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Now, today, I'm going to be showing you how to build a perspex tray,
acrylic tray, whatever the term that you want to use.
We're going to show you how to make one today.
This one is one that I made about a year ago, and it's still going strong.
It's still fine, but I needed something a little bit bigger.
And I've had a lot of questions about how can I make one?
Well, I've decided as I'm going to put the next one together,
I'm going to show you along the way.
Now, I've learned a few lessons from making this one from before.
So I'm going to put all of that
learned lessons into this new one that I'm going to build.
Now, if you start asking yourself, well, why do I need one or do I need one?
Yes. As a content creator, as a photographer and videographer,
you want to create anything that involves liquids, that involve water,
then, yes, you're going to need something to put that water in.
Now you can get anything, any old tray that you want to use.
But the versatility of having this, as in a transparent,
you know, base and sides it makes for more creativity.
So you can like this from either side and you can light it from below.
OK, so firstly, let's go through all the things that we're going
to be needing to build this tray.
First and foremost, and the most obvious is the acrylic or the perspex
For the purposes of this video, I'm going to use the term Perspex.
So we can have Perspex.
This one I have is a five millimeter thick Perspex sheet.
That's where it was cut from.
We're going to need something to bond it with.
So I'm using this Tensol 12.
I'm going to need a applicator as well.
I'm going to need a bit of tape, some sandpaper, going to need some gloves
and some white spirit or any alcohol,
you know, methanol kind of thing for cleaning.
Now, I'm going to be putting the cost up on the screen of the total
cost of the build.
And I'm also going to be putting links in the description
of where you can get this stuff. I'm based in the UK.
I'm going to be giving you UK links, but at least they'll give
you something to search from.
They'll give you some ideas
where you can search in your locality to get these bits.
Now, before we go any further, I've got to tell you to exercise safety
when you're doing this, especially when you're using solvents
or any kind of chemicals, especially this thing.
I'm using Tensol 12 as the bonding agent for this.
Read the safety instructions that come with this.
Read the safety data sheets if you need to.
Thats one of the reasons why I'm wearing gloves
and really I should be doing this in a well ventilated area
but for the purposes of this video, I've kind of just have to go through with it.
But I've got two doors open, so I should be fine.
So the first step in this build is cutting your Perspex sheet
to get the sides and the base of your box.
I'm going to be putting the dimensions that I'm using for the build today
And from my previous build,
I cut it myself.
And that wasn't,
as you can see from here, the cuts that aren't great, they're not great.
They were you know, they weren't too straight.
But I did I made do with what I had and the facilities that I have.
So this is where I'm going to sort of give you some advice on where you can
get it cut or how you can get it cut, because I didn't get this new one myself
when I ordered this from the supplier, which was on eBay.
I did ask them if they can cut it for me.
So I did reach out to a couple of suppliers.
Some of them said they couldn't. Some said they could.
So if you are buying this online,
you can reach out to them and ask them if they can cut it for you.
I'll put their description on screen and the dimensions on screen of this one
that I'm building right here.
Alternatively, if you purchase this at your hardware store,
you can try to ask them to cut it there for you as well.
If you have a friend or a family or a neighbor who has like a table saw
and they can cut this, then, you know, that would be also a good shot.
If you can do it yourself, you can use a jigsaw.
If you have a circular saw, you can use that.
So as you can see here, I already have my base
and I have the four sides to this box.
And we're going to start putting this together.
Now, what we want to do with
the first thing that I'd want to do is to just give these edges,
because I'm not sure if you can see it well in camera here,
but this edges got saw marks on it.
So what I want to do is, is smooth this down a little bit.
So get rid of the rough edges so that it will bond better.
So we have a flatter surface on here for it to bond onto the other bit of acrylic
So I'm going to do is use some 120 grit sandpaper.
And as I go along the top,
as go along the top of it, lightly stretching it all the way down
until you get rid of all of that
saw edges or any ridges that you might have on the side
and what you want to do, you just give that a little bit of a clean up.
When you're finished.
And in that's where the spirits or the alcohol comes in.
So you would then just
give that in a clean
space free of any dust
and really any grease
that's going to prevent this from sticking properly.
So these are arrows
that are put on here is just is just for me, essentially,
I'm just pointing towards the edges that have just smoothed out there.
So I know which end to put down when I'm about to bond it.
So I'm going to do now is stick the sides onto the base.
I'm going to be using tape to do this because this is a temporary fix
that we just put and everything together.
Before we bonded right, but I wanted to know if just a final little
cleanup, again, that's going to clean the edges of here,
make sure that there's no dust or grit
on the bonding surfaces and a mating and mating edges.
So that's one last wipe on here.
So we start putting the sides on.
So as you can see, I've got my arrow here.
I'm just going to line this up on the side.
So that's one e dge of it.
That's one side now So we're going to repeat that for all four sides.
I will see you in a sec.
OK, so as you can see now, we have the shape of a box.
I'm just going to reinforce the corners that I've got the
these sides together, and it's going to reinforce the corners a little bit.
If I could find edge of the tape. Come on.
And there we have it, ladies and gentlemen.
No, we're not quite yet done.
So now we have the makings of a box.
It's looking like a box, but it's held up by tape.
So for one is going to leak and it's not going to be structurally sound.
So we need to weld this together.
Weld these edges together
by using this this product.
And that's the next step that we're going to be doing, though.
We have this like this, as I mentioned before, this is Tensol 12
got this on Amazon in the UK, Amazon, UK, and it comes with
a syringe is a single use syringe And it comes with a couple of these
tips as well, because what we're going to do is just go around the edges of this
gently squeezing out as we go.
Try not to make a mess.
Try not to make a blob.
Then were going to call up to the sides as well.
So we need to do the four corners.
And that's kind of the process in a nutshell
is what I'm going to do, though, is leave this overnight to bond properly.
And then when I come tomorrow, I'm going to take the tip off the outside
edges and again apply some more of that bonding agent just from the outside.
So in case it didn't penetrate deep enough from this angle,
we can now cover the bases on the outside as well.
And that is pretty much it for this video.
One thing to note is that perspex scratches
very easily in my first box.
There's a lot of scratches on the underside.
So depend on what you're shooting, if you're shooting anything.
But if any transparent liquid, especially on a on a white
or plain background, the scratches tend to show up.
Now, with photography, you might be able
to get away with that by cleaning up the scratches in post-production.
You don't really want to do that anyway.
But in video is a lot more difficult.
So just be mindful about how you would store your brand new perspex box
so that it doesn't get scratches, especially on the base of it.
Now, here's an extra tip for you.
And I've just made that grave mistake.
If you have a bit of cardboard whilst you're using, the bonding agent
just cut a bit of cardboard that can go on the base it
so you don't keep dropping the thing all over the center of it.
It's not a good look.
I've made up boo boo
and I'm going to try to see if I can I can get it out when it does dry.
So don't make that same mistake.
And if there's anything else that you wanted to ask me about this build,
let me know in the comments below.
Also, follow me over on Instagram.
You can shoot me DM as well. And let me see the results.
If you do, go ahead and brave it to me. One of this.
Let me see the results of the tree.
Let me see the results of the images.
And I'll see you guys on the next video piece.