Splash-Pod: The Personal Water Park

Step 4 Cutting & Trimming the plywood

There are three different sections that we're cutting for the plywood. The side panels and bottom panel are cropped at the corners for style, as well as function. The hidden joints I chose for the chassis sit inside the same channels that the wood panels occupy. This means that I would need to make room for these by cutting an ugly notch in the wood, or by doing something more tasteful like a cropped corner. The size that I went with for the crop just happened to be the exact size of my cheap 45° drafting square. This made for a nice template which I used for all of the cuts on the 1/8" plywood.

All of the pieces came from Home Depot slightly off size and I had to trim very small amounts off of the sides in order to make them square. I don't own a table saw so I had to make do with my circular saw. Cutting 1/8" to 1/16" off of a 1/8" thick plywood with a 1/8" thick saw blade without a rip fence wasn't very easy. I thank my older brother for tips on setting up my saw to make this possible. Lopping the corners offf of the pieces was much easier. I simply drew on the template and chopped it off with the circular saw. All edges were then sanded smooth with 80 & 120 grit sandpaper.

The top panel also needed to be shaved down to exact measurements. After I had a near-perfect 39" square, I needed to cut the hole in the middle. I wanted 5" of border around each side of the tub for strength and to provide a stable surface for the external accessory connectors. This meant an internal circle of 29" cut into the very center of the square. To draw this out, I simply drilled two holes 14.5" apart inside a thin piece of wood and used this as my compass. One hole was placed in the middle of my panel around which I rotated the compass, drawing the circle. Next, I drilled a pilot hole near the internal edge of the circle so I could fit my jigsaw blade into the panel. I then carefully cut out the circle, supporting both the panel and the cutout as I sawed. The cutout was trimmed up and sanded to complete the cut.

Finally, the panels needed to have their holes drilled for the 4 buttons and 2 accessory connectors. All of these were drilled with a spade bit. The buttons used a 3/4" bit and the accessory holes required a 1/2" bit for the pipe. Each hole was slightly bored out with a rotary rasp.