Spiderman 3 by Matt Fielder

Disassembly

With the hard drives looking good, it was time to get cracking on the rest of the case. For the base machine I chose an old Cooler Master favourite - the ATCS 201.

This case has been around practically since the dawn of case modding, and is still one of the finest chassis on the planet. Back in the day it used to compete with the Lian-Li PC60, and is one of the first cases that was ever modded on bit-tech. Now, it's marketed under the Praetorian brand from the company, but it's still the same all-aluminium wonder we know and love.

However, I wanted to do some pretty hardcore work to it, so this was going to require completely pulling the thing apart, rivet by rivet. The process of pulling it apart was pretty painful - it's always hard to see your future machine in pieces, but I love thinking about the end result.

I wanted it to be a polished, almost mirror-like aluminium finish and so this was going to require some fairly hefty work to pull off the anodised finish on the aluminium.

This is the case being dismantled, before I had started on any of the anodising stripping.

If you don't remove the anodised coating, trying to polish the case is pointless. What is anodising? It's the process by which pigment is attached to the metal by running an electric current through it. However, the easiest way to remove it is simply with oven cleaner - but be careful, since it's caustic and will burn your hands.

The process is this: pour oven cleaner onto the pieces you want the coating to melt off of. Let it sit for around 45 minutes, then return with some warm water and a cloth - then presto, wipe the trouble away. I ended up soaking my pieces in the bath tub so that I could get more done quickly.

I went out and got a polisher for $30 that worked great and which I knew would cut down on the polishing time dramatically. A combination of sandpaper, fine rubbing material and the polishing wheel would be the answer to my problems.