Being an amateur woodworker(I helped my step-dad put a roof on and do some remodeling when I was about 13-14 some 20+ years ago), I wanted to take my time.
The builds took about 25 ish hours for the first one and a little less the second. I put a lot of bells and whistles on these, for ease of use, durability, and portability. Here's the list of what all went into these.
1. Fully carpeted with latex backed black carpet from Parts Express. Seems like it could fall out of a moving truck and not wear through that stuff. It was not too bad time wise. Possibly more than Duratex or some other liquid applied coating, but I think it took me about 2 hours each or so for carpeting and they look awsome. The bonus in time you gain from carpeting is that you don't really have to do much sanding. I just rounded off the edges a little and used a lot of adhesive. I overlapped corners and made one cut so as to have perfectly matching edges at the corners. I think I got about 7 yards total for both cabinets. That was probably more than I needed, but not way over. 3 cans of spray adhesive were used carpeting both cabinets.
2. Pull-out style handle mounted on the back of the cabinet with 2.5 inch wheels on the reflector plate so they don't touch the ground when the speaker is sitting on the 1.5" diameter rubber feet. The handle was purchased at Parts Express as well, but the wheels were bought elsewhere. I don't remember where I got them, but PE only had 3" as the smallest wheels. Rubber feet were from PE also.
3. 1.5" tophat. This isn't the normal size, so I had to get adapters also. This was done because the 1 3/8" metal tophat was too deep. I would have had to add a 1/2" plate to the top or modify one of the interior plates to install it.
4. Penn Elcom spring loaded handles on the sides for loading. These weren't recessed but just the surface mount. The first set I put on were pretty much centered. This turned out to be a few inches in front of the center of gravity so they want to tip backwards, but it's manageable. The second set I just estimated the CG and came pretty close. It's about 3" back from center or so with a HL10c loaded T24 with the hardware I used.
5. Parallel Neutrik connections. I got a dual Neutrik mounting plate and used the 2 pole connectors. In hindsight I would have used the 4 pole so I could have used bi-amp speaker cables. Live and learn.
They weigh much less than the EV T18s(109 lbs.), but I haven't weighed them. I would estimate around 60-65 lbs. I used some 1/2" hardwood plywood from the local HD, that seemed to work out well. It was flat, no voids and was about $30 a sheet. Don't even know exactly what kind of wood it was, but it worked well.
My tips for building. Some I used and some I wish I had used.
1. Guide boards:
Use these with C-clamps to line up the interior panels on the sode panel and then screw/glue them. Use the wax paper so the boards don't stick. I didn't use this method but wish I had. basically I used a 2 man operation for this part of assembly where one person eyeballed it up and then the other person drove the screws. There was slippage and such depending on the angle the screws ended up going in. It was within tolerances I'm sure, but I'd rather be more accurate myself.
2. Two drills would also have been nice. It does say that in the plans now I think, but I didn't have 2 drills and had to do a lot of bit swapping for drilling pilot holes and then screwing in panels.
3. A rotary saw/Dremel type tool works wonders. I used the mini drum sander to quickly round off the edges a bit and used it with some guide boards to cut holes for tophat, Neutrik plate, and where we mounted the extendo handle. It's not quite as nice as a router, but certainly much cheaper.
4. The extendable handle could be excellent. Could be I say because I didn't do it quite right and they bind a little on ours and make it a bit tough to extend, especially on the first one. The handle we used really is meant for about 1/4" thickness material. Measure where the interior support brackets neet to go to be wide enough to avoid the inside mounting bracket for the extendo handle. It is a bit wider than just the normal divide the width by thirds that I used on all the other brackets. The handle I used also needed to be cut a bit. The normal length of the piece is 24", but this would put the ends through the reflector plate. We cut them to about 17" and put rivets in the ends after it was modified so there was a stop and the handles wouldn't pull all the way out. For router users this should be quite easy. Just route our a bit of wood where the back of the corner mounting plate attaches to the cabinet so the wood is only 1/4" thick. This will allow for easy extension. If you do not do this and have the interior handle brack mounted too high the handle will actually come out at a slight angle and really bind on the holes in the mounting plate. This is probably the biggest regret of my first cabinet.
5. Glue. If you aren't that accurate with your cuts or had to use a circular saw instead of a table saw use what you think might be too much. It will fill in the gaps and help you with that air-tight seal you need. You can use caulk or more glue after the build if you can reach the leaky seam, but as it says in the plans don't use silicone based stuff as the fumes are bad for the speaker surrounds.
6. Speaker mounting. The t-nuts and bolts I used were a bit on the small side. I used the hurricane style t-nuts, but I used #8. This is probably too small for the HL10c I mounted. I had to use lock washers and some non-silicone caulk to fill in to be sure of a solid seal. This will definately be a pain if I ever have to replace the speaker. I would recommend at least the #10 or 1/4" t-nuts and bolts even for a speaker this big.
7. Screws. I think I used about 150 or so screws per cabinet. I'd get extra even. I used #6 1" screws all the way around. I would probably recommend using 1.5". I think they would have a bit more pulling power to help with any "mis-aligned" panels or slightly wrong cut panels.
8. Sanding. I didn't have to sand a ton, but even with what I had to do to get the panels somewhat smooth after filling some mis drilled screw pilot holes and such, I would say a belt sander is the way to go. I used one of those hand-held vibrating type and it was pretty rough on the hands and even though I used some pretty rough grit paper it still took a bit of muscle. The belt sander would pretty much do the work for you if you just guided it around the flat surface.
I think that's it for the tips. I'll add more if anyone has any questions about what I did.
Sound.
Here's where we put the rubber to the road so to speak. What a dream come true to be cheesy about it. They sound twice as good as I could have imagined. We cross them at aroun 100Hz, perhaps just a touch higher since our tops aren't that good and I'm trying to lighten the power load on the tops for now. Hopefully if I get around to building some DR250s I can drop the crossover point slightly.
The subs are run off of one channel of a Behringer EP2500 amp that puts out 650 Watts with a 4 ohm load. It's not ideal headroom-wise, but it certainly does the job. They are much "cleaner" than the EV T18s, and have plenty of that punch you look for. Even with one sub running they are pretty formidible for a room of 100+ people. The 2 set side by side against a wall could do some serous damage in a 250 seat room even.
I actually have a bit of a problem with putting too much kick through the PA lately because during sound check it's so clean. It is really deceivingly loud.
In summary the T24s are 40-45 lbs lighter than the EV T18s each. The T24s have only 3/4 of the power requirements(although with the higher sensitivity of the T24s I would say you probably need only 1/2 the power for the same sound) of the EV T18s. I also could build them the way I wanted them(handle, wheels, Neutrik or 1/4" if I wanted, etc...).
I give the T24s an A+ easily. We don't run our own sound too often, but have probably used them 6-8 times in the last few months already, and they still amaze me.
In the begining I was just hoping that they sounded good enough for me not to get my ass kicked for suggesting building our own stuff. Now I just get a crazy grin every time I crank up a CD when we are on break so the rest of the band can hear them. I play the sax in the band, but I'm the sound guy too. I enjoy both jobs, and the T24s make the sound guy part of that equation even more fun now. Bravo to Bill, and keep putting out the killer plans.
Hopefully I'll get some pictures of these and post them up here soon.
Ahh....here at last. A few pics of the completed cabinets.
Questions, comments, and constructive criticism greatly appreciated.