Neglected wood becomes speaker cabinet
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No turbo builds this winter, but we gotta occupy ourselves somehow....
My intent was to get back into electronics, so I've been focusing audio amplifiers. I already have a nice home-audio amp, so after building prototype of an (in)famous low-distortion class-A design, I decided to build bass guitar amp instead. Of course, an amp is no good unless you have a speaker cabinet, which I don't, so I went down that rabbit hole... I also recently joined the Bodgery in Madison, which has a pretty well equipped wood shop, and so one rabbit hole leads to another. Now I'm building a legit solid wood speaker cabinet out of a cracked slab of quarter-sawn elm that I just happened to have found at a local architectural salvage resaler... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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No turbo builds this winter, but we gotta occupy ourselves somehow....
My intent was to get back into electronics, so I've been focusing audio amplifiers. I already have a nice home-audio amp, so after building prototype of an (in)famous low-distortion class-A design, I decided to build bass guitar amp instead. Of course, an amp is no good unless you have a speaker cabinet, which I don't, so I went down that rabbit hole... I also recently joined the Bodgery in Madison, which has a pretty well equipped wood shop, and so one rabbit hole leads to another. Now I'm building a legit solid wood speaker cabinet out of a cracked slab of quarter-sawn elm that I just happened to have found at a local architectural salvage resaler... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That’s sweet! I’ve always wanted to get deeper into diy audio but never really had the time or an idea of where to start, maybe an amp would be good? The wood for those cabinets looks gorgeous, what do you plan to do to coat it and fill the cracks?
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pretty boards. getting square pieces of wood sure is a process! how do you like it vs. working with metal?
Dan
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That’s sweet! I’ve always wanted to get deeper into diy audio but never really had the time or an idea of where to start, maybe an amp would be good? The wood for those cabinets looks gorgeous, what do you plan to do to coat it and fill the cracks?
Depends what your interests are I guess. Building an amp is a good DIY project. Tying to understand how really work is another matter. Simple at first, but the more you dig into it, the more complicated it gets.
I'll be cutting off any cracked portions, so the ends boards will just get glued together. I do have a plan for that split piece of end grain that's in the picture though...
pretty boards. getting square pieces of wood sure is a process! how do you like it vs. working with metal?
It's been pretty cool actually. The slab of wood that I started with was obviously sawn a long time ago. I was told that they found them in a shed somewhere. They sold or used up all the good pieces, so this cracked one was all that was left. Starting with a piece of material with a story and a history (even if you don't know the whole story) is way more interesting and thought provoking than an inert pile of metal tubes and flat stock.
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Starting with a piece of material with a story and a history (even if you don't know the whole story) is way more interesting and thought provoking
for sure.
smart move keeping the off-cuts. there are always little projects that those are perfect for.
Dan
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No real updates yet, but things are happening. In the meantime, I've been dubbed "Maintenance Mike"...
Working in a shared space run 100% by volunteers has been an interesting experience. Some of the people there are clearly seasoned vets who know what they're doing, but there's also some FNGs... I've definitely seen some dumb shit go down (guy trying to run a 2.5" forstner bit through a 2" thick, 3.5" diameter disc of wood on a 1960s hobby-grade drill press, woman trying to run a glue-up with no flat sides and grain running the wrong direction through the planer, etc). However, the one thing that they have in common is that they're all way more focused on the projects they're working on than they are at the space itself. We have decent tools in the woodshop, but the place has 150+ members and those tools are getting run hard day-in and day-out.
I fixed a 12" disc sander that had about 1/8" of play in the disc because the bolt that held the disc to the motor was loose and had clearly been that way for a long time. Fixed the blade height adjustment on the table saw... People have been complaining for months that it's hard to crank up and down; turns out there's a worm/spur gear that's been unlubricated, metal-on-metal contact long enough that the spur gear has about 1/16" of wear in all of the teeth. The planer takes the cake though...
There's actually a pledge-drive going right now to buy a new planer. The planer we have works fine, but it's loud... Uncomfortably loud. I asked: "when was the last time the PM was done?" No one knows. So, naturally, I take a look at it. I do all the stuff that should be done "frequently" according to the manual first. They're obviously not being done on a regular basis (or ever?), but I don't find anything egregiously wrong. Then.... the gearbox.
The manual says to change the oil in the gearbox 2500 hours of operation. Assuming that this has never been done, I go ahead and drain the oil. Literally about a thimble-full of oil comes out. Nice and clean looking though. Takes about a quart to fill it back up. Yikes. Es no bueno. Obviously, it's been running dry for god-knows how long... Figured I'd let it ride for a day our two, then flush it and see what comes out...
Those aren't bubbles...
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oh man! Thats gonna turn into a part time job.
That's a real concern of mine, so I'm making "avoid commitments" my (ironic) new-years resolution. I don't mind helping out, but have no intention of making a job out of this.
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Universal problem in any shared space unfortunately. A free rider plus moral hazard situation: if folks believe that "someone else" takes care of stuff they don't take the time to check or take care of things. Worse if folks believe that such tasks are beneath them.
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youre making it sound like this is a few pals sharing a space - isnt it a membership makerspace that you pay dues for? isnt there is someone running it and taking your money who should be monitoring and taking care of the machines....
