Drilling a tank

[kwirky]

Originally Posted by Farrmanchu

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/pr...hreadid=502320
Here's one, I guess you still need to drill a hole or two in the bottom of the actual box. But from what I can tell, this guy did it all with Dremel.

holy XXXX! i just cut a 1-3/4" hole with a dremel and i'm never doing it again! he did all THAT with one? must have taken him an entire day just for the cutting.

[BCOrchidGuy]

Well it's been a busy couple of weeks. I've purchased the glass (1/4") for an external overflow and got my bulkheads and am close to finishing my stand.
For the overflow I tried the diamond bit dremel route but because of the thickness of the glass on my tank (5/8") it was painfully slow. My lovely, wonderful, thoughtful, brilliant ever so kind (not to mention beautiful) girlfriend bought me a new rotary tool kit for Xmas, one of the things it came with was a diamond cut off saw. I tried the cut off saw and the glass cutting went really quickly after that. Once I had the overflow cut I used the diamond grinding bit to smooth out the edges etc.
Now I'm in the process of siliconing it all up and I'll be drilling holes in the overflow for the bulkheads tomorrow.
I've built the sump from acrylic but am considering using a glass sump (15-27 gallon aquarium) and using the acrylic for a refugium that sits under the tank beside the sump. I need to figure out how to do it and allow room for a 5-10 gallon tank as my freshwater top off supply.
Once I figure out how to size pictures I'll post some pics of the system and my progress or lack there of.

Doug

[BCOrchidGuy]

Here are two pictures, one is the of the diamond cut off saw and the diamond bit I used along with the router attachment. Not included in the picture are safety glasses and a dust mask neither of which I would attempt glass work with out. The other picture is of the cut out. Notice all the white stuff in the tools picture? That is the dust from cutting the glass, I imagine it would make a mess of your eyes and lungs. The plexi glass on the tank is off set 1 inch and is to guide the rotary tool so the edges are nice and clean with out a wavy line. I was going to use a 3 7/8" hole saw to cut a hole in some plywood and then use the plywood (inside the hole) as a guide for the dremel to cut nice round holes for the overflow but I may have found my old source for inexpensive glass hole saws, I'll find out on Monday and post the name if it's the right place.

Doug