We are at the end! Today, I will show you how I put everything together and the final result.

In the previous article, I ended up drilling the board on the wall with my father. Suddenly, I had a desk with metal plates on my wall in the apartment. The idea became real, and I could no longer back down. It had to be finished. It was November 2020 when the desk appeared in my living room. In December, I started pouring boxes and lids in bulk. I could pour about 10 boxes and the same number of lids simultaneously. I needed only a few tens of grams for the lid, about 40 grams, and nearly 85 grams of resin for the box. The lids had a high success rate, but the boxes did not. In the end, I threw away some moulds and quickly bought new ones from China.

With my own silicone moulds for the lids, I ran into another problem that I hadn’t considered initially. The forms were not levelled. I mean, the back part was, but each box fell into the silicone rubber a little bit differently, and I needed levelled lids. So, after the resin was poured into the silicone mould, I watched and levelled each lid for another day (checked every few hours). I came up with another good hack: When the lid was already stiff but not completely hard, I took it out of the mould and put it on the bottom of the box to "shape" the lid, thus ensuring that the lid fit nicely on the box.

I still knew very little about the resin because I didn't protect myself. I didn't think of it. It was just before Christmas 2020, and I was watching the last episode of the second series of the Star Wars show Mandalorian on a Saturday morning. Of course, I cried through the whole ending scene, so, to lighten my mood, I started pouring resin. A little resin got on the skin around my eyes, which itched a little – but three days later, my eyes were so swollen I could barely keep them open. It took two weeks for my eyes to return to their original healthy state. In the end, not many family photos were taken during Christmas 2020. Protect yourself!

I was at the end. I had a wall, boxes, lids, everything. All I had to do was put everything together. I'd already thought about it (and prayed it would work out). I prepared a few tens of millilitres of resin, filled the box with sand, and smeared the edges of the box with resin and the lid's edges. I put them together and had them in the vise for two to three days.

Sometimes I overdid it with resin and, unfortunately, in one case the resin spilt through the sand to the front of my box. It happened especially to the sand from Barcelona. (That’s okay, though. I'll fly there for a new one; it's basically around the corner. Sand from a country like Lesotho would have made me much more upset.) However, sometimes the resin spilt out, so I checked each box a few hours after putting it together; if a droplet appeared somewhere, I wiped it carefully with acetone.

Sometimes I didn't have enough sand to fill the whole box. Eventually, I had the idea to use my 3D printer. As I let my eyes heal over Christmas 2020, I took the time to watch a few Udemy tutorials on Fusion 360. In about five hours, I had created the first 3D model. I modelled and printed several different heights of potential fillings. Then I put them in a box, filled the empty space with sand, and, when the box was full enough, printed the size of the filler in a cheap transparent filament. At first glance, you can’t distinguish between the boxes full of sand and the boxes with fillers. You would have to look from behind :)

Anyway, the process was slow. I ensured that the sand did not mix with another; some sand got "electrified" and flew everywhere around the lid and the box. I solved this by slightly moistening the box and lid with water. The black sand tried to outplay me; who knew that black sand contains a gazillion metal fragments and that if I used a lid with a magnet on it, the sand would completely and dramatically stick to the lid?

Voila, I have the boxes! But how to tell what sand comes from where? I prepared labels for each box on my 3D printer. The base was in transparent colour and then several layers of black. I also added a space for the flag of the given state or area on the label. I printed the flags with my laser printer on sticky glossy paper and put them on the label. I stuck the label on the box with double-sided adhesive tape. It looks great.

Here is the result. I have about 110 sands currently. The wall can hold up to 195 boxes, so it will be a few years until the wall is full. I'm thrilled with the results, mainly because I was able to finish the idea. The expenses were significant, but I don't mind. The sand wall helped me not think about Covid, which was worth almost any cost.

And what about the sand wall? The empty spaces are filled with souvenir magnets. When it's full, I'll probably expand to the next wall with another wooden desk :)