{"id":5881,"date":"2003-10-04T00:39:00","date_gmt":"2003-10-04T04:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/2003\/10\/04\/rivethead\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T11:32:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T15:32:26","slug":"rivethead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/2003\/10\/04\/rivethead\/","title":{"rendered":"RIVETHEAD!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> 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…<\/p>\n

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…<\/p>\n

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<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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. :)<\/p>\n

Oh, maybe some pictures…<\/p>\n


Slab at beginning of heat treatment.
Click for more pics…<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

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<\/i> be… Woo! Italics…<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,11,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers","category-making-things","category-moved-from-livejournal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5881"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15749,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5881\/revisions\/15749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}