DIY 40 Breeder Stand

[ticklem]

Ok so I am upgrading my 20L to a 40B and decided to build my own stand. Theres just not that many stands available for a 40B that you can put a fuge under. And the ones that you do find are outrageous in price. So here is where I got the idea for this stand. I did not follow it to the tee I have some slight variations but basic idea is the same. I do like this idea though because of the space that the simpson strong ties save over using another 2x4 in each corner as a connector.

Idea for 40B stand

1st thing I did of course was build the frame. This is where I am at now. Mine differs in that I only used 1 2x4 in the middle front and did not use one in the back. This is because I am using a 20L for a fuge and with a brace in the middle/back I would never be able to get the fuge out if something happened. Plus you do not need that extra support the 4 2x4's on the corners are plenty to support a 40b.

Next thing I did diffrent is my up right 2x4's are all one direction (front to back) while the one I am folowing has his front ones going front to back and the back ones going side to side. The main reason I did this was I wanted the upright 2x4's to support the spot that top frame is connected. If you put the 2x4's side to side the you are relying on the screws that hold the top rectangle together to support the tank and not the 2x4's. 2nd this gives me more room in the back for getting my fuge in.

Am waiting on a router now to put my sides and shelf in. .

[C-Rad]

Looks rock solid. Are the screw heads on those brackets gong to make it hard to skin?

[bitts]

C-Rad. Ticklem. this a perfect chance to ask about some things that seem to very from build to build. with this being a great example of how to build with consideration to shear stress & tensile stress. could you go into why the joints are designed as they are. such as the placement of but joints & lap joints.

 

for those wanting them defined.

shear stress

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shear_stress

tensile stress

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensile_stress

[ticklem]

Looks rock solid. Are the screw heads on those brackets gong to make it hard to skin?

 

 

Yes Actually it does present a challenge as I want the wood on the side to be flush with the 2x's and not sitting on the screw heads. So that is what I am working on today with the router. Pictures to come on that.

[ticklem]

C-Rad. Ticklem. this a perfect chance to ask about some things that seem to very from build to build. with this being a great example of how to build with consideration to shear stress & tensile stress. could you go into why the joints are designed as they are. such as the placement of but joints & lap joints.

 

for those wanting them defined.

shear stress

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shear_stress

tensile stress

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensile_stress

 

 

Basically in my build it will be all butt joints. The top frame/rectangle is made of 4 pieces of 2x4's 2=36" and 2=15". Where the 36" board connects to the 15" board there is a 2x4 support placed directly underneath 1/2 on the 36" board and 1/2 on the 15" board. Basically this stand would hold with out any of the braces or screws because the 2x4's ARE the support. And from what I can tell a single 2x4 upright can support a ton of weight before it fails. But of course you put screw in there and the simpson strong ties because if it was bumped from the side you need something to hold those upright 2x4's in place. The design I was folowing had 2 center uprights in the middle of the 36" boards which is complete overkill. They are NOT needed for the support. The only reason I even have the on in the front is to attach the center piece of plywood to it.

 

Oh and on the stress I am not an engineer so I can't really elaborate on that. But I can tell you this stand will be rock solid and coould probably hold 5 full 40Breeders stacked on top of each other.

[ticklem]

Ok got some more pictures with the routing done on the sides to get the plywood to sit flush. And have the shelf cut for the bottom.

This is one of the sides with it completely routed

This is what the side goes against and you can see I routed where the silver strong ties are.

Picture of the router and also a Dremel too that I used for sanding the edges

The bottom shelf with notches cut out to fit

[cody6766]

I can attest to the strength of a single 2x4 across a 38" run. I have mine set up that way with the top rail sitting on the posts like your design. My 40br is holding up just fine with no sagging or bowing. I have a piece of 1/2" ply and then a 3/4" ply on the top.

 

Stand is coming along nicely

[ticklem]

I can attest to the strength of a single 2x4 across a 38" run. I have mine set up that way with the top rail sitting on the posts like your design. My 40br is holding up just fine with no sagging or bowing. I have a piece of 1/2" ply and then a 3/4" ply on the top.

 

Stand is coming along nicely

 

Yep Mine will not have any plywood on the top the tank will sit directly on the 2x4's but it will sit down in the plywood on the outside so you cannot see the black on the tank bottom. I figured if I put plywood directly underneath the tank it would just be a water trap since it will be sitting down and I will never be able to get to it to clean anything. All of the plywood I am using is 3/4 inch it is a cabinet grade pine that was on sale for like $22.00 a sheet and you cannot tell the diffrence between that and the oak I was looking at. I would say after all is said and done tank will run between100 - 150. Much cheaper that 400-500 for a store bought one and I truly believe mine will look just as good if not better.

 

All the pictures that are posted are of the backside of the plywood that I am using. The front side is a much better look no knots or anything like that. I will put some pics up when I get the sides on.

[C-Rad]

C-Rad. Ticklem. this a perfect chance to ask about some things that seem to very from build to build. with this being a great example of how to build with consideration to shear stress & tensile stress. could you go into why the joints are designed as they are. such as the placement of but joints & lap joints.

