Blue-Hellfire

[Cobra]

just a small update today.
kinda screwed up my lower back over the weekend so its makin it a bit hard to get any modding done at the min.
but this is where things are sitting so far.
start with a pic of how the nose cone will look when its in the turbine opening

i think it looks pretty good for what it is =o)
next lil thing i got around to was Blow hole cover V2.0
i wasn't totally happy with the first one i did as i felt i could do better.
so once again i grabbed my dremel, this time the canvas was a perspex clip board from staples.
its a bit thicker than the material i used to make my first fan grill so i already thought it was an improvement.
first thing i did was cut a hole in the clipboard the size of the opening i wanted.

this is the point where i am gonna get bashed,kicked, clubbed and beaten.............
i started with an idea in which i wasn't sure if it would work out or not so i just dug into it.
i didn't take pics of the actual process because you all know how to do the simple stuff like drilling and shaping things with the dremel and assorted bits.
all i can say is that i started with this basic shape

then i fashioned a lower jaw bone as well and cut both pieces out of the same clip board,
once i had the rough pieces cut out i drilled and ground out the eye and nose sockets so it was similar to my other blow hole cover.
heres where i did something a bit different.
1st my wife let me borrow one of the steel muffin tins from the kitchen.
2nd i grabbed my small propane torch.
mixed the 2 together with a bit of imagination and a touch of clear 5 minute epoxy to join things together afterwards and i ended up with this.

i now have a 3D version of my skull for my blow hole cover. i used the torch to heat and melt the rounded edges of the skull around the shape of the muffin tin to give it a bit of depth.
next i hit it with a coat of primer as i will plain this unit with high gloss black shortly.

once i have it painted i have an idea of something i want to try out which i think will work good on that part in particular.
more on that once i figure out exactly how i wanna do it.
one nice thing this week tho is my opticals came in

so of course i had to start dismantling them hehe

who knew there were so many parts in these damn things? lol
eh they will more than likely end up getting a paint makeover and a full stealth before they go in the case
anyhow i will cya this weekend with something more hopefully

[Cobra]

yay:clap::clap: i can move again!!!
well at least somewhat, enough to get a bit of modding done.
in the end i decided to stay with that version of the blow hole cover. i am going to try some different things with it to see the effects i end up with and hopefully come up with something i am happy with.
this past week was a slow one for modding my machine as wifey wanted to see some progress with her own so she didnt feel left out.
so this is what i been doing this past week.
remember me and wifey have the same case we started with
hers we did basic mods to, store bought side window for the sharkoon rebel 9 ran us a whole £10 and i deem that cheap enough to justify not cutting the whole myself lol.

stock pic courtesy of the sharkoon website.
we didn't like the stock plexi that came with it cause it came with mounts for 2 120 mm fans built into it.
pulled that out of the frame, filled the holes with some bondo and smoothed things out.
primed it all up and went to halfords for her to pick out some colors.
she wanted a dolphin/water theme so various blues came home with us.
she went to work on her new side panel piece of plexi
she is engraving for her first time so i will ler her do her thing while i do the paint thing.
popped off the front covers fron the dvd drives and also the front faceplate from her fan controller ( they do have to match or i get my but kicked)
i wish i had some pics of the process up to now but to be honest my back still wasn't up to par and she left the new cam up in the bedroom most of the week and i just wasnt up to hitting those stairs back and forth for the cam so i just got on with it.
did a basic fade for the undercoat of the case including the drive covers and fan controller cover.
then grabbed the squirt bottle.
filled er up with some water and set the case one its side.
spritzed the side of the case till i thought the water drops were big enough for the effect she wanted.

then grabbed an aerosol can of gloss black and lightly misted the entire panel.
note to self....when watching commandos vids on painting make sure to have the sound on and also watch them to the end.
see part of my prob is i am a MAN
i see an example of how to do something and figure,,,eh i got this.
since i am said MAN i cant be like a normal person and actually get the information i need first time through and then go try on my own.
i say that for one reason
i almost had to strip the whole damn case down and respray it like a moron.
i misted the panel and left it sit on its side for about 35 mins.
all the while it was sitting there i am thinking hmmmmm.. that don't look quite right.
so figuring i was screwed anyhow i went into the house and came out with some paper towels.
started dabbing off some of the excess water that was left on the panel.
ugh this looked like crap, so wifey came over and grabbed the paper towels and decided since the paint was screwed anyhow she would scrub it a bit and see what happened.
tis there where the bit of luck came in.
when she rubbed it wasn't perfect but it did pull up a good bit of the paint that was inside the bubbles themselves and that made it look the way she wanted it to in the beginning.
little more rubbing with the paper towel and first side was deemed done.

