Davids for Tom

[publicIdaho]

Was looking at getting the fronts and backs glued on then noticed I had parts sitting over on the cart. Then I realized that I screwed up putting the hole in for the terminal cup. It was right in the way of the brace that runs down the center of the woofer chamber. Decided to make an extra brace and straddle the hole.

[publicIdaho]

Last thing was to get the back access panel set up with T-nuts so that it can be removed easily.

Marked the holes carefully on the access panel and drilled holes through both the panel and the back (the panel was inserted correctly) that was just big enough for the 8-32 bolt to go through.

[publicIdaho]

Hah, just noticed that I put the panel in backwards to take the picture. I did have my cross lines the right way when I drilled the holes.

You also can see the epoxy fill mentioned earlier, I think it should be better than it was at least.

Once the holes were drilled, the access panels were removed and larger holes were drilled for the T-nuts to be inserted. Then it was t-nut pounding time.

That is all that got documented today.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

Make sure you test everything before permanently adding the front panel. If the wiring isn't right it will be a nightmare trying to fix it afterwards.

[publicIdaho]

Thanks for the tip!

I was planning to leave the 45° pieces off so that I could get to the MTM wiring easily, but I think I could sit the top on or clamp it a bit and do the testing. Time to put an amp in the car too for the trip to the shop.

[publicIdaho]

Time to see if the wiring was was done right. Start with mounting the woofer and hooking up the terminal cup.

[publicIdaho]

Then seal up the panel 7/9 access hole. Just used 5/8 screws. The last 1/8" of a screw does not do much so I was fine with them going through a little bit, and we use 5/8 screws by the thousands so I had plenty around. Have not put in the gasket tape yet, this is just a very preliminary test.

[publicIdaho]

Then it was time to mount the other drivers. If you have put in as many screws as I have, you might be tempted to to just slap the driver in the hole and put the screws in. But this is the finished product and I wanted to make sure I did it perfect. First thing was to get the drivers lined up and mark the holes with a pencil.

Remove the drivers and use an awl to put some starter points for the drill.

[publicIdaho]

Drill with a small bit, no bigger than the shank of your screw. An easy and quick way to keep from drilling too deep is to put a piece of tape around your drill bit. Make sure to put it on so that it does not unwind as the bit spins.

I happened to find the blue painters tape first, great tape for some things, but not the best for sticking to a drill bit. It worked though

[publicIdaho]

Fronts and backs clamped in place and drivers mounted.

[publicIdaho]

YES! We are finally making noise

Even with the corner wings of the MTM section off and the fronts and backs just slapped on with a few clamps, the speakers did not sound too bad. Good enough to listen to for a while even.

[publicIdaho]

Then it was time to take it all back apart and get ready for the adhesive.

I will say it again - I really believe that pocket screws are the thing for these builds. I did not use any for the fronts and backs and I was amazed at how much those panels want to slip and slide about. I had 4 clamps down each side and two on the top - 10 total clamps secured and I was still able to get a clamp lengthwise on the back panel and move it a little to get it back in place.

Put the bottoms in with a few pocket screws, took a minute or two at most to get them installed perfectly.

Put some 1 3/4" square blocks of poplar on the bottom so that there will be some meat there to mount feet/spikes.

Now it is time to wait for the glue to set up. Might take a while - it is trying to snow outside in my neck of the woods.

[publicIdaho]

The angled side pieces went in today. First step is to clean up the little shelf on top. This will be very hard to sand once the pieces go in. Have to be careful to keep things flat.

[publicIdaho]

Here is a picture showing the after. With the sander I have, you have to be very careful with the edge of the disk because as it spins/orbits, if the edge hits something, like the front or side vertical pieces, it will very quickly carve out a little notch.

[publicIdaho]

Now to fit the panels. This is pretty easy, if the panels are a little over sized. Just check the fit up and down, then clamp the straight edge on them again and run the router over them with the 22.5° bit.

If you are lucky like me and have an edge sander, sand them to fit on that handy machine.

Make sure to add a little back bevel on the bottom so that the front of the piece goes all the way down. If you don't the back of the piece hits first and the front is slightly lifted off of the shelf area. It is also handy on this version, with the 22.5° corners that meet at the point rather than what the plans call for with overlapping 45° edges on the pieces, to ease the back of the angle edge (make them a little more than 22.5°) so that you are sure the front points meet rather than have something hitting on the back and have the front edges split apart from each other. The PL Premium will fill any gaps that might be at the back and you are more assured of a nice looking joint.

Time for the PL Premium. On the first panel, I applied the adhesive to the panel itself and pressed it into place. This resulted in the excess adhesive scraping off the front edges of the joint and staying out of the cabinet. On the rest, I put the adhesive on the cabinet and slid the panel in. This kept the adhesive on the inside where hopefully it is doing more good.

I also added the braces 8/9 and 7/8 braces, each had to be modified a bit because of my back panel access hole. But I took no pictures of this easy step.

Now it is time to wait and then get into sanding, rounding some corners and generally cleaning things up for the finishing stage. The fun part is over. The blue tape over the driver holes is to keep out dust and paint from the inside of the cabinets.

Question: when using the T-nuts to mount the woofers, do people use blue Loctite on the bolts or anything similar to hold them in place?