Speaker Camp! Newb Edition...

[mtmpenn]

I posted this on partsexpress, so for anyone that frequents that site, please feel free to ignore this.

The short version is that I'm new at all of this. This is my second build, and I don't own a lot of tools. I'm also taking a page from Jon Marsh and building these babies on my vacation. The major difference between my speaker camp and his is that I don't know what I am doing, instead of a half dozen routers I own a wood rasp, and my project couldn't possibly look or sound as good (I'll be happy if I don't just end up burning the thing in disgust). Onto the build:

New tools for this build include veneer supplies and clamps (cheap from plumbers surplus):



Then I got everything set out:



I don't have a router, but I wanted to try and give the drivers some room to breathe so I used a rasp to open things up. Not pretty, and maybe I should have taken more out... hopefully better then nothing:



And the clamping begins!



Then I got hungry and took time out for a hearty breakfast:



Then there was more clamping. I am loving the corner clamps I bought:



One down, the second about the be finished. I put some kitty litter in the empty spaces at the bottom. Some people have described their tritrix as tippy. I thought maybe a little extra weight at the bottome would help. Now that it is done, I'm not sure that it addes enough weight to actually matter...



That's it for day one. I will say that if you are like me and you need to buy tools it doesn't seem like speaker building could possibly save money. My wife may not even let me keep these (her words, when she saw what I spent the day doing: "Those are BIG;" she was not impressed). BUT, the tools are here to stay and buying stuff isn't nearly this much fun!

[numberoneoppa]

I love your right angle joiner things. Is that the knockdown kit from PE? I guess it would have to be because of all of the machined cutouts in the MDF. Anyways, it looks great so far, and yes, the TriTrix is tippy and the cat litter will probably make a bit of a difference, so good thinking there.

Keep it up.

[evilskillit]

Lookin very good so far. The litter may help a bit, mostly carpet will make things tippy. My WGs are taller, wider, deeper, and heavier and they're still tippy on carpet without spikes. If you have carpet you can get some spikes and/or build some little plinth stands or outriggers with spikes on em to make them a bit more stable if you're worried about that.

One thing tho, did you use audiophile grade kitty litter? Or is that just best choice? It makes a difference. :W

[JonMarsh]

Corner clamps are very useful, as is a good breakfast! :B

[mtmpenn]

Thanks for all of the responses.

Numberoneoppa: The corner clamps are these guys . They are very fast and convenient to use.

Evilskillet: I used only the best kitty litter that the local dollar store had for a dollar. Someone else suggested sand, which probably would have given me more weight. Oh well, maybe next time.

Friday was a slow day for me, with a late start (looked like it might rain so I held off for a bit). I made a little progress though by filling all the screw holes and sanding the cabinet into submission. I now know why people with routers often cut their panels slightly oversized and use flush trim bits. I bet that is faster and more accurate then my method, which was orbital palm sander with 80 grit, then 120, then 220 around the edges. It took some effort, but the cabinets now look good. They are nice and smooth and all of the edges are flush.

Evidence:





Friday night/Saturday I was in NYC visiting a friend. We went for a nice day hike on Saturday. I was surprised how good the hiking was so close to the city (about an hour drive). If you look closely you can see the NYC skyline in the distance:



After the hike we ate at a placed called Fatty Crab - spice asian deliciousness. I was too busy stuffing it in my mouth to take any pictures.

[numberoneoppa]

Awesome. I use an orbital sander to fix any imperfections on the edges also, the problem with that is that it tends to want to round the corners a bit, which I hate (thank goodness for bondo or homemade fillers!)

Also, that picture from your hike really makes me want to get out of my seat and do something outside!

[mtmpenn]

I don't think I've rounded the edges yet... I'll probably do a little more sanding before the veneer so I'll watch out.

Yesterdays progress:

I plan to paint the back of the TL and around the driver cutouts flat black.

First I masked the area I wanted to paint (notice the sweet ad for the US regional air guitar championships):





Then, they got some primer:





I should have done more surface prep. Will have to do some sanding today... For any other newbies out there: if you are preparing to paint MDF, do more surface prep. Even if you think you have done enough, you haven't. Just sand/fill more. You cannot seem to do too much prep, even with flat paint.

