Laid down a couple coats of black primer tonight after cleaning everything with the Duplicolor Grease & Wax Remover. Soon comes the paint!

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FINALLY got this bad-boy painted, now the reassembly--the fun part--can begin! I was really happy how this turned out! The metallic flake is a tad over-exaggerated by my cam's flash, it's nowhere near as glittery as the cam seems to show. The last attached pic is probably the most accurate of the true appearance, I took that pic in the light with the flash off. The chassis looks black until light hits it directly, and then you get that really sweet metallic glint.

As far as my paint procedure: 2 coats of sandable primer (black in this case; I chose black in case a scratch gets down past the clear and color coats, it'll still look black). The next day, 2 coats of the metallic black. It covered really well so additional coats would've been a waste of time and money. Day 3, 3 coats of high-gloss clear-coat.

I really like how the metallic black contrasts subtly with the satin-black finish of the top panel.

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I reassembled the UV-reactive "disco floor", case skates, and chassis fans. Time for bed.

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Here, I'm determining how to go about attaching the back side panel that I stupidly cut and mounted the fish in, upside-down. I have a plan to resolve this that'll look pretty pimp, I hope. Here I'm measuring some bolt-holes which will be drilled through the chassis and the back panel as well. I'm also planning on removing the area indicated in the second attached image.

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I encountered a minor issue with the front side of the case. Perfectionist that I am, this just won't do. I noticed that the lower middle section of the "disco floor" red acrylic is bowed downwards slightly. I'm going to stick a bolt and nut through it to make it sit flush with the bottom of the case chassis. It's not only for looks, it's also because I want the maximum glow from the UV cathodes to shine through the disco floor and through the adjacent red UV acrylic piece on the bottom of the front bezel.

An unintended but useful feature of my front intake fan: Since I had to raise where it was supposed to mount by a good 3/4" so the front intake fan would be centered inside the front axe-head duct intake, the top edge of the fan intakes cool air about half an inch into the lowest 3.5" drive bay. I'm going to mount my 74 GB Raptor there, with enough space so that the top curve of the 120mm intake brings cool air across the "hot side" of the HDD.

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You'll recall that 2 posts previous, I had to do something to that lip along one edge of the side panel, because even though the panel would fit onto the back side of the chassis, the lip prevented the front bezel from snapping nicely into place with its plastic tabs. It would pop on enough to stay there, but the side view would reveal a noticeable gap between the panel and front bezel, so being the perfectionist I am, I removed the lip.

After 2 or so hours of rotary'ing, hacksawing, grinding and filing, I got the lip fully removed and the edge nice and straight, and with a smooth, burr-free edge that wasn't guillotine-sharp. It took a lot of time to correct my major "oops" of putting the fish on the side panel upside-down, but now I'll be able to mount the panel onto the chassis and have it look like nothing's amiss.

Part of modding is finding ways to correct your mistakes, or at least make them look good or like part of your intended mod.

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My plan was to mount the back panel onto the chassis with some nice thumbscrews. I could have just drilled some holes and forced the thumbscrews to bite into the metal, but the metal there is so thin and it wouldn't take much for the threads to be stripped out. So I used a technique someone posted here how to make your own tap & die in order to cut your own threads. I can't recall who posted it, and I can't find it with a few minutes' searching so I'll just repeat the procedure--but credit doesn't go to me for this.

First, I used a drill bit quite a bit smaller than the actual thumbscrew threads, and drilled holes in the chassis part, the part where the thumbscrews will need to bite into. I then pounded nails of increasing size until the final nail, which made a hole almost the size of the thumbscrew threads. The inward indentation provides more of a surface for the threads to bite into, more than just using a drill hole.

