The Road Case [Blog 6]

[Week 4/20 - 4/24]

Putting together this large road case was a example of potential setbacks you may experience as someone who works with music equipment. Being a member of a church who’s going Mobile later this year, Rob will be required to move his sound equipment with ease, which is where this large, four drawer road case comes in.

The initial issue with the road case lies in the fact that the slides on one side did not match the other, causing very janky motion when sliding in and out. Our goal was to fix the slides so the drawers may slide in and out seamlessly.

We spent several days working on this case.

While Rob adjusted the position of the nails on the inside of the crate, I would tighten and position them on the outside. To create holes in the wooden boards within the slides, Rob taught me to use a Drill Press.

One Idea we had was to use wooden planks on the outside to help stabilize the slides on the inside. For cutting these boards, Rob taught me how to safely and efficiently use a compound miter saw. Eventually this idea was scrapped, as the drawer kept getting caught halfway through.

We continued testing out different sizes of bolts, nuts, and washers to fasten the slides to the sides of the case, where I learned how to use an impact ratchet to fasten bolts tightly. Unfortunately, we were unable to find a method that worked correctly. No matter what we did, the drawers still continuously got stuck halfway in. Eventually, the project was put on hold for the time being.

Even though we ran into many issues when assembling this road case, this was overall a valuable learning experience for me for multiple reasons. For one, I learned how to identify different sizes and types of screws, nuts, bolts, and washers. I also learned how to use several manual and power tools. While these skills may not apply directly to the recording process, they are important to securing the hardware that makes these sessions possible. I would consider the setbacks and failures we experienced to be valuable for continuing work on the road case in the future, and I hope to do more work on the road case when I return to the job site in May, so we can accumulate what we’ve learned and hopefully tackle this project once and for all.