When I made my first switch panel a few months back, Ice had this to say:
Hahahaha!! You're doomed, DOOMED!! Resistance is futile!!
... I guess he was right!
This is an Akers-Barnes modified cockpit designed by Jedi (jvanes) and Hammer (mladen) on the ED forums. (With permission from the ABC guys.)
It took a LOT of persuasion to get my wife to sign off on it, so in the end I had to obey the following rules:
1) NO POWER TOOLS! It'll bother the neighbours.
2) NO SPRAYPAINTING DURING DAYLIGHT HOURS! It'll bother the neighbours.
^ This might seem odd, but we live in an apartment in Tokyo, so I have no access to a garage/workshop and we are in close proximity to other residents.
So, tools!
Who needs jigsaws?!
All in all it took me 2 months, cutting for an hour to 90 minutes per day, drawing dimensions in the evening and spraypainting in the dead of night.
I actually ended up having a lot of fun doing everything by hand, and I somehow still have all my fingers, so just making the thing was a great experience all round!
Some mid-progress pics:
Making 18mm ply the XRay way...
The cockpit is 80% plywood, 20% MDF.
Drilling fun, for when you absolutely have to have nice rounded corners...
Necessary reading if you see me with a saw...
And if you want to know which books to use to get a perfect 8.6cm brace, it's Dune, Heretics of Dune and Stranger in a Strange Land. Now you know!
My desk for the past few weeks:
Partway through the project, my wife passed the "workspace" and jokingly asked me to do the classic high-school metalwork no-no and make her a shuriken.
Apparently she doesn't know what happens when you ask me to make a shuriken:
Lots of gluing in this project:
You may notice the most consistent mistake I made during all this - I kept forgetting to mirror the parts, so many pieces don't have the nicer veneer side of the plywood facing out. Still, it doesn't make a huge difference in appearance.
Instrument panel fun:
Stick mount done and labeled appropriately