The next step involves making a pair of notches in a spare thumbscrew, on opposite sides, with your thinnest rotary tool cutting disk. A close look at one of the attached pics will show how I did this. Now, you take that notched thumbscrew and slowly tighten it inside the nail-hole, and backing off, then turning it in more, and backing off...the backing off lets the metal filings removed by the notches fall free. Keep doing this until you have the thumbscrew all the way in. Now, you have threads that will work with your non-test thumbscrew!

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I came up with an ingenious (IMHO) method of making drill holes that will line up between the back panel and the chassis beneath. I didn't want to do this with a ruler because chances are it wouldn't line up. Sometimes you have to come up with better methods of measuring than by using a ruler.

I placed a strip of wide masking tape along the edge of the chassis, pressing down evenly and marking where the existing nail-holes were, that I'd tapped in the previous post. I then folded up the tape, inserted the panel, and made sure the panel was placed exactly where I'd want it to be after I bolt it on. I then re-folded the tape back down. Voilà, as easy as that, I had the exact location where my drill-holes had to be, in the side panel, so that it'd match up perfectly with the chassis holes! The nail inside one of the holes shows that indeed, my measuring method worked almost perfectly. I removed the panel and drilled the holes first with a small bit, then a larger bit. I used a bit a few sizes larger than the thumbscrew threads, so that there'd be some "wiggle room" if the holes in the panel wouldn't line up perfectly with the holes in the chassis.

With the holes drilled in the back panel finished, I attached the panel to the chassis with some black thumbscrews and rubber washers. Turned out pretty good!

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I fixed the problem with the slight bowed curvature in the red "disco floor"; before and 2 after pics attached:

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I got around to finishing the back "Fish Panel" tonight. I attached the cathode with a strip of double-sided tape at one end, and a zip-tie at the other. Before the panel would fit, I had to grind and file down the square acrylic end-pieces of the cathode.

For these pics, I used the blue anodized thumbscrews...what do you guys think looks best, the black ones or the blue ones? The blue ones add a bit of contrast, whereas the black ones look much less obvious. Should I show them off, or hide the fact that I "oopsed" on the panel? Your feedback is appreciated, on this or any other detail of this worklog!

I took a pic with the power off, with the power on and lights on, and with the power on and lights off. Unfortunately, my crappy old cam takes night pics with inaccurate colors, the fish glow looks almost white..but it's definitely UV-reactive blue. I'll be using a much better, newer cam for the final "money shots".

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Here are my proposed cathode mounting locations, chosen to get the best effect on all the UV-reactive goodies I have planned (not just the disco floor and UV fans). It wasn't easy to get a half-decent night-shot because the cathodes shining directly at the cam tend to make everything more bright than it really is. It'll look a lot better when the side panel is on and you only see the fans and the other goodies through the black acrylic window.

Still, here is a teaser pic of the UV goodness and my cathode locations.

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For the ATI X1900 series vidcards (this one is a 512M X1900 XT I bought off eBay), probably the best aftermarket cooler for the money is the Accelero X2. It uses a unique fan that pushes the air downwards in the direction of your motherboard and out the rear, away from the case slot brackets, and this air does double duty cooling the heatsinks at the innermost edge of the card. Some would say this is actually a design flaw, as it pushes the warmed air towards the motherboard and into the case, and I wouldn't dispute that. However, with the cooling I've got planned, and my usual fastidiousness with interior tidyness, I'm not too worried about my mobo getting hot 'n' bothered.

I *was* concerned about that big fan on the X2, though...it stands up quite a bit taller than the vidcard itself. In most cases, that wouldn't be an issue, but don't forget that big 250mm fan housing, which is about an inch thick on the inside of the side panel! I was almost *certain* it would stick into the fan blades of that 250mm fan, with my luck! Even my ruler measurements were telling me this...

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...but was I ever lucky! With the mobo sitting on it's brass standoffs in my test-fit, the side panel slid nicely into place without even rubbing anything. But how close WAS it? *You* be the judge...

