The Woodie DS - Cause everyone wants to touch some wood

Status: In progress

Table of Contents

1/08/2009 - Planning and begin building

Well I am pretty strapped for cash and needed a project to do. I had a whole bunch of strap wood left over the from Duop project so I was hoping for a non electronics based mod. Went through my video game drawer. Wooden Atari Cart? To easy... A wooden Atari 2600 case! Nah not enough wood... I finally made it to the bottom of the drawer where I found my lonely DS.

Yep its a stock DS. I don't really play it anymore so it has been collecting dust in that drawer. Time to woodify it.

Couple screws later I got the bottom off.

Bottom of the DS casing. I am going to reuse the stylist holder. Would be impossible to construct out of wood.

Some wires I had to disconnect. This is really a picture for me so I remember where they go.

Opening the top of the DS.

Yep. Nothing much in the top half. Just a LCD, pair a speakers, a mic, and an antenna.

The friction hinge. Going to have to figure out how to make this work in wood. I am thinking of some epoxy to fix it in.

All the case parts I am going to have to build out of wood.

Yep, just making sure the DS still works.

The raw mahogany wood. This is 2'x3"x5/8" in size.

Resaw the mahogany into 1/16" sheets.

Profile of the side pieces for the top of the casing.

Pre-sanding is done ready for glue.

And...the boring picture of the wood drying....

I am going to be building this thing part by part. That is finish one part completely so I can eliminate the slight tolerances caused my the lacquer finish.

1/19/2009 - Upper half almost done

ok Update time

The Hinge part for the upper half of the case. I cut the notch out with a dremel and drilled 1/4" holes at each end for the friction hinge to fit in and to allow the wires to pass to the lower case.

Looks pretty good so far.

Sanded the cover down and drilled the speaker holes with a 1/16" bit. I used the original case as a template.

Yep looks like a DS.

Gluing the hinge part to the cover. Tapped the cover to the other half to keep it still while the glue sets.

All dry. I added a thin piece of wood to the bottom part of the screen opening. I thought it looked weird without it.

Side by Side

Now to counter sink some holes so that the two parts can become the upper half of the case.

I want to try to find some Stainless Steel wood screws. Size is #2 1/4". ACE only had them in brass.

The tube for one side of the hinge will be made out of an aluminum tube. But its I.D. is to small so I enlarged it with a bit on the drill press.

Right size now.

I decided to use epoxy to attach the tube to the case. I also spread the epoxy on the inside of the joint so that the case just fall apart due to the stress that the friction hinge will cause when the DS is opened.

Thats it for now.

1/21/2009 - Upper half done, guts installed

Finished the upper half of the DS today and installed the guts.

After the finishing coat. I used some high quality lacquer that I use for all my other wood projects. It gives it a deep rich color that gets even better as the wood ages.

Guts installed. Didn't do anything fancy about the internals. Just a little dab of hot glue to hold the screen, speakers, and WiFi antenna in.

It all works! Know just to build the lower half which will probably be a bit more difficult.

2/4/2009 - Bottom almost done

Cutting the bottom out. Making sure the piece I cut is the right size.

The headphone jack has to be right on the edge.

The power switch has to be set back a bit. This will make sure there is enough room for the sliding part.

Back to the top. Decided to reattach the parts with better hot glue.

All screwed together.

The bottom and top off the DSes lower half.

The sides. The grove was cut by slightly raising the table saw blade out of the table and running the wood over it with the fence really close.

All the parts cut.

Cutting the DS slot.

After filing and sanding.

After cutting all the ports and gluing the sides with the bottom.

How the top will fit.

The bottom PCB inside. Fits pretty tight.

Everything lines up!

Using the original top as the template i cut out the holes and D-pad.

Another angle.

Without the PCB. That is it for today.

2/6/2009 - Project Halted

Well I broke a good portion of it due to a drill press accident. Project is canceled for now.

5/28/2009 - Project sees some light

Ok this project is going to be rebooted updates will follow in a couple days.