This is an important issue for anyone building a tank stand to understand:

"Joint" - The method used to fasten two pieces of wood together where they intersect Uusually at 90 degrees. Since a tank stand needs to support a lot of weight pushing directly downward, the important joints are the ones connecting the top (weight bearing) horizontal pieces to the vertical pieces (legs).

 

"Butt Joint" - Where the horizontal piece rests directly on top of the cut end of the vertical piece, as was done with this stand. With butt joints, the tank weight is pressing straight down, compressing the wood. Wood resists compression very well, and so this kind of butt joint is extremely strong, and won't fail until the force pushing down is so great that it crushes the wood, or causes the vertical piece to bow and then snap. A 3' long vertical 2x4 can support many thousands of pounds before it bows or fails. The bottom line is that if you use butt joints, the wood will fail before the joint fails - extremely strong. (This is called "compressive strength" (tensile strength is different))

 

"Lap Joint" - Where the horizontal piece is screwed to the side of the vertical piece. With a lap joint, the weight pushing down on the top horizontal pieces, is trying to either sheer off (break) the screws that hold the end of the horizontal piece to the side of the leg, or to rip the screws out of the wood. The compressive strength of wood is much much greater than the "shear strength" of the screws, so the weakest link in a lap joint is the screws (either breaking, or ripping out).

 

Butt joints are far superior to Lap joints for supporting heavy weight (like a tank stand). Lap joints usually work because even though they are much weaker than Butt joints, they are usually sufficiently strong to support a tank. That being said, I see no need to use Lap joints for tank stands, and I would never recommend them because there are just too many ways to do lap joints wrong, and end up with a stand failure. Here are some of the ways to get in trouble using lap joints for a tank stand:

1) If the wood around the screws gets very wet, the screws can pull out much more easily.

2) Screws can rust eventually (and invisibly), and rusty screws break rather easily.

3) If you use weak screws (like drywall screws) for a very heavy tank, you could exceed the screws shear strength.

4) If you only use one screw per joint, you could exceed the strength of the screw.

5) If you use screws that are too short, and go through the horizontal piece, but don't go very deeply into the wood of the leg (like 2" screws), they could pull out easily.

6) If you drill too large a pilot hole for the screw, and it's threads don't bite deeply into the wood, they can pull out easily.

If you use butt joints, there's really only one rule to remember to avoid a failure:

There must always be a vertical column of wood, composed of one or more vertically stacked pieces, supporting each end of each weight bearing horizontal piece.

It doesn't matter how you connect the pieces, as long as they can't shift out of position such that they no longer form a "vertical column". With butt joints, the fasteners don't support the weight of the tank, but only serve to keep the pieces oriented in a vertical column. The vertical columns of wood (resisting compression) is what supports the weight of the tank. The fasteners only need to be strong enough to resist the relatively small forces that will try to knock the frame pieces out of vertical (bumping the side of the stand, moving the stand, sliding the stand along the floor, etc.)

 

Butt joints have one weakness compared to Lap joints: A lap joint between two 2x4's using four screws, will usually resist "wracking" better than a butt joint. Wracking is what happens when a 90 degree joint hinges, like an elbow, and can be pushed to be more than or less than 90 degrees. Any amount of wracking will cause the "vertical" legs to tip, stop being vertical, break the one big rule, and let the stand fold up and colapse. The easy fix for this is to skin the frame, and let the skin firmly fix the joint at 90 degrees. Another way is to install diagonal cross pieces at each corner, turning each corner into triangle, or "skin" each corner with a little plywood triangle.

 

I think the two best design principals when building a stand are

1) use butt joints instead of lap joints.

2) Prevent wracking at each 90 degree angle (in both the horizontal and vertical planes) either by skinning, with diagonal cross pieces, or with little plywood triangles.

[C-Rad]

I should add that while the stand in this thread is a great example of using butt joints, there is one joint that, would be a bit weak if supporting an acrylic tank (but this stand is for a glass tank, so no problem). The cross piece that connects the middle of the two long top horizontal pieces doesn't have any legs under it, so if there were a lot of weight pushing down on it, that weight woudl be supported only by the sheer strength of the screws holding the cross member to the horizontal pieces. For an acrylic tank, I would either put legs under the ends of the cross piece (2x2 legs would be more than enough) or I'd use metal joist hangers on each end of the cross member. For a narrow tank I'd just use 3/4" plywood or the top and let that support the weight of an acrylic tank.

[ajmckay]

C-rad (I always want to call you octopus...!) very nice post!!!! I think that information alone will help people immensely in designing simple, cheap DIY stands. At some point I'll probably refer someone to it just because it's simple to understand.

 

Tick, overall I'm quite impressed by this stand. It's simple and looks to be quite strong. I'm in the process of building a stand for my 40b as well, though it'll be a 2 tier stand. The brackets are pretty slick as is your solution for hiding them. Are you going to trim it out like the stand you linked to? He did a fantastic job on that one!