Dan
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youre making it sound like this is a few pals sharing a space - isnt it a membership makerspace that you pay dues for? isnt there is someone running it and taking your money who should be monitoring and taking care of the machines....
There is a volunteer board of directors, and each area has a volunteer "captain", but no one person is in charge. They can make rules, but then someone has volunteer to enforce them. It's kind of a free-for-all right now.
It's a newer space formed by defectors from Madison's other makerspace, which is no longer accepting new members and is commonly described as a "toxic" environment. This place is trying to be open to everyone and focused on community outreach, but it's currently growing at an out of control rate, so I'm sure something will have to give eventually.
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gotcha. boards are a waste of time. its a life goal of mine to never be on one.
Dan
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gotcha. boards are a waste of time. its a life goal of mine to never be on one.
I don't blame the board at all. A lot (most?) of these makerspaces have this weird, almost utopian sense of how order can form in an absence of structure (see: do-ocracy). Probably works fine in smaller environments, but I don't think it scales well.
Anyway, now that the planer has oil in it, there's a spot on the floor developing underneath it...
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All 5 bolts that hold the gearbox cover on the planer were loose... Hopefully that's sorted.
In other news, thick glass mirrors don't make good kaleidoscopes. Unless there's something I'm missing here... Image quality is not great.
Dafuq, you say? The company I work for bought the building that we were previously leasing space in because we need more space. We finally got rid of the tenant whose space we wanted to take over, but they left behind these giant 4x8 foot mirrors.
Whoever put them up did a terrible job and gave zero effs about whoever was going to have to take them down, so they are somehow simultaneously in danger of falling down and difficult to remove without damaging (mostly held up by glue. not even joking). Anyway, I was helping one guy that wanted them take them down today. We (he) broke the first one. The second one we got down in one piece. The third one looked to be way more of a PITA than the first two (more glue), so he gave up on it for the day. Pretty sure he's going to bail on them. There's one other guy that wants them, but I'm pretty sure he's not going to be willing/able to do the work of taking them down. So if anyone is interested, let me know I guess? My only idea for them was to build a giant kaleidoscope and that's not going to work...
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Lest ye think nothing is actually happening here...
In hindsight it should have been predictable, but every time you cut or shape this wood, it likes to move around on you. Plane it flat, come back the next day and it's warped. Progress has been slow-going because I've gotten fed up with this and have been giving the wood plenty of time to relax before moving on to the next step. Moisture content measured in the 7-9% range which is slightly high, but I think the real problem is with this piece of wood in particular. Elm has an "interlocking" grain pattern. The grain twists helically around the trunk/limbs, and the direction of the helix changes directions periodically. This makes the wood more flexible (similarly to concentric twist in wire looms...) and also more difficult to split with an axe. The huge cracks in my slab should have tipped me off that there was some internal stress in the slab, which is trying to work itself out.
I saved a piece of the end-grain from near the end of the slab, because I wanted to memorialize the slab of wood that I started with in the finished project. I came up with an idea on how to use the piece, but I wanted a second piece to add some symmetry. By almost dumb luck, I managed to just baaaarely nick a nail with the chop saw while cutting another piece that had some cracking in it. The presence of nails and this type of stress (another spot seen at left) suggests that this was an urban tree.
Both pieces of damaged end-grain (along with the nail) were stitched back together with casting resin and incorporated into the front panel of the speaker cabinet. Normally this part of the enclosure will be hidden under a speaker grill, so most people will never see it.
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Clamps!
For those that aren't aware, wood glue sets up in about 10 minutes. This makes assembling the whole box in one go a pretty stressful event. It went pretty well though; only one corner (front lower in picture) had an issue. The rest turned out pretty decent.
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For those that aren't aware, wood glue sets up in about 10 minutes. This makes assembling the whole box in one go a pretty stressful event. It went pretty well though; only one corner (front lower in picture) had an issue. The rest turned out pretty decent.
thats gonna look awesome, did you miter all the edges?
check out this video - it may give you a little more peace of mind for your next project. i was also under the impression that the working time of wood glue was under 10min, but when i tackled my bench top (24 laminated 2x4s in one glue-up) i did some research to see if I could get away with more time.
Dan
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thats gonna look awesome, did you miter all the edges?
The perimeter is 45 degree miters, the front panel sits in a dado, and the back panel is in a rabbet. Yay, woodworking jargon! I plan on using a low-angle block plane to chamfer all of the sharp edges, we'll see how that goes. Excited to go pull the clamps off of it tonight.
I did a little research earlier, and found that I was using literally the worst glue in terms of working time, but just sent it anyways. I'll definitely look into other options next time.
https://www.wwgoa.com/article/measuring-wood-glue-assembly-time/
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The perimeter is 45 degree miters, the front panel sits in a dado, and the back panel is in a rabbet. Yay, woodworking jargon! I plan on using a low-angle block plane to chamfer all of the sharp edges, we'll see how that goes. Excited to go pull the clamps off of it tonight.
I did a little research earlier, and found that I was using literally the worst glue in terms of working time, but just sent it anyways. I'll definitely look into other options next time.
https://www.wwgoa.com/article/measuring-wood-glue-assembly-time/
excited to see it finished - plane chamfered edges are nice. i've attempted them and have had mix results since I'm still a rookie so i'm still using the sandpaper/block method.
also:
Dan
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