Building more acrylic tanks

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
you built a clear tank and painted the sides blue?, thats nutty, the black acrylic sheets are half hte price?,. why would you pay a premume to just blank it out,


BTW, that exparament that we where talking about didnt work all that great, well just not well enough...
 
well the first tank really was just a goof tank, we tried alota stuff we never tried on the earlier tanks. And the blue acrylic down here takes 4 weeks to order ( the guys 20 mins from my house... ) so we said screw it :).

I'm gona wait the 4 weeks next time though :)

I tried the sanding on a scrap peice, than we used the torch on it. and it made the acrylic bubble O.o... was nuts.
 
PIX MAN PIX!!!!!
 
i tried three areas, one was melted acrylic shaveing in weldon 4 applied directly to deep scratches, this filled the scratches in well but i think that i need to apply the weldon to the surface, let it work for a bit then goop the thick melted acrilic ontop, then sand smooth, this will bond better then it did, the way i did it the deepest scratch 1/16"-/1/32" deep you could still see as a bubble., the other more sirface scratches are perfect, no bubbles or anything, and it added a good 1/16" to the surface to be sanded away..., i think that if i was to sand then out totaly then fill it in with the weldon acrylic mix and sand smooth then this would be totaly ideal, but i dont have enough scraps... the other exparament i havent yet tried to see what happened with it, i poured a bit of weldon on some deel scratches, then applied a 1/8" square of acrylic and kept douceing it with the weldon till it had melted in, and left it over night, well for some reason it turned milky but i think that if i sand it totaly flat and polish it that the scraatches will be gone...


Why go though all the trouble, well if you have scratches that you want to totaly get rid of you either have to take material away till its gone or add more and smooth it out to me totaly flat and opticly true..., well this is what i was trying to achive...if you just sant the scratch out and buff it that creates a weak spot in the tank and well distort light drawing your eye to it, espertaly if the scratshes where deep..., Or am i reading too much into this sort of thing?
 
Tomorrow, we are gona try a very coarse sand papper, than try and polish it with a very fine peice, and see how it goes :)


was at my gf's party all day, sorry no pics
 
Drilling the 2 holes now, than I'm gona polish it up and order the bulkheads. Than we start on the 180. Pics up later on today.
 
milkman, I am planning a 135 gallon cube for a reef and will be using 1/2" cell cast acrylic. Would you say it is hard to work with acrylic? I wouldnt just try it off the bat withput practicing ofcourse. Is it as hard as people say it is? Any pics of the drilling process? Does the acrylic cement just applied to the inner seams once the tank is put together?
 
I know that you directed your question to milkmanAnd i hope you dont mind if i give you my perspective?, the holes are the easyest to drill, all you need it any wood holesaw bit, i wouldnt use the spade bit, only bease the punch throught violently and do not drill nice..., for the $3 i would get a hole saw...


Acrylic is 5 times harder to work with in one respect and twice as easy in another..., if you get your pieces cut and the edges cleaned up then its easy as pie..., acrylic is easy to work with because all you need is normal wood tools, like a table say, jig saw and drill, not like glass cuting which can get expensive if you make a mistake...


But getting a good joint is harder, you cant just silicone the joint and walk away, the joints need to be as clost to perfect as posable... if they are rough then you wont get a good seal and you will get bubles..., i recomend getting weldon #4 and #10 or #15, the higher you go the thicker the stuff gets, you would want to lay a bit of #15 then apply the panels, clamp or tape well into place then useing the #4 and a syringe dribble the solvent along the joint and let it get pulled in..., By no means should you take the panels apart once the weldon is applied, this is a big no no and you will never get rid of the bubbles...,


Hope this helped...
 
so apply a bit of # 14 to the joining edges and then run lets say #3 along the seam? I am getting precut panels to my size. I would only be putting it together and drilling hte holes.
 
clopez21;1018873; said:
so apply a bit of # 14 to the joining edges and then run lets say #3 along the seam? I am getting precut panels to my size. I would only be putting it together and drilling hte holes.
Click to expand...

Are you negotiating the Weldon #'s? He says 15, you say 14; he says 4, you say 3. THAT is hilarious.

HEHEHE :ROFL:
 
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