I also built the crossovers. I'm not great at reading eletrical diagrams, but the Curt's diagram and the video really helped. I used some scrap plexi to mount the parts on, which seemed to work well:



You may notice that things are kind of ugly where I tried to attach the red hookup wire to the crossover. Any thoughts on how to make this better? I suppose I could use solid hookup wire? Any other suggestions? I've got a few more connections like that to make and would love to do something a little more elegant.

Mike

[evilskillit]

Looks fine to me. My only advice is trim off any extra wire hanging off of the joint. They act as little antennas, granted they probably don't pick up any noise in the audible spectrum, but better safe than sorry, right? Plus it just looks nicer and is less likely to short to something near it.

[mtmpenn]

Thanks evilskillet. I will try to clean them up a bit.

More progress...

The cabinets haven't changed much. I did a little more work with the flat black paint, but nothing worth showing.
The big adventure for today was veneer practice!

Two 4'x8' sheets of veneer are hard to work with on a 2'x4' work surface:



Thankfully, I managed to inspect the veneer, make a cut list, and get most of it back into the box (putting it back in the box may have been the hardest part of the day).

I'm using heatlock veneer. Between Bill Schneider's excellent tutorial, voltiaudio.com build tutorials, and joewoodworker.com (with an email or two to Joe himself), I felt like I had a decent idea of what to do. I had a spare baffle laying around (long story, but I'm good to go on my next project already...) so I decided to use it for practice.

Glue drying (it is hard to believe how excited I have been to watch glue dry these last few days... speaker building must be a sickness):





After ironing:



I'm not sure where the white splotches came from. Anybody got an idea??
I sprayed a little veneer softener on the veneer prior to ironing. Maybe that was it? Or from the iron's steam??

No pictures, but I trimmed to size with both a veneer saw and a utility knife. I actually think I liked the utility knife better. With a new blade it made a nice clean cut with minimal tearing. I sanded the edges with a sanding block until flush, and then repeated the entire process on the other side. Here is what the edges looked like after I was done:



The line from the glue and the paper is pretty faint, which is great.
The next task was to use a utility knife to open up the driver holes. They were precut (recesses and all). Doing this with just a utility knife was not fun. BUT, it wasn't as bad as I thought and the results are pretty good:



It isn't perfect. There is some chipping around the drivers and a little bit around the edges. But, I definitely got better as I went along. If I take my time and use what I learned with this practice board, the real thing should be pretty good.

Tomorrow, I will test some finishing ideas on this board while hopefully making some progress on veneering the cabinets. I plan to do back, bottom, sides, front, then top.

[mtmpenn]

I managed to get the backs of the cabinets veneered today (I'm 1/6th of the way done!)

The back of the cabinet is tricky, and I spent a lot of time trying to decide how to best deal with the TL. I didn't want all paint. I could have edgebanded the sides/top of the TL opening, but I thought the seams would be too obvious. I decided to try to do the back in flat black inside the TL with a solid piece of veneer around the edges.

I put a few coats of flat back down over the last few days. I started today by masking it off around the edges to try to minimize glue and razor damage. This was probably a waste of tiime (there was plenty of damage when I was done).



Before I attached the veneer I cut a little window into so I could is it to line things up and get my trimming cuts started.



Then came a lot of trimming with the utility knife. Then some sanding to get everything flush. Then I masked the veneer and sprayed one final coat of black.





Then I had a hearty dinner (pork ragu with gnocchi...)



My major observation for today is to never, ever use a veneer saw to trim veneer across the grain. With the grain, it is amazing. I can use it to trim right next to the box and get a near perfect, flush, cut. Against the grain, it tears chunks out of the veneer. The top of one of the speakers got pretty chewed up. I'll try to get a picture of it later and see if anyone can tell me how to fix it.

Back to work tomorrow, so progress will slow down dramatically, but I will update the thread as I move forward.

[Bent]

I'd think that if you put a straght edge along the veneer, and scored it with a exacto knofe you'd eliminate the tear-outs.

[mtmpenn]

Do you mean to score the paper side of the veneer or the wood side?

[Bent]

I mean the wood side.
try it on a scrap piece first - the relief provided by the score should help prevent the tearing.

[gregnash]

I mean the wood side.
try it on a scrap piece first - the relief provided by the score should help prevent the tearing.

