Questions about DIY acrylic pico reeftanks...

[nanoguy]

Hey there folks. I have a few questions for you DIY acrylic workers. I am thinking about building my wife a small pico reef tank for her classroom in the 2-3 gallon range. I want it short and long with an overflow but the dimensions are not what my question is about.

I read that cast-acrylic is the way to go but was wondering about thickness for this small a project. Can I use 1/4 inch and scribe and break the pieces since I have really no specialized tools? What do you use for adhesive and where did it come from? If I did need to use a tabble saw what type of blade should I use? Keep in mind I am doing this on cheap and it won't be a show tank but I would like it to look nice.

I'm sure I'll think of more questions later but that will get us started. Sorry for the long post but thanks for looking.

 

[skipm]

1/4 inch is fine, thats what I use for most of my projects. The scoring and snapping method will work but it will take alot longer to prepare the joints for bonding, I use a tablesaw with a carbide tipped blade. Use a blade with as many teeth as you can, this will help make smoother cuts. You will need to get the proper acrylic cement to make the joints, I use IPS Weldon 3 or 4 which is water thin and Weldon 16 which has a much thicker consistency. Look in the yellow pages under plastics or try calling around to the glass shops in your area to see if they have any they will sell you. You can also find it on-line at places like www.usplastic.com .

 

[nanoguy]

Thanks for the advice, do you have to sand your edges when your done cutting?

 

[skipm]

They will need to be dressed and sanding is one way to do it. Since I have the tools though I use either my power planer (handheld) or my jointer to dress the edges. I also found early on that a carbide scraper like you would use to scrape paint before paining worked well as long as the blade was new and sharp.