BillFitzmaurice.info

Hi, humbly submitting my own build currently in motion, in which I think I have made every mistake possible so far:

1. Step 1 was to build the sawhorses and assemble a workshop. So I'm a little behind already.
2. After years of neglect in the garage in the NW climate, neighbors table saw seems to have seized the arbor nut solid so I'm stuck with his old blade. Yes, we tried penetrating sprays and hammers.
3. No guide channels on the saw table or angle guide-pusher-thingy either so I'm cutting angles by eye.
4. No riving knife so I've had a couple of lessons in sawblade kickback. Nice, purple ones to the gut. Never again.
5. Probably cut every angle on the wrong side once, glued pieces backwards, destroyed pieces by screwing too close to the edge, ripped off laminate layers while separating guide scrap, trimmed angles on the wrong side, thrown the part away and started again from scratch. I rock!
6. Working without drivers or hardware, I'm getting to the point where I need to buy those to finish the baffles.
7. Man, that PL glue is evil in a can.

I have given up fighting and I'm just going with the flow now - every step is a learning process and I'm OK with having to start again. Really, every time I remake a part I just get more accurate, better fit. I have no idea how people can "knock one up in a weekend", those guys must be superhuman! I've also come to realize that making 4 cabinets at once is actually easier than making two. More opportunities to set up a cut and run pieces through until you get the right number and they'll all be identical. Next time plan to do more at once. Every time I visit the hardware store I now know what I'm looking for in a table saw, and suddenly I find that I have expensive taste...

Following the 2012 designs and I have questions: About that baffle piece, 16" really? There's no way fitting 16" to a 15 5/8" piece like that will give you a 3-degree slope. I guess I'll understand once I get more pieces together but the design so far has some very odd measurements, like the 10-degree horn throat pieces that are joined by a 13-degree parallelogram. Sure, I can fill the gaps with PL, but I don't believe the designs are correct! And then other times they're spookily accurate. It's probably just me, everyone else building these things has no comments.







Looking forward to see how many points this workshop rates. I'm guessing low 3's.

Ok,
kudos to you just for trying!

I'm building the bigger brothers (DR250's) same version plans (see the build thread in my sig) at the moment.
Don't sweat the angles in the plans, or the plans themselves!
You will see the two different angles for the throat horn make sense when you go to put on the two ends. The "other" angle lets the throat horn end pieces sit flat.

Don't go any further until you have your drivers. You have to have them on hand to cut out the driver mount.

Yes, the front side of the horn is taller than the part to the rear of the cab.

As far as cutting angles by eye, give that a miss from now on. It will only increase your frustration.
Go and buy one of these:
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Igaging-digi ... 989wt_1139
An 8" one is fine, and doesn't cost much.
It makes setting any angle a breeze (eg want 13 degrees? set the rule to 77 degrees, or if the cut is the other way, 103 degrees and you have your angle, precisely!)

Slow down.
Go back and read the plans a few times so you are also thinking of the next steps as you go along.

You've learnt most of the hard mistakes and survived, so start getting the early stuff right, or the rest might end up a nightmare.
That's said as encouragement, not a negative!

Oh, and if it makes you feel any better, my cutting and building is also done on two sawhorses with a circular saw, drill and jigsaw.
I have been known to use an angle grinder as well. And a bunch of clamps.
The only "luxury" I have is a router on loan...

I'm with you. It took me 6 months to make mine. I used the neighbor's old tools and his garage too (until he moved.) For the tricky stuff (mounting the pole mount/cutting the horn sheaths/ finishing/etc.) I got help from my hobby carpenter father-in-law, and another one who was a friend from church. I needed lots of help. I even used my uncle's connections to find someone who cuts metal to custom-fit my grills. I also misglued and started over, though it sounds like you have me beat there. Second time was so much faste, I recommend finishing one, then going back and mass-producing. I'm now a proponent of OTops, unless you like spending time in the shop. BUT... If you have the time and patience (and tools and friends?), anyone can do it.

A couple of things really bolstered my confidence. First, making the table saw sled. Once I had that, and could make 90 degree cuts with some kind of kickback safety factor, I was much less timid. Second, making accurate laminated guides. They matched my metal angle exactly and I could clamp pieces to them for gluing, knowing my pieces would be accurate.

You may want to check into the flat packs currently for sale in the classifieds. I picked up a couple to speed along my next set, whenever I need to expand my DJ/ audio services.

Update from the weekend. This is the last week the family is away visiting Grandparents, so progress will probably slow from now (can it go any slower?) Also, my posts may sound like I'm down on everything but that's just my English sense of humor. Don't mind me, I'm actually enjoying messing around in the shop.

Cut out the top and bottom panels, cut out the buttcheeks and found a local source for the 1/8" baltic ply. Still not ordered the drivers yet as I'll be away for a week so there's no point in Fedex attempting to leave expensive boxes at the door. Visited the local "Woodcraft" store to ogle the tools I'll never buy and pick up a GRR Gripper. That device made some of the difficult cuts way simpler to handle, plus I get to stay away from the spinning blades. Really happy with that device, recommended. The other tool I can't do without is the Quick Change Drill-Drive bit:



I would go insane without it. (Either that or have to buy another power tool)

Beginning of the day:


It's like icing a cake with concentrated evil:


I probably use far too many screws where I could use clamps instead and get things done faster, but do not underestimate the power of a couple of 3-degree guide jigs. Those things are gold:


But I do like me some squeeze-out. Managed to solidly glue two guides to the baffle requiring prying with a chisel, a small amount of de-lamination and guilty sanding afterwards. Lesson learned - remove guides before the glue sets:


End of the day. Those two supports took WAY longer than I imagined. Measuring 4.5" from the front of the panel instead of from the eventual trim line didn't help, so I had to redo one of the cabinets completely. Clamp is there to squeeze a split in the ply caused by lazy pre-drilling. See? I aim to cover all possible mistakes.


