After a hard days work, the stand is built!

Hi All

I bought 3 lengths (1 length = 6m) of 32mmx32mmx2mm square tubing, had them cut it into 9 lengths of 2m each. Took it all to my brothers house to cut and weld. Well after a long day, much elbow grease and a few slight tweaks to the original plan the stand is complete!:bigsmile:

Now I need to get some quotes to have it galvinaised, then get the wood that will make up the cabinet around the frame and then should be complete. I cant wait to get the stand home and put the tank on, at the moment the tank is on a stand that is a 1m high! The new stand is 700mm high, so it will make working on the tank a whole lot easier and viewing will be alot better. Once the stand is at the new place and standing in place we will grind it to be 100% level, the garage floor is not the best surface to try and level the stand, but is as damn near as level.






More pics to follw...

 

You don't necessarily have to galvanise it Peekay... you could go the old fashioned painted route. Generally a lot cheaper too.

A lot of people get away with simple black etch coat primer, and then sometimes put a top coat of enamel on. The problem with this is that if you bump the frame hard enough with a metal object, you could remove some of the primer. In theory this shouldn't happend, but it does. A VERY good product to use is a paint called "Hammerite." It gives you a powedercoated looking finish, it is a primer, undercoat and topcoat in one.. and dries similar to a polyurethane type paint. It takes a few days to cure to complete hardness, but when dried, it's AMAZINGLY hard, touch and durable.

 

If the stand is going to be covered by wood, galvanising it will be an overkill. Just a good primer and top coat will be fine in this case as nothing should be able to chip the paint once it is covered with wood

 

Some more pics:

 

well done

 

No need to galvanise, unless you got the money to spare

 

Looks similar to the stands I made - It will hold a couple of ton's of water !!!!!!!!!

 

Finally! :bigsmile:

 

Thank for all the input. My brother, the one operating powertools and welding, also says that galvinising is an over kill. Just got off the phone for a rough estimate for galvinising: approximately R700

Will definitely go the DIY route. Thanks Zoom, I have seen Hammerite at the hardware stores, is it a better paint than the red oxide paint?

The entire stand will be covered with wood, the plan is to take the wood all the way down to the floor, 4 doors opening up into the cabinet, the bottom will also have skirting on it to finish it off nicely and make it look like it is a fixture in the house.

 

Paint red oxide then the Hammerite over it..

 

If it's going to be covered in wood... then red oxide on it's own will suffice. The hammerite is about R180.00 p.litre... so a bit overkill if it's going to be covered. If it's going to be exposed, then just hammerite will do because it havs it's own primer built into the paint. Just check with the tin... some products are not self priming.

 

I think the red oxide will also be enough as it will be completely covered on the outside with wood. I might Hammerite the metal on the inside of the cabinet that will be visible from the indside of the cabinet. Thanks all for the input.

 

In jhb we got little or no problem with rust. We can get away with just a coat of paint

 

or you prime it with i think polycell make it, called Russist (rust resist) it dries to a black finish and then you can paint enamel or such over it

 

Some Progress

Hi All

After alot of hard graaft we have made some progress:bigsmile::bigsmile:

My brother has the most amazing garage ever! Every powertool known to man kind is in his posession! We mounted the stand on trestles and pulled out his spray gun and compressor, gave the stand a few healthy coats of hammerite, I forgot to take my camera with so no pics of that happening... The following weekend sent us on a hunt for wood! We had the shop cut the wood to size and we have so far mounted the front frame of the cabinet, and we mounted the sides just to have them in place to do the routing, but took the off again so that the tank can be slid onto the stand, we'll mount the sides again once the tank is in place. We decided to go "Ebony" with the stain, and so far it is looking awsome! The wood soaked up the stain like a sponge, and will probably still need to put about another 3 or 4 coats on before the final polish. Now all that is left to do is the canopy and the frame from the cabinet to the canopy. As you can see, staining is a messy job, it's so thin it runs like water! Luckily I still have hammerite left over, so we will touch up with a brush where stain has gone on the metal. See progress thus far below:









We also still have to do the doors for the cabinet, there will be 4 doors, two for each side.

 

Looking really good so far. One day when I'm big I'm going to have a garage like that...

 

Looking good PeeKay,

LOL at Rory. My sentiments exactly....

 

A bit of a idiot question but how did you attach the wood to the frame? The build is looking good Peekay!

 

Ha Ha Rory! That is also my sentiment exactly! My boet works really, really hard, and is extremely good at what he does, so he spoils himself every once in a while and buys the most fantastic powertools! But, ja, it is an amazing garage, it is really massive, before he closed it off the rear section for his office he could park 4 cars in there! The best is the fridge to keep the beers close at hand!

Thanks Darryn & Wito, it's been a lot of hard work, but it is paying off hugely, we put the tank on the stand over the weekend and spent the better part of yesterday washing pool silica sand and filling the tank, still quite cloudy, will take some pics tonight and post tomorrow.

Wito, the wood is attached with steel self tapping bolts, it has a size 8 or 10 bolt head and the thread is much closer than the self tapping screws used for wood, there is also a a section on the front of the bolt that actually drills the hole into the metal just before the thread self taps into the metal, it holds very strong. We counter sunk the bolt heads into the wood and then used a wood filler to hide the bolts and the stain hides it quite well, you can see it, but you would have to look for it and it almost looks like "knots" of the wood once stained.

 

Stand looks awesome .. makes a big difference having all the tools at hand