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An elevated drawing board for your (comics) artwork, that becomes a lightbox when a light source is placed underneath. This will be light on process photos as I built this almost a year ago (and have been tweaking it since.)
The goal of this is to be cheap, not pretty. Worry about making the artwork pretty!
What you will need
Materials:
- A plywood board: I used a 24"x24"x1/2" board to start. The plywood part is important because it's cheap, and to avoid needing a router.
- Something to act as a spacer for the glass/plexiglass: I used thin cork from the craft store cut into strips.
- Glass/plexiglass: If you can score some acrylic, that's preferable, but in my case I found two sheets of 11x14" "frame replacement" glass on clearance for $3 each.
- Clear desk cover: Not 100% necessary, depending on how closely you can match the seam between your glass and the board.
- Scrap wood, door stops for elevation
- Aluminum rails for T-square fanciness
- Misc. hardware bits as necessary - screws, washers, hooks & etc.
Tools:
- Wood saw
- Circular saw or drill and keyhole saw
- Router (if you have access to one, it's gong to be easier)
- Wood Chisels: I don't have a router. But I did have chisels and patience.
- Glue/epoxy (for spacers/optional side rails)
- Sandpaper
- Shellac, if you're fancy
The goal of this is to be cheap, not pretty. Worry about making the artwork pretty!
What you will need
Materials:
- A plywood board: I used a 24"x24"x1/2" board to start. The plywood part is important because it's cheap, and to avoid needing a router.
- Something to act as a spacer for the glass/plexiglass: I used thin cork from the craft store cut into strips.
- Glass/plexiglass: If you can score some acrylic, that's preferable, but in my case I found two sheets of 11x14" "frame replacement" glass on clearance for $3 each.
- Clear desk cover: Not 100% necessary, depending on how closely you can match the seam between your glass and the board.
- Scrap wood, door stops for elevation
- Aluminum rails for T-square fanciness
- Misc. hardware bits as necessary - screws, washers, hooks & etc.
Tools:
- Wood saw
- Circular saw or drill and keyhole saw
- Router (if you have access to one, it's gong to be easier)
- Wood Chisels: I don't have a router. But I did have chisels and patience.
- Glue/epoxy (for spacers/optional side rails)
- Sandpaper
- Shellac, if you're fancy
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Signing UpStep 1Overview
This is what the basic idea is: a drawing board with a hole in it, with a slightly smaller ledge holding the clear bit in.
It's not a terribly complex thing.
Of course, I'm not much of a carpenter, so here's what I did:
I cut one edge off to make it 24x20"; the cut edge became the top, so I wouldn't have to worry about it being a perfectly square cut across. That way the bottom edge won't make it sit all cock-eyed.
I traced around the edge of my glass to find out the large hole size, and then measured in about 1.5" all around to find my through-hole size.
If you have a circular saw, this is the easy bit where you cut that inner whole entirely out. Lacking that, I drilled some holes close together and used a keyhole saw to cut through and hack that center section out.
Now here's where I use the chisels and the plywood to cheat, not having a router to make the larger part. I used the chisels to carefully start knocking out the glass inset area, and only chiseled out the top two layers of plywood. That let me get the inset depth I needed to get the glass down low enough (a bit on the too-low side, adjusted with a little fine-tuning chiseling and cork support strips) easily and without a router I don't have.
It seemed to take forever, so I recommend a router if you can find one to use, but don't let the lack of one hold you back.
Once you have your hole cut and ledge in, with clear part adjusted in, you have the main part done. You'll probably want to sand your board a bit to get a smooth surface there, too. I put shellac on mine because I had it handy and I'm a bit fancy, I guess.
Slightly fancier: If, like me, you're a terrible carpenter, there's going to be some gap between your glass and wood board surface. A clear desktop cover from the local office supply store will go a long way to making this disappear. It might be the most expensive component you could add at up to $20 or so, but since it's made specifically to be a good writing surface, it also happens to be rather nice for drawing on.
Even fancier still: I found some aluminum rails in the weldable metal section of the local home improvement store, that just happened to go over the edges of my board perfectly. I don't pretend to think that both sides a epoxied on absolutely parallel to each other, but my T-square goes entirely across so I only really use it from the left side, anyway.
It's not a terribly complex thing.
Of course, I'm not much of a carpenter, so here's what I did:
I cut one edge off to make it 24x20"; the cut edge became the top, so I wouldn't have to worry about it being a perfectly square cut across. That way the bottom edge won't make it sit all cock-eyed.
I traced around the edge of my glass to find out the large hole size, and then measured in about 1.5" all around to find my through-hole size.
If you have a circular saw, this is the easy bit where you cut that inner whole entirely out. Lacking that, I drilled some holes close together and used a keyhole saw to cut through and hack that center section out.
Now here's where I use the chisels and the plywood to cheat, not having a router to make the larger part. I used the chisels to carefully start knocking out the glass inset area, and only chiseled out the top two layers of plywood. That let me get the inset depth I needed to get the glass down low enough (a bit on the too-low side, adjusted with a little fine-tuning chiseling and cork support strips) easily and without a router I don't have.
It seemed to take forever, so I recommend a router if you can find one to use, but don't let the lack of one hold you back.
Once you have your hole cut and ledge in, with clear part adjusted in, you have the main part done. You'll probably want to sand your board a bit to get a smooth surface there, too. I put shellac on mine because I had it handy and I'm a bit fancy, I guess.
Slightly fancier: If, like me, you're a terrible carpenter, there's going to be some gap between your glass and wood board surface. A clear desktop cover from the local office supply store will go a long way to making this disappear. It might be the most expensive component you could add at up to $20 or so, but since it's made specifically to be a good writing surface, it also happens to be rather nice for drawing on.
Even fancier still: I found some aluminum rails in the weldable metal section of the local home improvement store, that just happened to go over the edges of my board perfectly. I don't pretend to think that both sides a epoxied on absolutely parallel to each other, but my T-square goes entirely across so I only really use it from the left side, anyway.
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Jul 6, 2011. 11:22 PM
artworker
says:
artworker
says:
Reminds me of my engineering days! We used to have a window glass over two tables and a table lamp under it to copy our engineering drawings.
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Jul 6, 2011. 10:25 PMsvelez
says:
This is very cool. I need to build something like this.
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114
Jul 4, 2011. 8:16 PMl8nite
says:
l8nite
says:
Nicely done ! I tend to just grab a picture frame with glass on the occasional times I need a lightbox although I have used a sunlit window and even the car windshield at times. Of course I don't have room for a dedicated drawing table either but that can be a good thing. I have several large clipboards and drawing boards that I can take where ever I want to work... hmmmm maybe I should make one out of clear lexan...
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