the acrylic was sandwiched between the MDF and the router jig.....Once I tacked the wood blocks snugly against the acrylic I laid my router jig on top of the acrylic lining everything up with the marks I had drawn on the acrylic, and then I tacked the router jig down to the wood blocks with the nail gun.....
A simple small pry bar underneath the corners of the router jig on all 4 corners and the wood jig easily popped away from the wood blocks, and here you have the end result !!!!!! As you can see some of the lines I had drawn on the acrylic before had helped me align the router jig when ready, and took alot of the guess work out of things. I still have to do alittle hand sanding and wet sand the cutouts.....All the edges of the sump including the baffles will be polished.....Highly polished as most of you guys know I'm a gloss fanatic!!!!!
I will get you pics of the router bits this time around.....The reason I had the wood router jig on top of the acrylic work piece instead of underneath it, as most are probably accustomed to seeing when using a straight cut out bit. The bit I chose for the cut out was a straight cut bit, but it was a fluted pattern bit, which actually has the guide bearing on top of the bit, instead of underneath the cutters.....
Since I had to re-do my sump when I got the hurricone, I'm gonna have to put mine in the DT.....
