I’m excited to check this out! What a great project to jump into with your kid.
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No, I wonder if the images ARE to big. See if you can scale it down to 1080 × something. Just a thought. Cuz I’d like to see these. 
Ok part 2 is up.
More cutting coming soon.
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Converting these into mini NAS machines ( I’ve done severeal this way) Was probably the best I could do for them.
The good:
The machine is VERY large. So fitting a 10GB/s nic + a couple LSI cards was doable. finding hard drive cages for the fit was not so difficult, as DELL had other machines in similar configs with up to 9/10 Hard drive capacity. So riveting the cages to make them fit was not a problem. Converting/cutting the current cages to be port front facing cages was not too hard, but more riveting and some tooling. A total of about 22 drives (All HDD’s at the time) was possible. Today with SSD’s and NVMe’s you can go further. The actual computer ( small formfactor itx mITX motherboard + old Pentium/AMD cpu) was really all that was needed. All this was second hand from Goodwill/GRID and or dumpster diving (Corporate rollouts) skid buys.
The Bad:
Can be very tedious and if not well thought out, time consuming. The more parts you have, the more compatability you will find. Unfortunately this means THE MORE PARTS YOU HAVE ! There will be many.
The Ugly:
You end up with an enormously heavy machine, and possibly VERY HOT box. 20 hard drives + a 1000w PSU + Aluminum case can warp, bend, the build. Not efficient/condusive to moving if needed. The things are structurally made for eye candy. The old machines in the 90’s were made for longevity, and the weight to them showed.
The compromise:
I think these are cool projects for learning about PC builds, and for donating to foundations, entitites in need of hardware. The builds I have done in various DELL XPS, Dimensions, OptiPlex range from making NAS boxes, network routers + storage, Pi machines, and other crazy things.
It’s warming to see a father / son project like this. Hope you get what you want out of it. Cheers !