i continued this on the rest of the faces of the PC
top first

then other side panel

one at a time, the only difference being, after misting i only had to wait about 10 mins for the gloss black to flash dry before i grabbed a paper towel and dabbed off the excess.
all in all it turned out pretty good looking.
i also did the face plates for the drives n fan controller

once everything was "bubbled" i pulled out the clear coat and layed out 6-7 decent coats of it.
now the pc is mock up assembled and waiting for the clear to cure enough for the color sanding and polishing.
which leaves us here..

thats it for this week guys.. i have done some small bits on my own rig but i felt it more important to keep being able to sleep in the bed as opposed to the shed by putting her PC up here =o)
cya soon

[Cobra]

thanks for the comments guys.
they are all much appreciated
i did a bit o playin around with some of the smaller stuff in the past few days.
remember these?

well.. i did a bit of filing, grinding and sanding to them just to clean em up a bit.

they did look like this after a few coats of primer

but now they look like this

all nice and purty and gloss black
while i was at it i hit the rest of the chassis bits with some primer(yes i did sand everything down previously with 600 grit paper to the primer had something to "etch" onto)

also remember these things?

it was time to give them a bit of a makeover as well.
since they are going to be full stealth i removed the front bezel totally
i peeled off the stickers on the drives ( whats a warranty worth now a days anyhow to a modder? lol)
the rear of the drive (the header panel SATA connection) for some reason they cast in tan plastic..thats horrible in my opinion but thats why paint was created.so i taped off all the electronics inside of it and sprayed the back panels black and also the exterior casings

since the front bezel isnt going to go back on these drives i need to add some auxiliary wiring to them so i can relocate the open/close buttons.
broke out the soldering iron

and some spare wire from my lil extinct PC spare parts bin.
then i soldered the 2 bits of wire to the front 2 points for the micro switch on the pcb board

and one with the outer casing back on.

ok thats where i have to leave off for today. more to do this weekend
cya soon

[Dane Bramage]

very cool work, man. very impressed with all of it. i especially like the "bubbled" technique. can you post a link for us newbs to the video you mentioned? i love your wife's case so far. even for just a pain job, i think it's gonna look excellent.

also, the trick with the opticals is kewl. one more thing to add to my impending design.

rep/sub.

[Cobra]

http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/f...ad.php?t=12621
there ya go bud..the origional tute i saw that gave me the idea for the water effect.
enjoy

[Cobra]

sorry for the lack of updates guys n gals but i got stuck on a side project last week ( building a new cage for our degus)

we have 3 of the lil critters and they needed a new place to run around.
so i built this

6-7 hours of bending wires and cutting wood should have provided them with enough room now to chill and enjoy thier toys for a while =o)
pc build update should be here this weekend hopefully.
cya then

[Cobra]

Had a friend of mine do up a sig tag for this one now as the one i had previously kinda sucked.

thanks Jon, works awesome as always.
ok tis time to get back to the pc's, first a brief rundown of what i have done on mine this week and then a quick update on the wifes with temp lighting and her etching.
when we last left my machine i had just painted the internal opticals and parts of the chassis.remember the first skull i carved out of plexi?
kinda looked like this

well i didn't want to let it go to waste so i recycled it by adding a bit of mesh to it and painting it black.
it now resides on the rear panel over the rear exhaust fan.

i didnt like the pieces of plexi that connected the eye sockets and the nose so i removed them with the dremel and epoxied each piece to the mesh behind it. i think it looks alot better than previous.after this shot i also shaved down the left edge to be flush with the case IO panel.
next... i grabbed a bag of rivets and decided it was time to start an assembly process to get it back to lookin like a pc again.
i do have to say at this point i am glad i didn't disassemble the chicks pc as far as i did mine..made it alot easier to use as a template for riveting mine back together lol.
once i got a basic chassis back together i started pondering how to mount the hard drive in such a way that it looks like its floating in thin air.
somewhere in one of my parts bins i found what i needed

its an old drive bay cover from one of those full acrylic cases ya see here n there.
should work nicely for what i want so lets knock right into it.
measure things up and layout the holes that will act as mounting points in both the case and on the HD itself

then drag it out back in the garden and grab my friend the propane torch =o)~

lil bit of heat, lil bit of persuasion and i have what i want.

this is the basic mount idea i have in mind.. simple but yet it will give me the effect i want when complete.

so i make sure the hardware fits the mount and the case frame itself

bolt it down in place

hit it with a touch of paint to make it disappear and then attach the HD to it.

its far enough off where the mobo will be so it wont cause a problem. not worried alot as i dont plan on anything extravagant for a vid card or anything and in the position its in it will also help me hide some wiring while keeping itself in the middle of the cross flow of the front and bottom fans.
just for the hell of it i decided to throw the side panel on just to see how much will be visible through the window when done....

