a miracle delivery... need advice

Good things take time! Let's see, if we were having a contest to see who's tank took the longest to get up and running, I'm pretty sure I'm still in the lead :spin3:

Shift by a few months and that's pretty much been my timeline, too. :D
my wife will kill me if this take more than 4 years, hehehhe, she gave me a stern voice as like "dont you dare" when i told her i lost 1/4" on the overflow, and that i would like to do it over :D
good things does take time, and it shows it both your builds, you guys rock!



here is some updates on the overflow, acrylic sheet placed in the "over complicated contraption":
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here is the first bend, coming out surprising well...
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here is the second bend, looking more like a overflow, the easy task is now beyond us,
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being the overflow is shaped akward, the router being only in a single posistion, and the working table very tough to slide anything aginst, all in all made it difficult to create clean edge, thus losing 1/4" more height than i wanted. but finally, here is the overflow trimmed down as sugguested to remove the distort in the acrylic after the bend.
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some lessions learned:
more material is better, you can always trim it down, i went with more width but no extra height,
i did not realize you can sand down acrylic, this would of have save the extra height,
can not flame polish black acrylic, doesnt yield the same result as clear acrylic :(
 
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here is me having more acrylic fun, building the floating dry box with .22" acrylic from the homedepot, here the piece being heated up for the second bend,
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routing mess,
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here is the near completed floating dry box cleaned up, still need to make bottom piece, weld, and then water test :)
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testing everything for fit,
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having not work with acrylic before, it seems that these are commonly used:
weldon #4, very watery, runs fast and far if applied too much
weldon #16, a bit thinner than syrup, comes out with a slight vertical position
bottle applicator, still learning how to control the amount that comes out, its very hard :D
and syring applicator, not sure where this is used, cant imagine using this with weldon #4
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have not seen others clamp there acrylic project like this, lol, maybe i can spot weld?
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a close up look at where i failed mulitple times to conture this curve piece(bottom) to the jig therefore to folded piece(top) as well, resulting in this large gap, and lots of acrylic distortion caused by reheating. i later used weldon #16 to fill this gap... not sure rather this was the intended use?
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so i decided to make its little brother (left), a more trim, slimmer version using different technique. unlike its big brother(right) the curve piece was on the outside make it absolutely critical that both curve piece and folded piece contures to each other. little brother differs in that it has its curve piece is on the inside which makes not suspectible to this issue.
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here a close up of curves in both the two boxes, again, big brothers gap was due to it not conforming to the jigs curve, so the gap was filled horribly with weldon #16. almost like it should be applied in layers so to not create air pockets when dried.

i am learning becuase this piece of acrylic is thin, when heated enough that it is subjectable to being stretched like "cling wrap"!! as you can see the jigs imperfection has left it markings on the inside of little brothers curve as the acrylic was being stretched over and conformed tightly aginst the jig.

also had issue with my makeshift router table, it was taking too much material out, more so on little brothers left side. also had weldon #4 run on me leaving burn marks as i am learning how to us the bottle applicator, other than that they both tested to hold water.
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backside pic,
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more progress :)

though i never heard of a tanks failure due to falling rocks or hundreds of pounds of rock stacked creating enough pressure to break glass, still i get nervous thinking about it, so i ordered a 4'x4' sheet of 1/2" HDPE to protect the bottom glass.

came home to this beaten up package, granted it is pretty large and heavy, thinking to myself did i not pay enough in shipping cost, that it costed more than the material itself.. upon inspection, i blame the supplier for being very careless...
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all corners looks more or less like this, glad i sized it 2" more than i needed...
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the packaging material is incredibly thin, it also left these marks onto the entire material... sure hope coralline algae will grow over this :D
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though damaged, i can still work with it to continue the build :rollface:
 
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after i routed the 4'x4' sheet down to size, i made a jig to route out the overflow box outline seen here,
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here a full pic,
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not sure what went wrong but the space between the overflow box is a bit wider than what i wanted..
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initial design was to round over the bottom edge, then fill it with silicon to create a gasket so to keep detritus out. the material was so easy to work with, i got router happy and round over the top edge as well, think it came out ok :)
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here a all to familiar pic from years passed...
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