After a helpful suggestion on NGRM by Michael Campbell, todays first task was to cut out some of the shelf, to help keep what will be a rather heavy box a little bit lighter! I suspect most people would expect me to have cut out a large number of circles, but now that I have the router bug, I figured it would be quicker and more effective to cut out large rectangular holes. I was a little worried whether I had taken off too much, but it still seems to have maintained structural integrity.
The outer holes are 150mm in from the end, and each hole is 100mm wide (excluding the centre one which is only 30mm wide). They are mostly spaced 100mm apart, aside from the centre one, but are all 300mm long. If I made them any longer, the castor wheels on the narrow end of the trolley (that will slide in on top) would fall in the holes!
Amazingly, the weather stayed dry all day, which meant I could crack on with painting the MDF box components in primer... and crack on I did! I actually managed to get almost all of it done; two coats on one side of every component, and one coat on the other. Some edges also had two coats on, and the rest had one. This means that theoretically I could finish the whole thing by the end of tomorrow.
The outer holes are 150mm in from the end, and each hole is 100mm wide (excluding the centre one which is only 30mm wide). They are mostly spaced 100mm apart, aside from the centre one, but are all 300mm long. If I made them any longer, the castor wheels on the narrow end of the trolley (that will slide in on top) would fall in the holes!
Above: The method or cutting them out was simple. Photo (1) shows each long side of the holes having been routered out (using the yellow spirit level as a guide for the router). Photos (2) and (3) show that I clamped a long spirit level so that I could do all the short ends in one go. This bit was done in a matter of about 5 mins or less. Photo (4) obviously shows the end result.
Above: Believe it or not, I had never used a paint roller before; quite sad given that I'm in my mid 20s! Still, it was very easy, and ideal for these large components; I certainly wouldn't want to do all this with just a brush - I did that with the trolley and that took 8 hours!
Above: By 7pm (after an hour break for dinner), I had got about as far as I possibly could; the holes in the shelf will need another layer of primer, but as mentioned earlier, the vast majority of the painting is now done.
I did plan on building the handle assembly, but I didn't quite get around to it; that's what happens when you more or less spend from midday to 7pm painting!
And there we have it, ready for some more painting, and hopefully final assembly tomorrow!
And there we have it, ready for some more painting, and hopefully final assembly tomorrow!
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