yeap...... i like it so far =o)
ignore the colors as the only thing on it at the moment is the stock black and then some white primer . this will all emd up changing but i have more work to do before i am anywhere near ready for paint yet.
tis all for mine this week but a quickie on the wifes rig.
she had her go at etching and i have to say i am quite impressed with it...

then for her blowhole cover i cut out the basic shapes and she went to town on those as well

slapped some mesh behind it and a blue led fan to compliment it.

hot wired a psu

to get an idea if how it will look with lighting
while none of these lights are in their final places you can get the idea that its gonna end up looking very cool.

i think thats it for this weeks update.. didnt have the time to polish out the chicks rig so hopefully that will follow this week sometime. and i have more fun stuff to mess with on mine.
cya next week with another update...
one last parting shot for ya before i go

[Cobra]

easy guide for hot wiring psu's ..basically just bridging the green wire in the large connector to one of the blacks
http://www.techwarelabs.com/guides/misc_mod/psumod/

[Cobra]

alrighty then...
i got 2 things in the mail last week that are both gonna help me towards my final goals with this build
first one deals directly with the build itself

wifey snuck around and found me a compressor on ebay so when its air brush time i dont have to use those god awful cans =oX
second present that showed up is just plain awesome.
wife knows i plan to use this as a gaming rig when done so the ebay queen herself struck again and now i have this

now yanno by the time i actually use it i am gonna have to rip it apart, tweak, push, pull, prime, paint and light it so it all matches lol.
as wife reads this and shakes her head in shame i have to remind her.. its a mod thing =o)
gotta have everything match when its done or its only half a mod =oX
this morning i looked over my side panels and decided i have some pinholes to fill in the larke one and i needed some bondo for the flamed one to even a few areas out so i started with takin care of those.

knocked most of the flame areas flat with a hammer and dolly , still needed some filler for the bits that didn't wanna cooperate.
then i hit the other side panel with a bit more filler.. this ones almost ready for color

i am shooting for the end of this month shooting some color on my rig. should be able to pull it off as long as nothing drastic happens.
while i wait for the bondo to cure so i can start the sand fill sand fill sand process i figure its damn well about time i polish out the wifes rig..
what do you know.... she agreed with me =o/
armed with a bucket of slightly soapy water,

an old piece of wall tile i have cut down and use as a sanding block. some 1200 and 2000 grit paper

i start rubbin it out
starting in parallel strokes with the 1200 grit first until i take all the gloss off the panel itself

once its all a uniform dull finish i grab the 2000 grit and sand the entire piece again being careful on corners and in depressions so as not to cut through the color coats and into the primer since i really really don't wanna do this paint job again o.O
once i have it gone over with the 2000 i grab some light rubbing compound. the stuff i am using today is called t-cut compound but any haze and swirl remover would do the same.
loaded a damp towel with some of the t-cut and applied it to the panel with a light haze.
then i grabbed the electric car buffer and used that to work the compound over the paint and smooth out the finish.

i repeated this on all the exterior panels on wifeys machine until i got a nice even shine.
she seems to like the way it shines and reflects now ( yay me )

thats it for todays update. hopefully have some more for ya next weekend.. have a great week =o)

[Cobra]

just a bit of a quickie for today
bodywork is done on 3/4ths of the case so far.. all complete except the flamed side window side as i havent had time to do the necessary sanding to flaten things out yet but that wont be too much hassle.
since the rest of the case is matte black right now from the guide coats of paint i am going to use basic black as one of the main undercolors on the paint scheme.
on top of the black base i need white as what i have planned will need a very light background as a canvas later
i grabbed some 2 inch masking tape and covered the exposed areas.
than i grabbed my flamed side window panel and used it as a template for the flames on the other side just so everything ended up in scale and matched.
once the flames were traced on the panels

i grabbed a generic razor knife and cut out the pattern little by little

flames started to take shape the more i removed masking

figured while i was at it i might as well throw in a foot shot so no one felt left out or neglected since there haven't been any new sightings in the past 2 weeks or so =oX

the layout for the top panel

i am not real worried about symmetry as flames aren't perfect anyhow and it wont really have an effect on the overall appearance once its done
grabbed a can o trusty Halfords white primer and layed on a light mist coat

i hit the front panel with the white again as well

i hit the panels with a few more light coats till i had even coverage
then let it dry about 20 mins before removing the masking tape
this is what i am left with atm

as i said.. the side window panel isnt finished yet and needs to be sanded and painted to match.
kinda my queue to go buy some more black and white primer lol.
both cans started sputtering out a bit by the end of their sessions.
its prolly gonna be about 2 weeks till my next update only because i have a bit of a full workload on the homefront and work in the near future so mod time will be limited but i will get "something" done in that time.
cya when i can =o)