Of course it's all aluminum, except for the slides which are stainless. I designed it around the plastic storage boxes, because I use those for a bunch of small parts.
This is my first "real" welding project. I've been in school for welding the last couple months, and am just trying to get as much out of it as possible. I liked how it turned out. And of course, it turns out that the actual welding was the easy part. I said to myself, "how hard can it be to make a box?" It turned out to be a bigger project than I thought it would be.
One issue was that the metal was old scrap that was donated to the school, so just cleaning the metal and getting a good finish on it was a challenge. (I didn't finish sanding the lid, so it doesn't match the rest of it....I'll fix that someday.) I went around pestering the people at the local welding supply store, trying to find something to polish the metal. In the end I went to menards and got some pads for an angle grinder that resemble scotch brite, but are some other brand. And then I went over it with 600 grit wet/dry sandpaper. Probably would have been better to do 400 grit to completely remove the swirls, followed by 1000 grit. But I already had the 600 grit, and the project was starting to get expensive.
