300 gallon stand build

[jamesucla]

I'm in the process of building a stand for the 8' 300 gallon tank. I built everything as straight & tight as possible, however was having a really difficult time getting the top surface parallel & flat. All boards have some camber to them over the span of 8. I started out hand planing, and after several hours was still not confident.....so I looked up on youtube how to plane a surface with a router. It worked awesome.

I used a straight edge to cut (2) 8' long pieces of 1" plywood to use as "rails", screwed them into the side of the stand (offset with 2x4) and used my level & eagle eyesight to make sure these were perfectly parallel. Then, I made a box out of plywood with a strip cut out of the middle for the router bit. The router slides forward & backward within the box, and the box slides left to right on the rails. This allowed me to get all the framing perfectly flat under where the plywood top.

 

[Backfromthedead]

Good lookin stand. No shims will be needed there.

 

[Crazy 8]

I like the homemade stands, they always look rock solid.

 

[Blakewater]

What kind of tank is going on it? You can always use a leveling Matt to fix about a cm of variation

 

[jamesucla]

The tank is 8' long 300 gal acrylic, going in my living room. So has to look professional; was a big deal for my wife to accept this & don't want to let her down. this setup allowed me to get everything flat and accurate to within less than 1/16" with about 1/2 hour of setup. Totally worth it if you have a router. Today I put on all the plywood & cut out the access door areas, progress pic below (stand is up-side down).

 

[esoxlucius]

Good job. Rule number 1 of our hobby....keep the other half sweet! That stand is a cracker, I don't think wifey will be too disappointed with your progress so far.

 

[jamesucla]

Glued some 1/8" oak plywood over the face to cover up all the screws, came out nice.

 

[jamesucla]

Framed the doors & filled the gaps

 

[Rass]

Looking killer so far!

 

[jamesucla]

I hit a "snag" so to speak, trying to trim down the oak plywood that i covered the front with. It splintered everywhere & looked like crap once i tried to fill in with wood filler. I'm not a woodworker so some of this is new to me. Ended up using the router to rip off the plywood, then i went with 1x4 red oak plank instead. I think it looks better now. Lesson learned trying to use thin plywood.

I built the doors & testing out some wood finish.