Looks like a speaker! Been reading through the idea of the removable front unit secured by nacelles (is Bill a secret Star Trek fan?) and that final drilling looks scarily final. Succeed or start all over again. Eek!

Another question. It talks about securing the woofer with screws, where my earlier had-to-move-house-and-leave-it-unfinished Tuba30 build was all about T-Nuts and Allen Keys. Am I right in thinking that in the DR200, the driver is screwed to the baffle, just straight into the wood?

Looking good!

Wax paper (we call it greaseproof here) or plastic stops the adhesive sticking to your guides. Now you know why it's in the plans lol.
I shouldn't laugh, having to start over again is no joke.

You've seen what I did instead of the nacelles. I really couldn't, and still can't, get my head around them, so I did it my way. At least it's another method.

When you put your sheaths on, just make sure your front uprights stay straight...

Fatlimey wrote:Lesson learned - remove guides before the glue sets:

Wrap the guide in saran wrap or wax paper.

Grant Bunter wrote:Looking good!

Wax paper (we call it greaseproof here) or plastic stops the adhesive sticking to your guides. Now you know why it's in the plans lol.

Or, you can cut off the inside corner of the guide to create a glue pocket so it can't reach the guide.

One house move, youngest kid at preschool, I find myself between jobs with a little time to spare. I may be slow but darnit I'm gonna finish.

This project is now officially the most complicated thing I have ever made from wood, and we haven't even got to adding the pipe yet.
Still nervous about destroying tweeters but can't stop now. Forwards!

You are to be commended for getting back to them after almost two years. Here's hoping you will be able to christen them before another two has passed!

Good on you for sticking with it! Roughly 2.5 years passed from when I first bought my OTop and T48 plans to when I started building them, so I sort of understand how you feel! Job, family and health come first, no matter how ticked off or guilty or however you feel about "not having two darn minutes to do something for me!" Trust me, I know that feeling well.

And I think your build looks great. Your description of PL as "Evil in a can" is pretty spot-on. LOL! We all have a love/hate relationship with the stuff. But it fills in gaps so well and is so darn strong that you tend to forgive it's evil qualities after it saves your butt a few times.

Looking forward to more progress and pics!

I'm leaving out the entirely scary and dangerous "splitting the Schedule 40 pipe" episode because DAMN do they have some bite on them. Docs fail to mention there are handy lines on the inside of the tube that helps enormously with alignment of the cut. DO NOT forget the 1/8" shim, oh no. Once the pipe is split, the half sections are easy to handle and can be fitted very accurately. Provided you don't trim them too short, in which case you'll be needing to rescue some of the cutoff pieces to shim the large gaps. Smother with too much PL and you're golden (no hot glue gun). At this point the project seems to be constructed of about 87% PL and only 13% wood. At least in my mind.

Been making me some jigs.


Going for a zig-zag layout with a lower blade than in the docs as I really didn't trust cutting through those screws. Now the tweeter section doesn't need to be airtight anymore, isn't this the new style?


Built a jig for cutting the tweeters, and as I have said all along I have probably made every mistake possible. So the cut lines are janky, I had to add a series of 1/8th inch shims to get the cut to the correct place. After finally wising up and locking down the jig to the tablesaw-channel-pusher-thing the results were surprisingly accurate. It looks a mess but the results are spot on. I ran through all the tweeters in one run so I would never have to go through setting it up again. I don't think my old borrowed saw has ever been set to 45 degrees in 30 years. It took serious effort and no small amount of 3-in-1 to get there. Of course now I'm finished and don't need it anymore it works smooth as butter.


DOCS BUG?: Cutting the 45 degree ends, the document says "3-3/8 from the end" but the diagram clearly shows a cut that appears to be 2-3/8" from the end. I went with the smaller cut and the result looks like the SKP and the diagrams.


Money on the floor.


Test fitting, ready for gluing tomorrow.


You have no idea how proud I am of this. The potential for screw up was enormous and I came out (after a little shuffling of drivers) with a full set of perfectly aligned pieces, end pieces correctly aligned and cut on one side and no broken tweeters. It's practically miraculous.


The current state of play, piecing together the front units for the tweeters. I'll wax paper the whole front and build it in place once I work out how to get my head around cutting that 3-degree angle on the baffles. I have a jig now but the visualization is escaping my feeble mind. Thank the creator for the Sketchup reference.


If you are building one of these, here are two tools you will use far more often than you think. Measure, measure, check then measure again. Then measure once more from the other side and finally cut. Then check by measuring.

You have no idea how proud I am of this

Errr yeah I do!!

Like many of us.

I'm ecstatic you're still continuing, and for all intents, doing a great job

Keep on plugging away...

At this point the project seems to be constructed of about 87% PL and only 13% wood. At least in my mind.

That is a frequent, and prevalent observation around here....welcome to the club. Your DRs are looking great, my friend. Keep plugging away.