BillFitzmaurice.info

I'm embarking on my second THT build. This one will be for my brother's home theater. He built a home theater in his basement with Klipsch towers, in walls and ATMOS in the ceiling. I could not convince him to go the BFM route. However, he's realized his Klipsch sub is barely adequate in this space.

We will follow the Plans to a T this time, no crazy improvisation or off the wall drivers like I normally do. Just 2.5 sheets of Arauaco, a Dayton Audio RSS390HF-4, blood sweat and tears. We're building 24.5 wide ouside, as I can get a full cab out of 2.5 sheets. I suppose there is one extra 2x2ft piece of ply i'm using for a woofer mount to space back a bit. I decided on that instead of the screw blocks to hold the driver. It's actually gluing to panel 4 as we speak. Panel 4 was cutout yesterday, and we laid out all the paths on the sides, inside and out to help with nailing. I also built a platform to work on this time. Many will remember I just built my first on sawhorses and it had a bit-o-curl. My panels all have some warp, since those 2.5 sheets have been leaning against my garage wall since I built the other THT. This was to be it's sibling, but I'll build one out of BB next if the prices ever come down.

Enjoy your build! Looking forward to "sound" results!

I feel like someone said it was forum rules I had to have this picture...

Got most of the braces cut to rough shape this afternoon after work. Also notched and test fit the mouth braces. No fancy rounded edges on this one, plain vanilla per my brother. He's scheming how to dress it up to match his home theater. Original plan was to make a 36x36x36 and paint it like a Rubiks cube. He has a bit of 80's flair in his home theater/bar area. However, his basement door wouldn't accomodate a 36 wide tuba. Then we thought about a faux 12" stand/cover whatever to make the 36" cube. Now he has something else up his sleeve. I think we are going to add some shapes/features on the outside and make it look like a Star Wars prop, since his bar is very star wars themed as well.

Got my woofer spacer glued to panel 4, which already had a hole to size for the driver. Drilled a 1/2" hole so my flush cut trim bit would fit, then I routed the spacer flush to the original hole. Turned out pretty good. We centered the driver with some center lines and lined up 4 mount holes on those. Then I tapped a 1/4-20 bolt to mark the locations through the woofer frame. Then we put the driver safely way and drilled out the holes for T-nuts. After pounding them in, we secured them with a bit of PL and a screw on each for safety/backup. Lastly I ground each flange down a bit and sanded it smooth so it doesn't stick into the bore.

Since I laid out all the lines ahead of time, and rough cut all the panels, I wanted to try something. I built my access cover flange, starting by panel one, all pushed tight to the front/mouth side. Then I worked my way around and cut each flange piece and nicked shavings off until they lined up perfect. With a test fit of panels 2, 4 and 5, I glued the flanges down first. I only had to trim a smidge off panel 5 as I fudged lines for panel 4 and drew two. I tried to center, coz my measurement/layout mark was in one spot and I drew two lines, one to either side or the initial scribe. No matter, it's mabe a 1/16th shorter at worst. I'll fudge the interior panels that far off all day with this dang PL oozing around.

When you take pictures rotate your phone to horizontal.

Looking good!

Bill Fitzmaurice wrote: ↑Thu Nov 03, 2022 8:35 pm When you take pictures rotate your phone to horizontal.

Trying not to show the filth in my garage LOL

I'll try widescreen on my next few, but already took these Bill
Using the flanges as cleats worked fairly well. I still test fit each panel dry, trimming 5 like I may have mentioned in an earlier post. Panels 2 and 4 came out nice though. I notched my braces on panel 4, although in retrospect, I don't think I did on my first THT, since I had the doubled up 1/2 ply. Oh well, it wasn't too much work.

Hopefully these pictures come through right orientation! We glued panel 6 and 7, struggled a little with warpage but I think we have most pulled out.
Well how about that, turn your phone horizontal, one picture preview comes out right the other two upside down. I had my phone in the same orientation for both.

Panels 8, 9 and braces went in pretty easy. I like it once i'm up to a reference edge again. I hate the insides that squish around and I can't bring myself to nail a cleat in LOL.

Last two panels going on, then braces and we slapped second side on right away and clamped. The platform worked much better. Building a second was way easier, since I had some sense of what I was doing. Labelling all the panels better, and stacking them in order of use helped greatly. Last time I cut all the panels a it oversize and then to 23.5 wide all in one pass so they all matched. Then I'd measure the layout on the side and cut as needed. Taking an angle finder i'd bevel as needed to match, then cut to final length. This time I did all that up front. I laid out each panel, and mocked up a stop or cleat to go on to the next and get final sizes. I only had one panel a bit long, or my pencil lines were sloppy. Same with the braces, got them all close, remembering last time one was too close to an edge. This time they were all pre-cut to final size. I only had one spot in the mouth with a hairline gap I oozed with PL.
Having my brother or my son (or both) here to help hold/glue/nail made it all faster. I just took off clamps tonight and started scraping PL. I tried to scrape after about an hour on almost every panel, but with the second side, I just let it go. We'll be putting some false façade on this anyway, so more to come. Headed to the basement to set up the driver for break in. Then this weekend I hope to drill the access cover and paint the joint so the gasket tape sticks cleaner.

I'm enjoying following your build. Thanks for sharing.

Cleaning up ooze out, shoulda done it an hour after... But I have so many clamps on and it was late, I just let it go.
Prime/sealed the driver chamber and inside of access cover while we had an unseasonably warm 70F day in November. Any more finishing now will require some heat assistance. Hope to get to the big box home store this weekend to get ideas for dressing up the outside. I mocked something up in CAD for my brother to chew on. I may have mentioned, he wants to make it look like a shipping crate from Star Wars. I had planned to scap on some plywood shapes on sides, but I'm not crazy about the extra weight. He wanted MDF, I'm going to look into PVC, since it's just for show and we'll spray paint it when done.