John Pollman
Member
- Messages
- 1,338
- 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...
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...
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