Any Colour You Like #3: Us and Them

How to make and fit the top. Initial thoughts were to go back to the CAD model and produce a template that way.

This is fine in that it is roughly the right size and shows all the pieces in their places. Slight problem though. This is an ideal picture. If I were making the top and sides and putting them together in one go it would be perfect to use. However I have already made and glued up the sides. With the best will in the world the resulting hexagon of sides is not going to precisely match to this diagram. So back to the real world. A plain piece of A4 paper and the sides placed on it top end down.

I used a scalpel to prick holes in the paper along the outside of the pillars. Join these dots up using pencil and ruler. Whilst your at it find the centre from the corners of this drawing, so

Found the centres of each of the rainbow patterns (join between yellow and green) again using a scalpel dot, join the point to the centre and extended outwards, so

Did the same with the double line representing the white line on adjacent sides.

Draw in the lines to give this (the black corner is a registry device, one of the black pillars on the base has the mitred side blacked to correspond)

The sharp eyed amongst you will notice there is also an extra, internal, hexagon. This is the actual size of the top and is derived by going around the existing hexagon with a piece of spare pillar material, marking dots to join up to create this, so

Black and white pieces were cut to size

and laid out on the plan to check

Next to cut the triangles for the colours. Only orange, yellow, green and blue need be trimmed to triangles, red and purple can stay pretty much as they are. I made a simple jig from a piece of veneer

with a 52mm x 6mm cutout at the corner and a piece of plastic double sided taped to it.

The veneer to be cut fits in it thus

and is cut with a scalpel to produce this

I tried these wedges out on the CAD diagram with a piece of pillar material to cover

I taped a piece of clear library film, sticky side up, to the real world diagram and laid the pieces on it

Filling in the gaps with spare veneer (Birch, white). This was glued to the MDF top material, with a black veneer (inside of box) on the other face and is drying in my veneer clamp as I write.

All for now

Be seeing you

-- Martyn -- Boxologist, Pattern Juggler and Candyman of the visually challenging. http://www.theartofboxes.com