Finished Product

Things I didn’t anticipate:

The quality of the hinges was poor, so upon taking the weight of door they bent a little, but just enough to make closing the door difficult.

I didn’t consider how I was going to attach the hinges to the steel frame, I could not bolt them, and the bugle head of a tek screw would not seat well in hinge flaps. I ended up threading holes the thin tube steel to try to allow the screw to catch and not just spin in space. It worked but the I had to pre-drill holes for the hinges and placement proved critical to how the door would close. I had to move the hinges around and re-drill holes because of it wouldn’t close. After some desperate attempts, I finally was able to place them correctly. I will definitely consider this hangup in the future with other projects.

The shelves were very sticky and putting them back together after shellacing them proved to be nightmare. So much so that I had to screw and hammer pieces into place. Another future consideration.

Things I was happy with:

The color of the cherry door treated with oil turned out pretty well. It was so nice and gave it such a nice shine and contrast that I decided not to shellac it.

The steel frame took the hammered texture spray paint very well and the color of the maple and cherry complimented the dark paint.

The shellac treatment after sanding felt smooth and looked fined all things considered.

Locker Beginnings

Locker Project:

For my first year of grad school we have the project of building lockers that we will use during our stay there. We have the option of designing from the example given to us but it has to fit the dimensions. The standard locker is made of wood and plywood.

For the sake of saving time and not taking up wood shop space, I chose to weld my frame instead making it out of wood. This allowed me leave some wood for mistakes cuts and have a locker that stands out a bit. The frame will still be capped with the .5” maple plywood given to us. I plan on welding on steel triangle pieces with small holes drilled in them to screw the plywood onto. to hold the shelves I will tac weld 1/8"x1”x1” angle iron that is inset so the shelves wont run into the capped pieces. Because of the radius of the inner corner of the angle iron, one corner of shelves will need to be rounded off to sit on it correctly. I will drill holes on angle iron on both legs to suck in the capped side pieces and into the bottom of the shelves.

Locker Overview

WELDED: I should have drilled the holes in the angle iron that would be used to screw into the side cap pieces A BIT higher so that the thickness of the single shelves doesn’t interfere.

I didnt pace myself when welding this, and the fame warped a bit and is now 1/8” out of square in some areas. UGH. I tried correcting it with a slew of pipe clamps, to no avail. It still sits on the ground without rocking so I am just going to run with it. Looks good from my house.