After laying out all my pieces, and making sure the measurements were correct, It was time to start the assembly. The assembly requires some simple and inexpensive tools. I used a set of pipe clamps... those are the yellow and black things on the 3/4" pvc pieces you will see soon. You may be able to get by without these, the GARF site shows them using electrical tape in place of the clamps you see here, but for my money, the $20 I paid for the clamps on Amazon.com was WELL worth it. The pipe clamps make holding the pieces very secure, and can put considerable pressure on the pieces, I think this makes a better seam. After deciding which pieces to start assembly with, you need to remove the paper from the areas where you will make the seam. This is so you can SEE the seam as it is glued. you have to remove about 1/2" of the masking paper on BOTH sides of the acrylic where the seams will be. You can leave the paper on all edges that will not be part of a glued edge (i.e. the top). Here you see the paper pulled up about 1/2" - you do not need to be exact here.
I used a standard box cutter with a NEW blade to cut the paper, being careful not to scratch the acrylic. This was easily done by laying the cutter on its side and sliding it along the folded up paper. The paper is pretty tough, and has a sticky contact cement on the back side. I initially started out with a used blade, but the adhesive wasn't being cut well, and was causing tearing...a new blade fixed that issue.
Here is the cement I used. It is water thin, acrylic cement from TAP Plastics. Like I said, I live in a pretty rural area, and the local hardware stores and the glass shop didn't carry any acrylic cement. TAP is online, and was VERY fast and cheap with the shipping, and very reasonable on their pricing. The TAP website can be found here.
