When I am constructing a woodworking project I frequently like to make use of rabbets (a dado on the edge of a board) for a bit of extra strength but mainly to make alignment when assembling much easier. I have a lot of woodworking experience but little acrylic construction experience. What do you acrylic experts think of this approach?
This would be quite easy to accomplish with a router. Like my picture shows I would make the rabbet a little wider than the thickness of the sheet sitting in the rabbet so I would have a bit of a protrusion to smooth out with a flush trim bit. Maybe 1/32".
I would like to hear opinions???
I have also considered doing a simple lock joint but I am thinking this would be over kill.... or would it? It would certainly make alignment a breeze during assembly! I would most likely use a lock joint for the sides to the bottom and just use a simple rabbet for where the sides intersect the other sides. This profile would also be pretty easy to setup on a router, but would take a lot more care while doing the routing. A rabbet can be easily fixed if you have a jitter in your hand while cutting it. A lock joint would be much less forgiving.
If I used rabbets or lock joints for constructing an acrylic aquarium what do you think it would do to the cementing process? I think I would use the stick pin method of inducing a gap to fill with the Weldon, then let the Weldon sit for a minute to soften the acrylic before pulling the pins and clamping. It seems like a lock joint would be harder to get a clear bond without air bubbles... but since I would only use the lock joints from the sides to the bottom I wouldn't be as worried about a visually distracting air bubble.
Thoughts?
This would be quite easy to accomplish with a router. Like my picture shows I would make the rabbet a little wider than the thickness of the sheet sitting in the rabbet so I would have a bit of a protrusion to smooth out with a flush trim bit. Maybe 1/32".
I would like to hear opinions???
I have also considered doing a simple lock joint but I am thinking this would be over kill.... or would it? It would certainly make alignment a breeze during assembly! I would most likely use a lock joint for the sides to the bottom and just use a simple rabbet for where the sides intersect the other sides. This profile would also be pretty easy to setup on a router, but would take a lot more care while doing the routing. A rabbet can be easily fixed if you have a jitter in your hand while cutting it. A lock joint would be much less forgiving.
If I used rabbets or lock joints for constructing an acrylic aquarium what do you think it would do to the cementing process? I think I would use the stick pin method of inducing a gap to fill with the Weldon, then let the Weldon sit for a minute to soften the acrylic before pulling the pins and clamping. It seems like a lock joint would be harder to get a clear bond without air bubbles... but since I would only use the lock joints from the sides to the bottom I wouldn't be as worried about a visually distracting air bubble.
Thoughts?