It actually protrudes about a millimeter beyond the fan housing, and oh-so-luckily-for-me, it protruded in a place between 2 of those 5 acrylic spokes, but is several millimeters below the fan blades themselves....and fortunately, they spun freely. *whew*

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The Accelero X2 has a very nice, smooth, flat finish to its copper plug...but it's not good enough for me. I lapped this for a few minutes each with 400, 600, 1000 and 1500-grit sandpaper, followed by a good rub-down with rubbing compound, and lastly, polishing with automotive polishing compound (aka scratch & swirl remover). Then cleaned 'er up (with rubbing alcohol), added some silver thermal compound, and put the 'sink on for good.

You can see in the comparison pic with stock HSF and the Accelero X2, the height difference. The X2 looks a lot better, IMO, at least it's black so that will go better with the main case mod color. I also was not happy to discover a tiny piece cracked off a component at the corner of the vidcard. I'm hoping it won't affect functionality, as luckily it's not a resistor or some other piece soldered to the PCB....*fingers crossed* -Damn eBay!

I found the piece of wiring for the fan lead a bit longer than it had to be, so I gave it a few twists, then zip-tied it to the now-empty left half of the PCI slot bracket vent. The fan wiring is practically invisible now.

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What's the ugliest part of almost every case mod? The part that almost nobody bothers to mod, the part you never see in the money shots? The rear of the case, where the cables plug in and the I/O & peripherals are exposed.

I kept thinking about Project Pisces, which had a nice, gloss-black paintjob for the chassis, but a few peripheral cards at the rear were shining their starkly contrasting, ugly steel slot covers through the otherwise consistent black paint. This case has a sweet metallic black paintjob too, but I couldn't stop thinking of how butt-ugly things would look, with that bright tin mobo I/O plate and a few bright peripheral cards showing behind that metallic black. And I've seen other people making their own custom-made I/O plates, so I thought I'd take that idea to the next level and fabricate my own entire rear panel.

I took some measurements of the L-shaped depression in which all the I/O and peripherals will plug into. I then went back out to the shop and cut away at some leftover 5mm black acrylic. After 45 minutes of filing, I had some nice, even edges, and I even rounded the corners and bevelled the front-facing edge of all sides of that "L". It fit like a glove!

Once I have the mobo and peripherals in place, I'll take more careful measurements and drill/cut some holes for connector access. Looks really sweet, it'll hide all that contrasting bright metal, and yet you'll be able to see inside the case too, once the UV is turned on!

Looking at those blue anodized thumbscrews, I think I'm agreeing with godfoot to use the black ones instead...

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Well, I began working on the I/O panel tonight. Drilled a few holes for the mouse/keyboard, and used increasingly larger drill bits (don't make too big a jump in size or your acrylic will crack), then used a round file to file open the hole bigger. The ports themselves look great, the head of the connector actually fits inside the black acrylic, I made the holes big enough for the narrow, colored plastic part of the PS2 to slide inside the black acrylic up to the point where the colored plastic thickens. It looks as if the mouse/keyboard are going right inside the black acrylic, which looks really neat.

However, I made a screwup. I removed the masking tape to do a test-fit, and was in the process of doing some final filing details, and I slipped and made a bloody scratch! It's not too deep so I'm hoping and praying one of you pimps has a trick up their sleeve about how to remove a scratch in acrylic! I don't care if it's science or magic, I'm open to anything!

Please PM me if you have any tips! Thanks in advance.

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In my test-fits, the black acrylic I/O panel just didn't sit flush enough for my tastes. Something was preventing it from pressing up close to the PS2 and USB connectors, which could make more complications with device plugs not going in far enough to make a good, tight connection.

The first closeup pic shows a metal lip that protrudes from the first slot bracket. Since I'd already painted the chassis, breaking out the rotary tool to cut or grind it off, wasn't an option. The only option that would work, and still look alright, was to cut the black acrylic panel in exactly that location, so that the two pieces would fit on either side of the lip.

