Saturday, October 14, 2006

HNB 5.0 Chassis Painting

Well, over a month ago, I said that I would attend to painting and designing the chassis. I changed gears and designed/built the cabinet first. I only needed to add a few more holes before I put a coat or two of primer on.


gray

I counted 46 holes that I drilled in this chassis! Every control, switch, wire, or bolt that mounts to and through this thing has it's own hole. This amp is about as simple as it gets, so you can see how complicated the whole process gets. After primer, I applied white paint. I am using non-fancy spray paint from the hardware store, or maybe even Wal-Mart. The white layer is actually a flat finish, not satin or glossy. I think I will put another coat of flat white on just to make sure I have good coverage.


white
The next stage will be to mount the white chassis onto a huge plank of oak to create a drawing surface. I will use some of my old-school cartography skills (and tools) to layout the faceplate design on the chassis. This will use technical drawing pens and regular old-fashioned India ink. Then, I will put a clear coat of lacquer to lock in that design and make it shiny. It should work out well, but - I am getting nervous again. Well, it worked out okay last time.

--gh

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