BillFitzmaurice.info

Well, after COVID lockdowns, a trip to Alaska, and more life than I'd have thought possible resulting in the garage/workshop being buried in junk more than once, I've finally got the workshop dug out and cleaned up enough to do work. I spotted the pair of Celestion 8" I'd bought when I first started thinking about this project and thought, why not? Managed to scrounge up just enough decent 1/2" birch plywood, sat down with a ruler and a calculator to figure out how to shrink the XF-212 down, and started turning plywood into sawdust. Had to partly mock it up to figure how to position the baffles. I think it should work out ok. Got everything cut out and have started gluing things together (in a somewhat not-to-the-instructions order, but it should turn out ok ). The Titebond is just to stick down the baffle cleats. I ran out and picked up some PL for the cabinet joints.

What speakers are you going to put in it?

Bruce Weldy wrote: ↑Thu Nov 16, 2023 12:33 pm What speakers are you going to put in it?

For this project I have a pair of 8ohm Celestion G8C-15.
https://celestion.com/product/eight-15/

Glue-up wasn't quite as clean as I'd hoped. Something shifted. Oh well, its' within the realm of what the sander can take care of. Now to figure out the geometry of the baffles.

Always come back and check a clamped up cabinet an hour or so later. The 1/4 dried PE adhesive can be scraped off in its fudge-like consistency.

Rich4349 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 10:02 am Always come back and check a clamped up cabinet an hour or so later. The 1/4 dried PE adhesive can be scraped off in its fudge-like consistency.

I went back after I posted the photo and scraped off the excess PE. What I meant by "not clean" was one of the joints shifted after everything was clamped and I missed it. Offset's only about a fingernail thickness but I can still feel it. Top layer of the plywood should be thick enough that I can sand it even.

Movin' right along... I'm at the point now, with the church Christmas program looming, I'm more interested in having a working cab than a pretty one. So I'll live with the slight incongruities on some of the edges, and the odd PL smear here and there. It'll still look ok from across the room which is mostly what I was shooting for.

After quite a bit of measuring, figuring, head-scratching, chewing thru almost all the 1/2 birch in the garage, and finally resorting to carefully custom-cut cardboard templates, I got the (bad words redacted) baffles cut out. Couple of the edges were about a sawkerf off, but nothing the adhesive can't bridge. Hole saw was set just a hair undersized, but a minute on the oscillating sander got the speakers to drop right in. All glued up, and after a couple hours the PL did its job and filled all the gaps. Like I said, I'm getting a bit antsy to get this thing together. Masked off the cabinet and painted the baffles and part of the inset area black. Did that on the XF-212 earlier and it came out looking pretty spiffy. Let it bake for a day under the mondo halogen work light. That thing gets HOT! The other day I found a bunch of clamp-down 8" speaker grilles I'd forgotten about, and decided to use them on this build. Here I'm making a pattern to mark the cabinet for the mounting bracket screws. Lay a speaker in the cab and set the template down around it, and make sure the guidelines are equal distance from the edge of the baffle. That puts the brackets on a nice neat 45 degree orientation. That completes almost all the cutting-and-drilling (still waiting for jacks and mounting plates, and a handle to arrive from Parts Express) so I figured I'd go ahead and start putting on the finish. I'll end up with around 8 or 9 coats of Watco Danish Oil (cherry flavor ).

Lookin' good from here.

Nearly-final assembly complete. Turned out ok, appearance-wise.
Just have to wire up the jacks and mount them, and cram a couple of pounds of polyfill in the back, and we can put it to rest. Interested to see how it sounds compared to the XF-212.

That turned out awesome! I'm diggin the speaker grill only look.

You've inspired me to make a xf204 for a garage speaker boombox. I might be able to 3d print that.

mrz80 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 26, 2023 12:32 am Interested to see how it sounds compared to the XF-212.

I've been using the thing for a few weeks now, and I've got a pretty good handle on how it sounds relative to the XF-212 at church, well enough that I can mess with new patches on the guitar synth and be pretty confident of how they'll sound next Sunday. I'm very happy with how it turned out.