# DIY Cabinet Advice



## Chris Stokes (21 Jul 2017)

Evening all,

A couple of questions for my DIY cabinet, which I'm mid way through:

1) I don't want the base to be in direct contact with the floor. Can anyone recommend any levelling furniture feet and fittings for my 60P cabinet? Will one in each corner be sufficient?

2) How to people waterproof their cabinets once painted? I've been looking at matt clear varnish and plastikote clear matt acrylic. Any advise?

Thanks in advance.


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## KipperSarnie (22 Jul 2017)

I would use block feet, home made & add packing to level if required.  
This time around due to health I bought a tank & cabinet rather than make one & had to use packing to level.
As for how many obviously a couple in the middle is beneficial depending on size of tank.
If your cabinet is painted then it should suffice adding a varnish coat is only like adding another coat of paint.  If your worried use an external paint.


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## zozo (22 Jul 2017)

It depends on the weight and the floor it stands on.. Now 60P dimension aint so heavy but still all in all you could easily have around a 100 Kilos / + 200 LBS for the complete setup. Devided over 4 little presure points you need a very solid floor and a rather heavy duty furniture feet able to hold the weight permanently. They should be able to level and secured so it wont stand wobbly on it's feet..Floor shouldn't be soft carpeting nor hard carpet (wood) with soft underlayment. Even modern build houses with concrete floors, have often a softer cement finish able to crack over time under a small heavy pressure point. That is why all standard tank cabinets are not constructed with 4 leveling furniture feet.

I had to overcome some simmular problems with my 110 litre tank and a 4 feet stand on a crooked wooden floor build in 1920.. After looking around at available altenatives i decided in the end to go with 1" steel gaspipe and 1" tube clamps.







 They also have feet and or end caps..
http://www.industrialmetal.co.uk/products/search?query=tube+clamp

Since it stands on a wooden floor i went for End caps and still used a piece of wood to connect the 2 feet left and right to devide the weight.. With the tube clamps which can be secured with a M10 alen bolt it can be leveled on the spot and firmly secured in all derections. After that builded a wooden shell around the steel frame.. Still because it was on a wooden (plank) floor in a 1920 build house, if i walked by the filled tank i saw it wobble little. So i had to secured the steel frame again to the wall, all  the way through with steel strips and threaded rods.

That's what i needed to go through to make it work.

So the question are 4 leveling feet sufficient? Can't be answered that easily.. It depends to much on situations we can not know with the question only..


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## GHNelson (22 Jul 2017)

Hi Chris
Mark Evans used heavy duty castors/wheels on a large cabinet....they could be a option!
The ones he purchased where not cheap.....but there is non expensive others! -

 
https://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/120-x-55-x-55-journal-finished.17974/page-37
Cheers
hoggie


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## Tim Harrison (22 Jul 2017)

If you're going to use castors just make sure your cabinet is sturdy enough to withstand the lateral pressure required to overcome the inertia needed to get it moving. Otherwise the weight of the tank will cause the stand to parallelogram, and it'll end up flat-packed.


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## GHNelson (22 Jul 2017)

......
Parallelogram.......is that a older version of the Radiogram


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## zozo (22 Jul 2017)

hogan53 said:


> ......
> Parallelogram.......is that a older version of the Radiogram


The solution.. Best of both..


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## GHNelson (22 Jul 2017)

That's it I want one


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## Tim Harrison (22 Jul 2017)

It certainly looks sturdy enough 
What on earth do you use it for?


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## zozo (22 Jul 2017)

Tim Harrison said:


> What on earth do you use it for?



To screw in new light bulbs.. I hold the bulb and my girlfriend turns the table... 

Nah, it's ot mine!? You mentioned parallelogram and i thought Scissor lift and got me an idea.. Googled it and found i wasn't the only one, again. It's hard to be original these days with internet. But ut is a very nice steampunk idea for a piece of furniture.. Would be awsome for a fish tank with that stainless ADA filter..


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## Tim Harrison (22 Jul 2017)

zozo said:


> But is a very nice steampunk idea for a piece of furniture.. Would be awesome for a fish tank with that stainless ADA filter..


Haha...it would be, along with a stainless steel CO2 cylinder...but also good for changing light bulbs too 
"Steampunk" one of my favourite movie genres... "Hardware" is a particular favourite, but perhaps lesser known. It's based on a story from 2000AD, a comic I used to get when I was a kid


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## zozo (22 Jul 2017)

Tim Harrison said:


> 2000AD



Judge Dredd..


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## Tim Harrison (22 Jul 2017)

Absolutely right ...but my mistake I was thinking of Cyberpunk not Steampunk ..haha. One of my numerous blond moments...subtle difference ...steampunk is still very cool tho', some great films


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## zozo (23 Jul 2017)

Tim Harrison said:


> .but my mistake I was thinking of Cyberpunk not Steampunk



Dunno if it is a mistake, looked a bit into it and i see what you mean.. And indeed with some subtile detail changes it definitively would look more cyberpunk.. 

With a regulator like this it would be steampunk.


 

But with a nice brandnew polished high end Co2 art setup on a polshed bottle would definitively look cyberpunk..


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## Chris Stokes (23 Jul 2017)

Thanks all for your replies.

I think I'll probably pass on the feet now, too much extra to think about and something else to go wrong.

I'll make sure the bottom gets an extra coat of whatever I use to waterproof the cabinet and be extra careful during water changes!

Chris


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