Originally posted by stevebrot They seem to still be demanding a premium price. Unfortunately they are hard to come by new and the price used was sky high the last time I checked. I would suggest that it may not be too hard to make one from plexiglass.
Steve
And of course I made one many years ago.
I saw the price of one at the store and said, yikes! I can make that much cheaper.
Well, I had to build two of them to cost-average the expense just for a piece of mind.
You will not be able to cut plexiglass with an edges smooth enough for that plexiglass vulcanizing bonding compound to seal the joint without very expensive equipment. Mine leaked like a pig. I had to pour epoxy in all the joints to seal it and that was hard to do after it was built and looks ugly. So bond it with generous amounts of epoxy instead from the get-go.
Plexiglass is not cheap and it is recommended you cut it with an expensive, 150 tooth, carbide saw blade. I used a more common 80 tooth blade and the edges were still less than ideal but would be good enough for epoxy though.
And of course I couldn't use the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle while building it. I had to make it fancy with valves to regulate the flow and what-not like I saw in the store. In the end, I had a lot of money and time in the project and at that point wished I bought one.
But the upside was I made two. One was for 11x14 prints which the store didn't have. But a more savvy builder could make this DIY project more economical than I did at the time.