We're back, and we're almost ready to start putting this puppy back together - but there's a touch more painting to go yet...
As I suspected I might... I’ve slacked off the Vox Build a little this week. There’s been a couple of days written off to meetings, we’re getting closer to deadline on issue 129, and the usual array of web news to keep up with. But we’ve made a bit of progress, even if it isn’t as much as we might have hoped.
Last time, we pretty much finished with the Lanboy’s panels, and this week we’ve been working on the IO panel, and the main frame and insets (the bits that were originally yellow enamelled metal).
The IO panel was pretty simple, but one wrinkle was making sure that the USB ports, power lights and other bits needed to be kept clear. For that, we used a combination of carefully applied Blutac, and a mess of spare USB jacks to keep those ports more or less pristine. With the base grey coats applied, we moved on to chipping, paying special attention to points that would see extra wear, like the USB ports and power button. Here’s what it looks like once we’re done with it.
Attention to detail is the trick, here, and the extra wear on the power button, in our mostly humble opinion, really sells the piece.
The IO panel was our last bit of grey, so now we can move on with the frame. We last saw that covered in masking tape, along with the metal inserts to the two larger side panels. The first thing here was to get a good solid coat of black on all these parts. The inserts were easy, but the larger frame needed some serious work, and a couple of coats. This is also the point where we should re-iterate that bit about doing your spraying in an open, well-ventilated space – since that’s the opposite of where we did our work.
Next time the office gets renovated, I am seriously voting for a dedicated spray booth.
Regardless, once my head cleared and I stopped talking to imaginary deceased turtles, it was time to unmask. Make sure the painted surface is absolutely dry, or you risk peeling up the odd bit of paint – just like I did. But that’s no biggy, as we’ll be roughing up this frame with the same dark grey then silver technique as used on the panels last week.
And when it’s done, even we’re impressed with how it looks. Of course, there’s also a certain irony to painting up actual metal parts to look like distressed metal...
However, when it works even better is when you start combining all these parts together. Re-building the case is going to be a long (and painful, thanks to our lack of screw-based foresight) process, but we couldn’t resist putting a couple of the panels on the frame to see how it all looks. Damn. Yeah, this is going to look hot.
Now, next week's going to be tough, as it's deadline, so we may have to skip an entry, but if we're lucky that might just give us more time to find some old aerials, a military-style telephone, and a few other odds and ends. Oh, and some lighting...
Issue: 137 | June, 2012