Simple, no 2x4 Stand Build

JSimpson

New member
I thought I would post up a few photos of a stand I'm building in case it might help someone with alternatives to the standard 2x4 construction method. I bought a 20 gallon high (24" x 12" x 16" high) at Petco's $1/gallon sale to use as a frag/miscellaneous tank. The stand will go in my study, so I wanted something that looked fairly nice but without spending too much time making it. No doors as I'm planning to use the inside of the stand to organize a bunch of clutter currently sitting around, and wanted it to look basically like a bookcase.

The stand is made from 3/4" maple plywood. Cost of 1 sheet was about $60 at home depot, plus another $20 or so for stain and poly to finish. I made the stand similar to the way that cabinets are made. Dados and glue, no screws. It's very solid, and this design could easily be scaled up to handle larger tanks.

Basic carcass went together in one day.
 

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The photo above also shows the start of the trim pieces being added. I also added a 2 inch wide strip of plywood to support the front edge, which is also supported by the 3 inch trim glued in front to hide the plywood edges.

Here is a photo of the stand with Maple trim covering all the plywood edges, plus a little routing to make it look nicer. Next up will be stain and several coats of polyurethane to make it water-resistant.
 
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Also, in the first pic, behind the stand you can see a small shelf unit I'm building at the same time with the remaining amount of plywood from the 4 x 8 sheet. There is a closet behind the tank with another 20H tank used as my kalk topoff reservoir, and I decided to make a narrow shelf that will go over the tank and hold additional supplements. It is sized to fit the standard 1 gallon containers (most of mine are from BRS) of Carbon, GFO, Kalk, Mag, etc., and has 2 shelves plus the top so will hold a lot of stuff and keep everything easy to find.

I built it at the same time as the stand so I would only have to setup dados, etc. once to build both units. I'll post a photo of it in place in the closet as well when I'm finished with it.
 
Nice! Would like to see the larger, well both I guess, after they are installed. I am interested is seeing how you set up your dosing containers. I,m a woodworker also, and was eying the roll around storage ;)
 
Nice. 2x4s are such a waste of space, especially on a small tank stand. Looking forward to seeing the finished product.
 
why didnt you use any screws to hold it together? i'm just curious

Good question.

I used dados and rabbets for all joinery in the stand and the shelf unit. Done correctly, with tight joints, gluing will result in a much stronger joint than you could ever get using screws. Screws may work OK connecting two 2x4's together, but when you are dealing with 3/4 inch plywood there isn't a lot of material to work with and good glue joints are far superior. Not only that, but it is much cleaner as there are no exposed screws or holes to be covered.
 
why didnt you use any screws to hold it together? i'm just curious

Good question.

I used dados and rabbets for all joinery in the stand and the shelf unit. Done correctly, with tight joints, gluing will result in a much stronger joint than you could ever get using screws. Screws may work OK connecting two 2x4's together, but when you are dealing with 3/4 inch plywood there isn't a lot of material to work with and good glue joints are far superior. Not only that, but it is much cleaner as there are no exposed screws or holes to be covered.

Think of it this way...
You join two pieces of wood together with just screws. Wait. When you remove the screws, the pieces of wood fall apart.
You join two pieces of wood together with glue. Wait. Once the glue has dried, the two pieces remain joined.

Screws are just clamps.
Glue is the most important fastener when doing any woodworking.

Your build is coming along very nicely.
Job well done.
 
Nice! Would like to see the larger, well both I guess, after they are installed. I am interested is seeing how you set up your dosing containers. I,m a woodworker also, and was eying the roll around storage ;)

Good eye. Like you, I'm always checking out what's in the background of people's shop pics.

I built 4 of the wheeled carts over the years. The one on the left in the first photo has a Delta planer bolted to the top, with storage below. It sits against the wall, and when I need to do some planing, I just roll it out to the middle of the shop and then roll it back into place next to the wall when I'm finished. It's a very efficient way to use space in a small shop. The other cart in the first pic has an old scrollsaw mounted on top, and the lower drawers are all filled with old planes (mostly Stanley, a few Lee Nielsen) and chisels. It's hard to see in the photos, but I used a block plane to put a 45 degree chamfer around the top edge of the stand.

I will definitely post some pics when I get everything finished and into place.
 
I only needed to see the Bessy clamps in your first pic to know you are a woodworker! The older green PowerMatic TS confirmed it!!

What glue did you use?
 
I only needed to see the Bessy clamps in your first pic to know you are a woodworker! The older green PowerMatic TS confirmed it!!

What glue did you use?

I used Titebond II for the stand and shelf unit.

I love that Powermatic table saw. Picked it up for a good price almost 10 years ago because it was 3-phase. I'm a big fan of older tools, especially the 3-phase ones which can often be had at very good prices. I have a 10hp rotary converter to run them.
 
Screws are just clamps.
Glue is the most important fastener when doing any woodworking.

I tell people this all the time, glue is actually stronger than screws or nails.
A properly glued union will never break apart at the seam, you will tear the wood apart before breaking the seam.
I use tightbond as well, but I use #III as it is waterproof, though it may not make a whole lot of difference really, just seems right to me for our applications.
Nice job!
 
People underestimate the strength of plywood when properly designed and constructed. I have a bit of a 'thing' for sheet goods and for most of my projects it is a cost effective and efficient way of getting what I want. I have a kitchen table, two aquarium stands, tv stand, bookcase etc all done in ply and most with exposed edges.
 
Thought I would post a quick update. Getting ready to stain and coat the stand with poly, but finally finished the shelf unit for the closet. Maple plywood with maple edging, coated with 3 coats of matte poly. You might notice the bottom shelf is actually oak plywood - came up a little short on from the sheet of maple ply I bought for the stand, and since it's going in the closet it didn't bother me too much. I'll post up a final photo of this shelf unit to show how it is being used. It's made to just fit around the 20H tank I use for kalk topoff.
 

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Looking good. As a fellow fine woodworker (I'm currently building a harpsichord), I appreciate the construction. The plain fact is the vast majority of stands shown here are so staggeringly over engineered they can literally, literally hold tens of tons. Doubled 2x6s on 1' centers clad in 3/4" ply for a 75 gal aquarium and such. It's nuts - one of those under each track could easily support a 60 ton Abrams tank with a platoon riding on it. Given how cheap 2x boards are, there's not much monetary harm, but the needless loss of precious volume for gear, pipes and cords is.
 
Thought I would post a quick update. Stained the stand and coated with 6 coats of matte poly over the weekend. It doesn't actually look near as bad as the photo :( . Camera flash in dim garage makes it look a lot more awful than it really is. I'll post up some more photos once it's closer to done that will hopefully show it a little better.
 

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Also thought I would post a photo of the finished shelf unit for the closet. The closet is an odd, pie-shaped closet under a curved staircase, and the tank is on the wall behind the shelf unit. Right now I just have a small airline tube running through the wall to feed the kalk topoff, but I'm thinking about relocating my Apex and dosing pumps into the closet as well. Figured the Apex might live longer away from the humid, salty sump environment. I made the lower shelf high enough to fit the gallon supplement containers, and the upper shelf tall enough to fit the dosing jugs. Could put Apex and dosing pumps on the top shelf, or even mount to the wall above.
 

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Ok, final update now that the tank is all setup. Location changed since my kids wanted it in the breakfast room vs. my original plan to put it in the study. Lighting is an Ocean Revive S026 LED fixture. Tossed in a couple pieces of rock that had been in the sump of my 90 gallon to get the cycle started. Will likely add some more rock as well.
 
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