The chassis for the Source Selector Unit / Preamp is out of the clamps. I removed the clamps, cleaned up the little bit of glue squeeze out at the joints, and gave it a light sanding. It looks fantastic.
I was a little worried about how it would be sitting after I got the clamps in place. It appeared that it might not be quite flat. However, when I laid it on the cast iron top of my table saw, it was perfectly flat. And a quick checked showed it to be just about perfectly square as well. Here’s how it looks.
This is one of my best looking chassis yet. The grain is striking but not overpowering and the detailing is very clean.
And remember the bloodwood I was going to use for this project? The board with the “decided twist”? I found a use for that board as well. Two uses actually.
One of these will be a mounting board for an old brass industrial line voltage meter; circa early 20th century. The other will be fashioned into a table top for a small side table to go by my fireplace. Somewhere to put my mead glass or tea mug when I’m relaxing by the fire.
As always, questions and comments are welcome.
I wonder if there is a general rule of thumb for percentage of time spent on a project between: Designing, Fabricating, Assembling, and Testing. It is nice that you can enjoy each step of the process.
I was thinking about this. I’m not sure it could be called a rule of thumb because it would obviously vary a lot person to person. But for myself, I was trying to quantify the spread. For simplicity I’ll call it the DFAT breakdown. I think I come close to DFAT:20:40:30:10 on average. Of course this is the distribution of time actually spent on the project. Measured in actual calendar days start to finish, the numbers would be all over the map.
In general, my fabrication time is always the largest portion of the effort due to the woodworking and finishing on the custom chassis and all the hand metal work. Others will obviously be different depending on how they put their projects together.