Now for the fourth set of images for this project. I finally found some stain that I liked, and hence went to town staining the wood case. The stain is a gell stain, which I’ve never worked with before. Since it was old (found it in a bunch of old wood working tools) I was surprised it was any good. It says to apply liberally and wipe off after 5 to 10 minutes. Due to it’s age, leaving it on that long would result in it drying too much, a very bad thing, but nothing a little water can’t take care of.

The case all fits together now, but the mounts for the hard drive are causing some problems that allow it to power up but Windows will not recognize it. What is happening is the little converter board that plugs into the hard drive gets tweaked and the data connector loses it’s connection. This will require redrilling mounting holes in the bottom aluminum plate, this time I’m going to use the drill press and hopefully that will be the end of the project.

-John Havlik

Masking the status/power LED window.

Testing the gell stain on the inside.

After removal of gell stain.

Applied gell stain to the outside.

Another view of gell stain on the outside.

First removal, nice color, but too light for this mod.

Closeup of the one side, the color is nice, but not what I’m after.

Another picture of the case with the lite stain.

Overall view of the lighter color.

Application of second layer of stain gell.

After removal of the second layer of stain gell.

Another view of the richer color.

Soldering up the status LED.

Closeup of the lead on the status LED.

Status LED connected to board.

Glueing the status LED into the window area.

Using a bit of hot/thermal glue to adhear the status LEDs.

Notice how tall that is, it didn’t fit so I had to redo the status LED.

After a bit of clipping, the status LED now fits properly.

Adding more glue.

A better closeup of the new, shorter assembly.

Nice rich color of the outside of the case.

Overview of the stained case.

Everything is put together now.

Time for a little testing, the white LED is for power, blue for activity.

Here you can see the white LED better.

Onto the third set of pictures for the wooden external hard drive case. As of now all that really needs to be done is to stain the wood. Since I don’t have the stain I want to use at hand, that part is not complete yet. Since the last set, the attachment mechanism was figured out. Turns out wood glue works good for tapping wood for M3 screws. The activity and power LEDs were mounted together, and the polycarbonate window for them was placed in the case.

-John Havlik

Going To Use Some Wood Glue To Thread The Holes

Using Wood Glue To Thread The Wood

M3 Screw In Glue To Cast Threads

M3 Screw All The Way In

All Four M3s In Glue Waiting To Dry

Removing Screw After Glue Dried

The Glue Threaded Hole

Drilling Out The Power/Activity LED Hole

Frosted Polycarbonate Window For Activity/Power LED

Second View Of Frosted Window

Using A Little CA Glue As A Screw Locking Agent

Blue + White LED Joined By CA Glue

Here is the second set of photos from the external hard drive case mod. I ran into a few problems, some out of haste, but oh well. The wood also decided to warp due to the increased humidity that accompanies Minnesotan summers. Anyways, like last time the photos are in the gallery after the break.

-John Havlik

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