Project: Dread-Knot; Stage 1

I have started a minor mod job on a tower case I have had laying around and dubbed it project Dread-Knot. The original design was a satin black case with sage green Celtic knotwork on at least one side and the top; just a paint job, simple as mods go. I recently added the idea of a round window with an edge-lit etching of a knot on it. I have never tried an etching so it should be fun.

After some toying around I decided to change the plan a bit. The case is now sage green and the knotwork is a layered speckled look which, in all honesty, worked better then I had hoped, but more on that later.

I layed out the knotwork on a piece of oak tag then used an exacto to cut out a stencil. After the first day I was about halfway done with cutting it out; My forearm was so sore the next day at work, but the design was starting to take shape. I had to put it on the back burner for a few days, but got back to it and finished the cutting. I now had a half-sheet of oaktag with the design drawn and cut out, the other half being saved for the other designs needed. Overall size of the design is 12"x12" if you want to get an idea of the proportions in the pix. If there is anyone familiar enough with knotwork and a pic clear enough you will notice it is really two interwoven knots and there are a few mistakes. The original design called for 3 knots but once i had the 2 cut out I liked the look and forgot to close up some of the threads I left "hanging" that were supposed to be where the third overlapped the previous. oh well...

The case is sanded and painted as per Insomniac's original tutorials, which are a bible for the case painter, to get a smoothe case painted a satin Moss Green by American Accents over a Rust-oleum Automobile Primer coat. Most of us would know Moss Green as Sage Green, but that is the name on the can if you feel froggy enough to check it out next time you are in a Home Depot or Wall-Mart. I opted not to go with the mle-deep mirror shine most modders like in a case and went with thwe satin look on this case so there will not be any clearcoat or extensive ultra-fine grit wet-sanding, but the prep and painting procedures he outlines are the same. The stencil was then taped to the case and the rest of the case was masked off with 2" masking tape. The stencil was first sprayed fully with Rust-oleum Satin Black. What I now had was a mirror image of the original plan and it looked alright, but it was missing something. I went over to my spray-bomb arsenal and considered my options. I don't have too many, but there were a few from previous projects and I wouldn't need much paint to do what I was thinking. I decided to go with the Plasti-kote Bright Silver Metallic from their "Body Shop Paint" line, which is available from Wall-Mart or any car parts shop. The stencil was hit very lghtly with this to get a speckled look, heavier on the corners and fading off toward the center to make it look like it is shining from the edges, then an even lighter speckle with the same color used on the case to break up the black a bit. The first black coat was done on an angle and some got under the stencil, the other coats I did straight down to prevent that. That mistake resulted in an unexpected shadow effect that actually looks like I planned it since the black that was part of the design is broken up so much with the silver and green and the overspray was fairly light to begin with. It looks half-decent so I won't complain.


Here are a few pix taken with my [[cheapass]] webcam. It is a full tower case [[measuring 22"Hx16"Wx8"D]] and weighs quite a bit. The lighting was far from ideal and I had to hold the case with one hand and take the pix with the other so the focus and aim are off too, but I think you can get the idea of the design, thought the colors are harder to see. If I get my hands on a better digi-cam iI'll take some better pix next time.

Picture details:

Pic 1: Overall view, case is upside down since the design is on the bottom part of the case and the cam in this pic is sitting on a shelf and couldn't get a decent pic at enough of an angle.

Pic 2: Same, slightly diggerent angle.

Pic 3: Detail top right corner.

Pic 4: Detail center of the knot.

Pic 5: Detail lower left.

Pic 6: "Sharpened" version of pic 5, don't think it helped any. :P

Pic 7b: Closer pic of the overall design.

Pic 7: Pic 7b run through a few filters to try to pull out the detail of the design itself, not sure if it helped any but it was worth a shot.

Pic 8: Wide shot, again upside down to get the design in the pic.




Future plans:

Stage 2 will be another knot on the top of the case with plans for one or two "threads" to run around the case similar to racing stripes on a car. This stage may be canned since I doubt I could easily duplicate the same speckled look I got on the other side.

Stage 3 will be a round window in the un-knoted side.

Stage 4 may be to etch and edge light a knot in the round window, but I am moving into an appartment down in Tampa at the end of the month and will not have a place to paint or cut so I wil not start it if I dont think I'll have the time to finish it before the move. Once I get established down there I'm sure I'll find a spot somewhere that I can work, but it won't be in my garage or back yard like I can here, so we'll see if I can finish this some other way.

Stage 5 will have to be to buy a computer to put in the bloody case :P This was supposed to be the case for my dual socket 370 board the Goat man sent me, but it decided to ake up smoking one night when I was trying to figure out why it wouldn't POST and died on me so I'll need a new mobo at least, possibly more. Good thing I'll be close to where they have the Market Pro shows down there ;). This may be jumped to an earlier stage if I get the cash before the work space, but for now it is easer to paint and cut then to afford parts so it isn't too high on the prio list.

Mist is back!! nice to see ya with a mod project sounds interesting, Celtic theme....

YOU KNOW THE MARKET PRO SHOW!!?!?! Dude I go to the Melbourne one religiously!! Got my K7S5A Pro that died from there!! We gotta meet up bro!

LOL.. apparently i snafu's posting in the gallery, i didn't mean to have all them on the front page of the gallery like that : sorry guys

hmmm am i the only one not seeing any pics?


edit: oops answered me in the middle of posting

very nice work, keep it up and show more pics.