Well, a top plate of sorts. The original inspiration was to use it for a funky little open-frame design I did a while back that Mike fell in love with, but he's been thinking of utilizing it for other purposes. Only problem is that most of the glass is rather too thick for what was originally intended.

Here are a few photos.

It was really just something I cobbled together out of scrap wood and spare parts to use as a simple volume control on the test bench. I didn't have any 6-32 nuts on hand so I just used some T-nuts.

Anyway, Mike saw it and really liked it and thought the basic design could be scaled up a bit and make a suitable chassis for a relatively inexpensive commercial product. He didn't like that the open frame was so well, open so I came up with the idea of routing an 1/8" groove on the inside of the front and rear panels that would run between the dowels so some 1/8" plates of some sort of material could be inserted. To keep with the open frame concept, Mike thought about using glass and went to a local glass shop and got some samples.

Anyway, yeah, I like the smoke glass too. Ideally though I'd like to find that same type in more of a bronze tone.

Oh, and while I'm here, here are the photos of the phenolic laminates I told you about. The one on top is the cotton phenolic (Garolite LE) which uses layers of loosely woven cotton fabric impregnated with phenolic resin. The one on the bottom is the paper phenolic (Garolite XX) which uses layers of kraft paper impregnated with phenolic resin.

I'm sure you've seen examples of the latter as it was commonly used as copper clad printed circuit board material before the glass epoxy boards became the norm. It's still used for making terminal boards, screw terminals, etc.

Personally I like the cotton phenolic the best.

se