Building Project Menhir: A Vertical Case Made of Aluminum and Wood

Finishing the Wood

In the renders I showed you at the beginning, the wooden parts were black, because my initial plan was to actually paint them black. I discarded that idea when I saw the case in real life and decided I liked the bare wood look.

I still needed to make it pop a bit more though, so I used an Osmo oil-wax finish to give a warmer look and satin finish.

The difference between before and after was huge!

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So I did this to every wooden part, and then I was ready for the final assembly.

Power Button and Final Assembly

The last panel I had to make was a cover plate made out of 2mm aluminum, to mount on top of the 8mm case plate, since there were a whole bunch of mounting holes that didn’t really look appealing. Since I hadn’t found a good placement for the power button yet, I decided to put it here, so it’s subtle enough and almost invisible while looking at the whole build.

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The last step of assembly was to make the tubing, but since I designed a tailor-made distro plate, it was a very straight forward process, with easy 90 degree bends and parallel runs.

I filled it with opaque light blue coolant that was only used for the photoshoot and then replaced with a clear blue coolant, since the opaque one wasn’t very good for prolonged use.

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It was now time to install the software and then shoot the final photos!

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Final Photos and Specs

Menhir is finally up and running. I hope you enjoyed going through the process! See you in the next project feature or tutorial.

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