Well, finally got around to finishing my display case – the longest thing has been putting the actual finish on it! I used Minwax’s water-based polyurethane (easy clean-up), but instead of doing all sides at the same time, I only applied the finish to one side at a time, to minimize sags.
I also had installed some locator pins so that the top of the case, in addition to knowing which side was which, wouldn’t slide off.
Here are some photos of the finished case, along with what’s being displayed. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how to add comments to the pix after uploading, so here’ some comments about them:
a) on the miter corners for the case’s top, you can see how big the gap is on the final piece I attached. This particular end is not glued to the rest of the frame; the idea is, if the glass ever breaks again, I can easily get a new pice of glass for the case.
b) try as I might, sometimes, when I drill a hole, it winds up being just slightly off. In this case, I hadn’t drilled the mating holes to the top case, so I was able to take a direct measurement, and get everything to fit …pretty well.
c) this case is big, and pretty heavy. The glass is what is called single-strength glass, and its thickness is pretty much the same thickness as the tablesaw blade, which was used to make the slots to accept the glass.
d) I had to do some re-building of ship itself, as some of the spars and such had fallen off.
Well, I think that’s about it. Hope you enjoy.
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