Memorial skateboard display case.

John Pollman

Member
Messages
1,332
Location
Rochester Hills, MI
This project is truly a labor of love.

As many of you know, my wife and I lost our 20 year old son unexpectedly on December 11. We are still in shock and trying to figure out how we are going to put our lives back together. His memorial service was on December 17. My very good friends who own the local skateboard pro shop gave us a new blank skateboard deck for people to sign at his visitation/service. It absolutely blew us away when reading the comments that were written on the board.

I have decided that I am going to build a display case for this priceless memorial. It is going to be made of six layers of bent 1/8" Baltic Birch plywood. It will be lighted with LED's and it is going to be beautiful. I have been working for the past few days building the bending form. I finished it this morning and gave it good coating of wax to help keep the case frame from accidentally being glued to the form in the case that some glue gets by the barrier when I start the glue up. I melted the wax and poured it on and spread it with a wide plastic putty knife. Then worked it in and around with a heat gun and the putty knife.

I cut the strips of birch ply and started to bend one around the form. It does bend, but is a little more difficult than I thought it would be. So a little while ago, I ordered a steam generator and it will be here Friday. I'm going to build the steam box tomorrow. When the steam generator shows up, I'll start steaming and forming the strips of ply. Once clamped onto the form and allowed to cool, I will laminate the layers together and then I'll be ready to move on to the next step.

Here is where I'm at right now...

Bending form 5.jpgBending form 6.jpgBending form 7.jpgBending form 8.jpg
 
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There is a special bending birch plywood - one of my local lumber yards stocks it in 1/8 inch thickness, which allows very tight bends. I do multiple layers at a time, with glue, rather than trying to convince the plywood to stay bent for later gluing.

Other lumber yards here carry 3/8 inch bending ply, which doesn't allow such tight curves, but a couple layers gives me a 3/4 inch curved table apron.
 
It's coming along nicely. The main case is finished. Now I have to start working on the front trim/glass retainer. I have some ideas, but haven't completely figured it out yet how I want to do it. That's today's job.

blank case.jpg
 
I used 1/8" Baltic Birch plywood. Cut it into 4.5" x 60" strips. I built a bending form and was going to steam the strips but didn't need to. I just used a spray bottle and wet down the center section of each strip. Then "pre-bent" them four at a time on one side of the form. (there are four total layers of the basic case). I allowed them to dry overnight. When I removed them from the form. they held the shape for the most part. I then just glued the first two layers and clamped them.

I cut two "J" shaped pieces and glued them up in opposite directions for form the oval. After the first two layers had set up for a couple of hours. I glued one of the J sections to the first two. I flipped them to offset the joints. I waited about an hour because I didn't have enough clamps to glue both sides at once. After setting up over night. I popped it off of the form, and it worked great!
 
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I feel bad because I spent a lot of time working on this shortly after Johnny passed away. I made a lot of progress fairly quickly. It helped me keep busy and gave me something to do. But it got to a point that I couldn't handle it emotionally anymore.

Celeste and I will never be "over" his death, but I am finally in a place that I felt like I could get back to working on the display case for his memorial board.

It's mounted, but now I have to finish fabricating the glass stop for the front, and then mount the LED lighting and wire it. It's getting close, but I'm not there yet. I'm engineering it "on the fly" with no drawings whatsoever. I'm looking forward to finishing it soon.

memorial skateboard case.jpg
 
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