Good evening Minions. I trust you’re up to no good. Tonight I present a collaborative project with my friend Chris from Austin Hot Mods: a custom powered pedal board for his South by Southwest exhibit.
About a year ago, Drunken Chris gave me $40 to build him a work bench of some sort. Long story short, I never got around to building it and he never got around to asking for his money back. I knew there was trouble ahead. Lo and behold, he called up one day and asked, “Dude, did I give you material-procurement funds and did you never procure materials?”
Well crap. I guess that means you want me to build something too, huh? And just as I was about to watch this engaging sporting event on the television set. But I guess a promise is a promise.
I started off with a board- a hardwood poplar board to be specific, and I used this yellow measure thingy to help me count it. It turned out to be 42. Moving on.
These are two combinations squares that were my grandfather’s. I pulled them out of a box of rusted tools and brought them back from the dead. A month ago they were both frozen in 40+ years worth of rust. I fixed them and they helped me with this project. Seemed fitting to feature them here.
Chris provided dimensions and a pretty clear design. After research, I had to make a few modifications due to weight reduction and other considerations. This is a scaled-down model to what he originally asked for. I called him and asked, “Do you trust me?”
What you see was going to be it, properly spaced and fastened together, but I decided to go on and make everything all complicated and shit.
Once I got everything perfectly even, I cut joints into the parts to fit it all together like a jigsaw puzzle. Not wanting to talk about negatives here but this step was fraught with bullshit.
I used putty and caulk to hide the bullshit.
Once assembled it was time to paint. Bullshit and inferior-quality wood prevented me from doing a natural wood finish so I decided on the next-best thing: Pumpkin Orange and Black Hot Rod.
I used furniture buttons to fill the recessed screw holes
I now have orange pliers as a bonus.
Quickly, tuna and/or cat-food cans make great stuff-holders.
I used orange and black acrylic paints with orange fleck to give the hot rod look, then hit them with a multi-color fleck coat before applying the decals and clear coat.
After Chris picked it up he installed LED accent lights underneath. Oh yeah, I guess there aren’t any pictures, but I also installed an AC power jack on the back so one can just plug in and play.
Here is the completed board, lit, powered, and displaying the different pedal mods Chris can make for you. This was a fun project to be a part of and from what I hear, the board was a hit at the expo. If anyone is interested in their own custom board, hit me up.
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