90 Gallon Wave Front Build (A LOT OF PICTURES)

Update

I have been working on some of the final touches of getting the siding on the 90 gallon. I will post pictures of that up later since I don't have any of those right now. But I was able to snap a few pics of some other things I was doing.

I will start off with an sort of off topic pic of my 20 gallon QT tank that I have set up now with my clownfish and a assortment of crabs in it. They are all looking really good and I added that other Korallia Nano to the tank yesterday to give it some more flow as you can see by the sand being blown up a little bit.



I also was able to trim the front of the wave on top it was hanging over since we installed it and since I was able to barrow a dremel I got it cut off and sanded it down to follow the curve through.





I still have more sanding to do! (I am getting really tired of sanding)

And finally I had to sand down the side of the top 2x4's in order to make the siding sit flush against the top piece. It was off by about 1/16 of an inch so it took a while to sand down but now that it is done the sides fit on perfect and all the uglyness will be covered up by the sides. I also had a little bit of help from the dremel here as well.



I am going to do some more work later today which will involve finishing putting the sides on then filling the cracks where the top and sides meet and also fill any other holes I can find.

 

Great work on the stand and doors. I wish I had the tools. space, and patience to build a nice stand like that.

 

Funny thing you say that cause I have almost none of these things as well most of the tool that I have been using are barrowed, exluding my drills and little tools. And as far as space goes if you call the kitchen/patio space then yes I have some but the wife isn't to happy about it at times.

 

Update

Well I was able to get some more done on the stand over the past few days and it has turned out pretty well. When I was putting the siding on the stand I noticed that the bottom piece of wood that the doors would rest on would not be wide enough for them seems like I missed a calculation somewhere. So Since I still needed to come up with an idea on how to cover up the bottom to make it look good I brought the kerfing technique back into the picture to get the job done. This way I am able to extended the bottom piece of wood far enough out for the doors and make it look good all at the same time.
So I went out and got a piece of poplar wood to get started I got a 1x4 from ace hardware.

The panel up front for the wood to be added too.



This is what it looked like before the cutting began.



And this is what it looked like after the kerfing technique.





I have gotten pretty good at this technique and can now say I am a kerfing expert!

So after that I got the piece set up to be glued to the bottom panel. Supplies were needed I need lots of glue and lots of wood clamps ranging in size, as you can see it set up.

Poplar set up and ready to go.



Glue added and clamps on!







Looks good doesn’t it well here is some bad new remember how I said that I had gotten 1x4 wood well my thinking was that I need to get a piece that was 4 1/4” in order to make it fit perfect but I though that a 4” would be enough and we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Well since I didn’t measure the piece of wood I later found out that at ace they go by another method of measuring wood so it is only a 3 1/2” piece of wood. Since it is that small it won’t work so after I relized this I took all the clamps off and got the wood off before the glue dried. So I went back out to Home Depot this time with a measuring tape to be sure to get the right piece of wood. When I got there I look at their way of measuring and it is accurate (why can’t they all be on the same page) well I got a 5 1/2” piece and I will trim it the size on a table saw.

All trimmed the process begins again.



Half way done.



Close up shot every 1/4”



Clamped on!











Okay while that was drying me and my wife were able to rearrange the living room to get the aquarium to really fit in. I have been spending all this money on the system and want to be able to enjoy one of the main reasons we moved was to have a larger living room. So we are going to set it up in the corner next to the TV I will be angled so that we can see it from both couches and even the kitchen. I am going to leave enough room on the right side of it to be able to get the back of the aquarium just in case anything springs a leak in the rear plumbing.

New living room set up.



Now that we got that all done 3 hours later. I guess moving all the electrical was a little more involved then my wife thought I like it to be tidy so zip ties and wire hold downs are a must for me. So after the stand got to dry overnight to really let it dry here are some pics without the clamps.

Front Shot.



Side Shot.



You can see the each side of the wave is hanging over by about 6” I left it that way so that I can just dremel it off to be a perfect fit instead of trying to figure out the exact measurement.
After that was all done I got some nails out and renforced the bottom wave piece. Unfortunalty pictures are lacking in this process I will get some up later today probably. I did how ever get out the wood filler and filled all the notches left behind from the kerfing process. Lot of wood filler, with more sanding to come.

Filler!



More Filler!



Final shot you can see how I trimmed the sides off with the dremel here to make it fit really well.



Well that is all that I have been up this is quite an update hope you enjoy!

 

wow that must have taken forever, can you set the depth of cut on your saw?

 

It didn't take to long about a half hour for the kerfing since I got to use a sliding chop saw made it really easy. And I set the depth of the chop saw down to leave 1/8" in the wood.

 

wow. nice work

 

That looks awesome. Good work. Do we see a matching canopy to be built in the future?

 

Thanks.

Not any time soo at least I might though now that I know how to do that kerfing so well I am going to try out the open top for a while maybe even hange my nova extreme.

 

I was wondering..what kind of wood filler did you use? I would like to fill in the little cracks between the pieces of wood(like you did) when it comes time. I don't know what to get.