Would a flushtrim router bit do the same? Only reason I ask is I could see it being a bit faster and giving the same cut he is talking about with the utility knife.

[mtmpenn]

Unfortunately I don't have a router, and buying one for this build is out of the question. I'll trying scoring te face of the veneer and see how that goes.

Thanks,

Mike

[mtmpenn]

I started this build threat, but never finished it. The tritrix have been done for some time. I recently broke out the camera and took a few shots of the finished product (I'm no photographer):









Listening impressions:

They sound great! They go plenty loud, but are also satisfying at low volume levels. I was surprised at the detail that they resolve. I don't have a lot of experience with high $ drivers, but these did better than I expected given the modest cost of the components. I certainly picked up some new detail in a few recordings, and overall liked the voicing better than the original vifa recession busters that I am using for HT duty. I wish I still had my "peecreeks" to compare, but I gave those away a couple of years ago to make room. Overall, great value and great fun to build. Highly recommended. Thanks to Curt/Wayne for a great design and for help from the forum during construction.

Unfortunately, they are a bit large for my home and although my wife would tolerate them she doesn't really like them (She's a music lover, but I cannot get her to stop listening to her laptop speaker and take the time to use the speakers). So, I'm going to give them away or sell them and build something else. I'll be sad to see them go, but building another set of something will be great fun. I'm already thinking of what to do differently (and I will invest in a router to save myself some time/pain).

[savage25xtreme]

Those turned out nice! Send um my way if you are giving them away! 8O

[richnen]

Very nice build!

"they are a bit large for my home", "she doesn't really like them"

I have used "the color is not quite right", "they are too small", "they are too tall" and "I need a pair for the garage".

I can always find a way to justify another speaker project!

Don't worry..... you are not alone, this site is filled with DIY addicts. I am sure there is not shortage of "reasons" why another project HAD to be started!

[Johnloudb]

Unfortunately, they are a bit large for my home and although my wife would tolerate them she doesn't really like them (She's a music lover, but I cannot get her to stop listening to her laptop speaker and take the time to use the speakers). So, I'm going to give them away or sell them and build something else.

Take a stand Man! Those are not big speakers!

BTW, very nice work!

[snmhanson]

They look great. Too bad you have to get rid of them. On the other hand, it gives you a chance to start on a new build. What about something from the Lineup series? They are only 6"x12" and 9.5" deep. I haven't built them myself but I did build Statement Monitors which use the same mid and tweeter (ribbon) and they sound great. I am now looking at the Lineup F4 or R4 for an easy and relatively cheap build that will satisfy my addiction until I can get started on another big project.

Also, do invest in a router and get a good straight cut, flush trim and 45 degree bit. Makes things so much easier. A plunge router or a fixed router with an interchangeable plunge base is ideal but more costly. I would recommend a circle jig as well. You can make your own jig but the circle jigs are very accurate and convenient. The router/bits/jig can add up but it is a one time purchase and I found it to be the most important tool in the build. As a matter of fact, if I had to choose between having a router and a saw, I think I would choose the router.

Have fun and keep us updated with the new build!

Matt

[mtmpenn]

Thanks for the kind words!

If I really wanted to keep them I could. But, somewhere deep inside I am forced to agree with her about their size. Our house is SMALL (~915 sq ft). I will try to sell them for cost and use the money to buy tools (or potentially trade them to my brother-in-law for plumbing services).

I'll be working on some bookshelf size speakers next. I've already got baffles precut for a set of zaph za5.2's, and all the drivers for jeff b's continuum's, and some peerless buyouts, and a set of klipsch buyouts. I think I have a problem. I won't buy anymore drivers though until I:

1. Buy some tools (definitely a router... maybe a track saw for dimensioning lumber... I don't like relying on the sloppy cuts at the lumber yard).
2. Build some cabinets and finish some of what I already have parts for.

This hobby really is a sickness. I took a furniture building class recently. It was fun and I made a very nice looking maple book shelf. However, it is somehow not as satisfying... I think because it doesn't plug in, turn on, or make noise.

[rdrowley]

This hobby really is a sickness. I took a furniture building class recently. It was fun and I made a very nice looking maple book shelf. However, it is somehow not as satisfying... I think because it doesn't plug in, turn on, or make noise.

AMEN!!!

[DeathMonk]

They look great! I'll take them off your hands