After I split the panel and filed the new edges smooth, then flame-polished them, I measured out where the USB connectors would be cut out, and drilled a bunch of holes on the inside of this rectangular area. I followed that up with an hour of filing to get a nice, clean, rectangular hole. I made the hole big enough so the plastic part of the USB connectors, not just the metal contact piece itself, would fit inside. It looks a lot more pimp when you see the USB & PS2 connectors just disappearing into the black acrylic!

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I haven't had a lot of time the past few days for modding, been doing some house-hunting! Anyway, I did finish the left half of the black acrylic I/O panel. Now it sports holes for both PS2 connectors, 2 USB connectors, and 2 USB + 1 NIC connections. It's quite fingerprinted and a bit greasy at the moment, but I flame-polished all the edges. The scratch doesn't look half as noticeable since the NIC cut-out removed most of it. I'll still try to rub out the scratch and polish the panel before calling it finished.

I loaded up all the ports and took some more pics.

I also received a 74 GB Western Digital Raptor SATA drive today. I can't afford major amounts of storage, but on the other hand, I wanted top performance with the storage I *could* afford. It'll work beautifully as a game & system drive, I have other PCs that handle my other needs. I want this one to be my best game & performance machine.

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Modding the acrylic to allow the vidcard connections was a lot trickier than you'd think. It's not as simple as just cutting some oblong holes for the monitor cable(s).

I first had to insert the vidcard in the PCI-E slot and screw it in, then place the acrylic approximately in place (it wouldn't sit flush because the DVI connectors stick out), and then I used a gel pen (or you could use whatever else you had that would make a visible mark on whatever color of acrylic you used) to mark the approximate edges of the two DVI ports. I didn't make a hole for the S-Video because I'll never use that.

I then drilled a pair of holes at the edges of each DVI outline with a 5mm acrylic drill bit (they're specially designed to dig into the acrylic without cracking it, but you could use smaller bits and work your way up to 5mm incrementally and that would also prevent cracking). After I had 2 holes for top & bottom of each DVI outline, I used the rotary tool to cut out the long edges. Then I focused on the top DVI outline only, and lots and lots of filing to get it to line up with the actual DVI port of the installed vidcard.

But that's not good enough. I had to file the hole even bigger and wider, because the metal part of the actual DVI connector (coming from the monitor or VGA-to-DVI adapter) is a female, and sits *outside* the connector on the vidcard. Once I had the DVI hole cut, I added 5mm holes above and below it, to allow for the screw standoffs. Much filing later, I was able to get a nice fit between the DVI adapter and the vidcard port.

Now that I had one DVI connecting perfectly, I was able to better line up the lower secondary DVI, and carefully repeated all the steps above, making sure both DVI adapters would connect to their corresponding ports on the vidcard (which was tested removed from the system).

The next step was to make sure the I/O panel would line up properly with the case chassis, once the vidcard was screwed in and the I/O panel put in place. Again, more careful filing and close eyeballing, until finally it fit nice and sweet, with the DVI adapters fitting snugly inside the holes in the acrylic, onto the vidcard DVI ports.

Note to self: next time, use 3mm acrylic instead of 5mm, as it's much easier to work with, and isn't too thick; the thickness of the 5mm acrylic made a lot more work ensuring that connectors fit deep enough to make connections to the motherboard and peripheral connections!

The last attached pic shows things sitting nicely in place...but check out those badass scratches! Whoa...

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Today's Recipe-Du-Jour: Acrylic Scratch Removal.

The pic shows the ingredients needed for a smooth and delicious acrylic scratch removal:

-sandpaper in 800 & 1000 grit (1500 grit optional but results might be barely noticeably better)
-rubbing compound
-polishing compound
-toothpaste
-Nu-Finish Scratch Doctor (removes haze and swirls in automotive paint)

The Nu-Finish could be optional. It didn't make a huge difference, but it was noticeable.

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