Wow, I feel like a true out and out rivethead tonight. I just spent the last hour filing, grinding, and wire brushing a 10″ x 20″ piece of 6061 aluminum alloy. See, when the G5 comes, it’s not going to fit on my shelf. Because of this I wanted to make a shelf for the G5, so it’ll sit nicely and look all pretty and stuff. My first choice was a nice 1/2″ thick piece of glass, but that ended up being too pricey; almost $70. Next, I consulted lowcostmetals.com after hearing about them from a friend. Turns out that I was able to get a appropriate sized piece of aluminum for $32, shipped. Not bad at all…

Anyway, the aluminum slab is a little scratched and was rather worn, so I decided to give it the most appropriate finish I could think of: brushed metal. Well, tonight I filed all the edges to nice 45°, put the wire wheel in my drill, and gave all the surfaces a fairly decent brush job, removing all but a couple of scratches. I think it looks pretty good…

As I was in the middle of finishing off the slab of aluminum, I remembered something I read online when reading the 6061 Aluminum Material Property Data Sheet. It seems that if one wishes to artificially age 6061 aluminum, it requires “350°F for 8 hours followed by air cooling” to reach T6 temper. Poking around Google, I found that T6 is a pretty hard temper, and I figured that it would be good to temper this stand, just to hopefully cut down on any more scratches.

So, in the oven it went. Seeing as this is a decent sized slab of metal, I’m going to give it 10 hours in a pre-heated oven. That means come 10:00am, I’m going to wake up, turn off the oven, and let the slab cool. Woo! Before placing the slab on the rack in the oven I made sure to wipe it down with isopropyl alcohol while wearing latex gloves. Hopefully that’ll eliminate any heat-assisted oxidation that may occur. If it does, I’ll just steel wool it off.

After the oven treatment I’m going to throw a number of coats of satin urethane (yes, the same stuff I used in my furniture) on the slab and call it done. Hopefully it’ll look nice… My tests with this urethane on various computer parts and metal pieces seemed to give a nice overall dulling, yet smoothing, effect, which is just what I’m looking for… So, we’ll see what happens. :)

Oh, maybe some pictures…

Slab at beginning of heat treatment.
Click for more pics…

Well, just one, but that’s all right. I also put together the new table saw tonight, but I didn’t cut anything, so that part wasn’t as industrial as it could be… Woo! Italics…

Anyway, I think I’m done for tonight. I also slapped together some extra-low-cost shelves from Target to give me a place to put my vinyl and books in my office. Those worked out really well… Pics will be forthcoming, most likely after I get the office all put together. Finishing that will entail about two hours on my back, tying cables up above my head… Sort of the way I hurt my chest before. Sort of.