[ticklem]

Tick, overall I'm quite impressed by this stand. It's simple and looks to be quite strong. I'm in the process of building a stand for my 40b as well, though it'll be a 2 tier stand. The brackets are pretty slick as is your solution for hiding them. Are you going to trim it out like the stand you linked to? He did a fantastic job on that one!

 

Yep I am working on the trim now almost have the top part done with the 1x3's and the crown molding. It looks really nice.

[ticklem]

C-rad (I always want to call you octopus...!) very nice post!!!! I think that information alone will help people immensely in designing simple, cheap DIY stands. At some point I'll probably refer someone to it just because it's simple to understand.

 

Here is another link to a DIY stand that I have seen 40B DIY. The reason I did not use this was that the Green pieces eat up all of you cabinet space and putting a 20L in there I need all the room I can get. But I would like the link to be on this post so people can see diffrent builds. I just liked the strong ties over using extra wood to brace the uprights.

[ticklem]

Here is a picture of the center brace that I attached a little diffrent. I did not want to see the strong ties every time I opened the door and the sole purpose of this 2x4 is to hold the plywood strip that goes in the middle of the 2 doors. I use a flat strong tie and screwed it in from the back side.

 

Here is a pic of the side on and the bottom piece on the front. It s comming together pretty fast at this point. The routing is the hardest and messiest part.

 

And here it is with the front completely skinned. If you look at these pics vs the earlier pictures I posted the front side of the (Cabinet grade pine) is much diffrent that the knotty backside that you can see in the routing pictures. It has a very nice wood texture and I could not really tell the diffrence between this and the oak plywood they have for $50 bucks and I paid $20

[ticklem]

Well overall not nearly as bad as I thought this would be. I have completed everything but the doors and of course staining and sealing. Will be using wood filler tomorrow to seal all the cracks around the top edge and around the inside shelf edge.

[ajmckay]

Super! I'll be filling nail holes and staining tomorrow as well. I'm pissed 'cause the wood filler I originally got doesn't stain for crap, so I'm going to have to gouge out all that stuff and replace it. I'm doing a test right now with the DAP plastic wood and the minwax stainable wood fillter (the kind in the tub).

[the_gats]

I got one more coat of poly to slap on my 40b stand w/ 20h sump.

[ticklem]

Super! I'll be filling nail holes and staining tomorrow as well. I'm pissed 'cause the wood filler I originally got doesn't stain for crap, so I'm going to have to gouge out all that stuff and replace it. I'm doing a test right now with the DAP plastic wood and the minwax stainable wood fillter (the kind in the tub).

Yeah I'm not impressed with any of the wood fillers I tried Elmers and the dap plastic. Emlers is easier to work with but I dont think it will stain as well but I plan on going over them with a stain pen if they dont look right. What color stain are you using my first can I got Red Mahogany but it is way dark and dosnt really have the red tint like in the picture on the can, So I am going to try the red chesnut next.

 

I got one more coat of poly to slap on my 40b stand w/ 20h sump.

 

The_Gats

Wheres the pictures???

[ticklem]

So here you go stand with 1st coat of stain on. Used Minwax Sedona Red for the 1st coat and going to use Red Mahogany for the 2nd coat to get that nice dark redish color. The plain Red Mahogany looked very brown to me by itself. So I used the very RED Sedona red as an under coat.

[the_gats]

The_Gats

Wheres the pictures???

 

Stand with 2 coats of poly. I think I am going to do one more.

[ticklem]

The_Gats

 

Stand Looks pretty sweet. So what is the bottom cubby for? I debated puting 2 draws in mine but I like the height to be around 30-31" so I can see it perfect from my couch and computer chair. And to get my skimmer in the sump I didn't have room for drawers with that height.

 

So heres mine after the final coat of stain just have the polyurathane to go.

The stand looks a little more brown in this picture than in person. It looks like a deep Redish/Brown color in person what I call dark Cherry. The 2 color staining turned out even better than I could have imagined. IT was worth the extra $7.00 for the 2nd can even though I used less that half of each can.

 

The reason I was aiming for a Dark Cherry color was I have 2 doors off of a broken desk that would work perfect for this stand. After polyurathae goes one I will post pictures of completed stand. Think I have to let the stain dry for la couple days. So after 1 weeks work I it is complete.

[the_gats]

The stand looks good. The bottom Cubby is for all my tank junk (refracto, test kits,etc). My stand is 42" tall because I am 6'3" and my back hurts leaning over to look in. I also wanted to leave my front open because I want to do mangroves and other macros in the fuge.

[UncleLuke]

My 50" 40br stand

 

[ajmckay]

50" tall eh? That's pretty high! Then again I like 'em a little higher as well. My new stand is ~48" tall, which puts the top of the 40b just under eye level for me. Works out pretty good I suppose. check out the pictures and design in my sig.

 

ticklem, the stand looks awesome! I really like the color a lot, I'm excited to see what it looks like with poly. Will you use glossy or satin poly? Post a picture with some of the surroundings when you finish, okay?

[bitts]

AJ's right its lookin great. wondering how the poly will change the color, if it does.