Smart Wood

http://etsy.me/1wC5dOU
Welp one of the first boxes that I carved out is on Etsy. This was done with one pass on a solid piece of wood. I found that doing it this way just wont fly, as it didn't come out quite as well as I wanted it to. However, improvements have been made since, so let's just call this box "alpha". Better looking boxes to follow.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/189288544/hearthstone-star?

Etsy store is up and running. Boxes soon to follow.

Went back to the drawing board with my design to better organize the cutting, painting, and staining process. 

Also, I had a few request an unfinished(bare wood) star. I have a couple on Etsy now. Take a look.

It's been a while since I've updated here, but I thought I should at least give some sort of update. I have put the OLD box on halt while I've been teaching myself 3d design, CNC milling, and finishing up school- among other things. I've got the 3d model to where I want it and have started some of the first test runs. Below is the first time lapse of the process. Still learning and making mistakes, but that's part of the fun. Enjoy, and hopefully I have some updates soon.

-steve

So the project is getting close. I'm pretty excited with how the touchscreen border came out. The picture to the left is the border all put together. I need to coat it with something to give it a bit of a gloss and protect it. However I'm satisfied with where it is at for now. Check out the pictures below as well. 


A couple finishing touches I still need to do:
-Gloss finish to protect the border
-Hardware for border(so I can pull the laptop out of the box)
-Inspected By tags for the bottom of the box.
-Satin finish to protect wood surfaces
-Box for batteries, and on/off housing for light switch.

I found out Hearthstone Insider featured a neat little article on my project! Super cool! Check it out here!

http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/10/23/hearthstone-fan-sets-out-to-craft-a-hearthstone-gaming-box/

Today I got a bit done on mounting the touchscreen. I secured the touchscreen to the wood face frame and I made a port for the "mickey mouse" plug on the back of the box. I also secured pegs around the charging block and let it dry for a bit, then screwed in a wood block above so it can be removed if need be. I'm thinking this will need to be changed at some point, as some of those charging bricks get pretty hot. I'm not familiar with this one in particular, so it's definitely something I'll need to monitor. 

I threw the touchscreen w/frame into the box to see how it sat, and it looks pretty good! I'll need to do a little bit of painting on the inside edges of the wood to hide the flat brown color.

I also printed out the border I "photochopped" and had some major issues with the printer.  I printed it out on several pieces of paper. I just put this rough copy on top of it to get an idea if I'd like it or not, and I really do! Lemme know what you think. However, now I need to take this to a large format print store and get it printed out to fit just right.

Thanks for stopping by! And don't forget to like on facebook! >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

A little more photochopping on the touchscreen border. I'm kind of torn between burning in the design then sealing it(like I did with the map on the inside). Or making some of this out of wood. I just think doing this all out of wood might take a lot more time. 

So today I brainstormed the bezel frame for the touchscreen. I wanted it to be somewhat seamless in terms of how I mounted it, but I also wanted to be able to take the laptop out if I ever needed to. I found a solution where I could glue pegs around the back of the wood frame around the laptop and drill in supports that cross from each peg. It will sit into the box nicely.  I'll need to put something on the face of the frame to be able to pull the laptop/frame out of the box. I have some ideas for it. We'll see how it goes. For now I'm going to let this dry, then tomorrow I'll attach the cross supports that I'll drill into the pegs.

Also, I photoshopped an image I'm thinking about incorporating into the wood border. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. I definitely need to add more to it and feather our some of the bad detail/tool marks. But for the most part came out pretty good.

I got the hardware attached today and so far it's looking pretty good! The box functions as a box and for the most part is done! Now I need to move on to mounting the touch screen. Hopefully I'll get started on that by this weekend! Stay tuned. Thanks.
-Steve

I went ahead and got the corner hardware cut out for the bottom of the box. I painted them thinking they would look ok just being a smooth metal, but to be honest it did not look crude enough for me. So I'm going to do the same thing I did with the other hardware and use the JB weld to give the hard some texture. Once that dries, I can go ahead and paint the hardware again and attach it to the box. For the most part this should finish it as far as the box goes. However I still need to find a solution for mounting the touchscreen. That will be worked on next.