Display Case Making

Just read the article on making display cases in the latest Model Engineer which seems a very usefull and practical method. The article prompts me to describe my mate Barrie's evolution of case making for his models for those who like glass as a material.

Initial attempts used Brass angle silver soldered together at the corners and the glazed with what he always described as 20 pennyweight glass. Picture glass to the rest of us (I guess around 2mm). The main difficulty was setting and holding the brass angle correctly in order to solder the joints. The finished result was acceptable but prone to tarnishing and plain brass angle actually looks a little thin. If you see museum cases they use a much heavier moulded section.

The next bright idea was hardwood routed to form an right angled bead ebonised and joined at the corners with fancy brass angle plates screwed in place with small brass woodscrews. Well this looked quite nice on a couple of skeleton clocks but the making of the scroll style corner angles in brass was quite time consuming. Glazing was as before using silicone sealant to attach the glass.

Realising how good a bond was created between the glass and the wooden corner beading lead to the final iteration. The corner brackets were done away with and each glass side was fitted with a surrounding edging of hardwood beading with the corners suitably mitred on facing sides and buttted on hidden aspects. The assembly was achieved essentially using the glass to bead bond as the structural strength with no need to rely on the corner joint at all. Much easier to assemble and quite light and strong. The final cases looked really good too.

regards Martin

Glass sounds better than acrylic to me.

Acrylic (Perspex/Plexiglas) looks great when it is new, but it is quite soft and dust, even domestic house dust, is very abrasive. After a few years of energetic dusting, perhaps by SWMBO, acrylic will look scratched and on its way to becoming opaque, and the maker's pride and joy will start to look old and tatty and perhaps SWMBO will want to hide it away, and the next generation will not want it at all.

Rod

What interested me was the 3 approaches.

1 Make a frame and glaze it. (relies on corner joints)

2 Make a glazed box and then add decorative beading (panel to panel joints)

3 Hybrid. Panel to bead joints with long adheasive runs making for strength (panel to bead to panel)

regards Martin

I've done it by using silicone to first form a glass box much like a fish tank and then applying a decorative "L" shaped moulding to the external corners, you you are neat with the silicon then the internal corners don't need covering if not a square bead can be added. The glass on this is about 300mm high, various woods that have been ebonized for the trim.

Bigger stuff like this 5ft wide case I route grooves into square columns to take the glass

Edited By JasonB on 27/08/2020 07:07:11