Rachel wants a shelf to go above the sink, right here,
to keep all this crap off the sink.
But, because it will get wet, I'm gonna try to make it
out of this sheet of acrylic,
and the shelf is gonna go right here.
And, it'll be interesting to see,
because I've never worked with acrylic before.
I'll start by switching to a smaller saw blade
because a smaller blade has a lower tooth speed
and that probably means less melting of the plastic.
It's an okay cut, but definitely not as nice
as a factory edge. I wonder if that can be
cleaned up with a hand plane.
Not really.
But, the cabinet scraper made a big difference.
These two pieces are gonna form vertical supports
to hold the shelf on the bottom of the bathroom cabinet,
but how to join these? I read that solvent cement
can be used to join some of this plastic,
I'm not sure, so let's give it a try.
First I have to peel the protective layer off of it.
Let's see.
Lot's of safety warnings on here, which I didn't read.
But, down here it says the joint should not be disturbed
for one hour.
It's now been over an hour, and there's this funny smell
in my workshop from that solvent cement.
And, let's try to break this.
Huh?
It seems like it's still a little bit soft,
but I think it has potential.
I'll have to do another test, and leave that one longer.
I gave this one a whole day to set,
so let's see how that holds now.
Well, I think that will be okay.
I didn't get adhesion on the whole thing.
I'm sanding the glue surface a little bit,
because I'm not sure if there's any coating on it.
Before I glue it together, I'm gonna drill the mounting holes
because it's easier now.
I have to not let the drill get too hot
otherwise everything just melts.
I'm doing the final glue-up outside,
so I won't have all the fumes in my shop.
I wasn't sure how much faith I should have in the strength
of my glue joints, so I added this thin backer
to help reinforce it here.
And, that also stiffens up the shelf.
And, I figure I should also add some screws to the corners
right here.
Now with the protective foil removed
the shelf just about disappears,
although I'm sure it will show up much better once it's dirty.
Now with all the stuff moved onto the shelf
it's much easier to clean up around the sink.
Although filthy sinks never used to be a problem
when I was single.