Yet another THT build... sure, why not?

So here goes... yet another THT build thread... The parts were ordered earlier in the week, got the wood last night, gathered tools and such as well.

Got the driver today and other misc parts... and began cutting. My progress was slow and inaccurate until I got a system down. I'll have to go back over the first half of the wood and measure and trim as necessary, no big deal since I cut everything slightly long (It's been a while). If it's short, I'll let the PL Premium fill the gaps...no error should be greater than 1/8" if my calculations are correct.

I can't even begin to explain how massive this driver is. I set it up while I was cutting and ran a 30hz sine wave through it at 10v or so to give it a little stretching, but the amp was getting a workout more than the driver was so I only let it run half the day for now. Tomorrow I'll remeasure and trim where necessary, then start the build.

My 10" Bic shakes windows and doors and walls...I can only imagine what this will do. Which is good, I won't need a killer amp, so I don't have to worry about going with a EP2500 or anything, this simply doesn't require it. I'll make an amp decision next week and order it... Until then once this is finished I'll just run it on the Bic's amp. Anywho, I'm tired, and I have to go to work in an hour...more updates tomorrow.

The dayton sitting on top of my current Bic V1020...


The 15" dayton next to the 10" Bic driver


My phone dwarfed by the driver


The workspace all cleaned up, with the wood laying flat, some with weights on them, in an attempt to avoid warping

Got it. I have enough scrap laying around to get it up off the ground a bit.

Today I layed out the pencil marks, and cut the access hole. It was a piece of cake as today I was much more confident in my measuring and my cutting. I used a simple cut out tool from harbor freight with a 1/8" bit. Measured over 1 1/8" for the guide board, drilled a pilot hole to start and followed the guide. Worked well. Just need to take a file or the dremel to the corners later.

Running out to grab food, I'm a little shaky, worked 11pm till 5am this morning (damn computers), slept till 3, got up and immediately started working on this. So I'm going to get food, and bigger clamps from harbor freight so I can start assembly. Luckily Moe's and HF are in the same plaza (Win!)

Laying out the lines on the board.


pattern layed out


Guide board clamped, first cut done.


Not bad at all

Well HF was closed, I ran over to lowes after dinner and didn't feel like dropping the $ they wanted for a 36" clamp or two, so I'll run to HF at lunch tomorrow. In the mean time I'm going to place and cut the woofer hole and the terminal plate. However, when I went to fill the gaps in the woofer gasket with some caulking as recommended I noticed the entire gasket is loose... how much of a problem is this? I was thinking of just throwing a thin layer either around the outside or under where it's come off and clamp it down for the night to seal it. Or is this an RMA type of issue?

Very good, thanks for the confirmation guys. I cut the hole for the driver, strangely enough, 3/4 of the way through my bit on my cutout tool broke... hoping that my makeshift circle jig would hold together I took it out and replaced it and finished cutting. The driver fits great in the hold. I'm going to make the holes for the T-nuts now and test fit that before being done for the night.

Ok, got the hole cut for the woofer, also got the tnuts put in. I accidentally ordered two hardware kits from parts-express...glad I did. One t-nut may have had bad threads or I got something in the threads cause half way through the bolt got stuck. I tried to go a little more then back it out and stripped the nut right out of the hole. Glad I had a second bag of hardware and this panel wasn't in yet!

On to cutting the terminal plate hole, then a beer and movie.

This is where I got stuck


Oops... pushing a little too hard maybe?


It fits great!


Pulling the t-nuts into the board (same procedure I used for my rock climbing wall I used to have in my living room)




Nice and snug


I'll add lock washers and some locktite later obviously


Straight over head, showing clearance with the surround

Alrightey, lock washers it is then. I'll pick those up in the next few days.

I got the gasket taken care of on the woofer. I just used the DAP caulking I got to fill the gaps in the gasket, to run a ring around the outside of it. I put some under the areas that it was coming apart as well and cranked it down to the board. This may be overboard, but will definitely suffice.

I also cut out the terminal plate hole and put that in. I realized in my excitement that I also sealed it and used silver hardware....oops. Should come out easy enough, I'll replace the hardware with black later when it gets painted, probably mid summer or so as it's too cold and I can't do it inside.

The HF router is fine. It's not the 1/4" trim router I was going to get from them, they were out. So I was looking around and found this one... it says Cutout tool on the box...It works fine. I also have an angle grinder from there, a bucket or two of zip ties, all kinds of stuff. If you're smart, and take care of your equipment like you should, HF stuff should last just as long as any name brand unless there's a manufacturers defect or something. In that case, just go buy another one, by the time you buy 6 or 7 of them you've paid the price of one name brand item haha. Any hand tools I buy, ratchets, sockets, screwdrivers, etc, are always craftsman. I can't risk stripping or rounding off an engine mount bolt or something of the like, so I will drop money on tools like that.

Anyway...on to the pics.

terminal plate hole, as you can see I wasted no time getting the hardware on there.










Caulking for the woofer gasket. I got the small syringe from the local drug store, for feeding a baby medicine. The tip on the end I got from a pack that the vet gave me when I had to hand feed my leopard gecko when he was sick. They fit nicely on the end and work well to spread the caulking.

Long necked version of course. I even forgot to include the iced glass from the freezer at this point.

The funny thing is, that beer is EXTREMELY carbonated (it's from River Horse, Lambertville NJ, I forget the exact name of this one)... I've had their brews before... no other ones were like this. And when I say EXTREMELY carbonated I mean, if you shake it around a little too much when opening it or when setting it down from taking a drink it will explode all over you. This 6 pack has soaked 3 people out of 6.

Just heading out to lunch now from work, I'll grab some clamps for later tonight.

myn, I saw that on your thread. I backed one out, but apparently I was cross threaded from the start. It took a tremendous amount of force to back out that one tnut though. I actually had to break out the half inch socket. I have some JB Weld laying around... I may coat the back side of them before installing that panel.

I have to work tonight at the rock climbing gym, so I won't get much done. When I get home before I go though I want to get panel 1 in place clamped and holes pre-drilled and screwed together.

This contraption won't fit up my stairs fully assembled. So I'm going to screw it all together panel wise to check fitment and trim where necessary, then disassemble and start over upstairs with the pl premium.

Ok I got home from the gym tonight, and poured myself a proper beverage....Since we're doing a DIY subwoofer, I thought it only fair to have a DIY beverage as well. Cracked open one of my homebrew beers I made at the beginning of December, Brad's Extra Special Bitter. Quite good if I do say so myself, and boy do they pack a punch. Based on the final gravity I'd say around 6% or so.

Anyway on to the other DIY. Panels 1, 2 and 3 went on with no issues. Screwed them in place and marked for later. Panel 5 looks ok, but I think its a qtr inch too long. I screwed P4 to the end of P2 instead of P3, and it sits almost flush with P3. But the diagram shows it butted up against 3, and securing to the inside of P2. So I guess I need to shorten P3 by a qtr inch, and possibly shorten P4 a little as well to fit. I know to stick to the plans, but can I get away with leaving P3 a little long and securing P4 to the outsides of P2/3? If I must be punished for my terrible cutting/measuring mistakes from before then so be it.

I broke a HF clamp tonight. It barely took anything, so my guess is that it was broken before I got it. I'll return it tomorrow. Also lost the bulb in my craftsman light so I'll have to get another of those too...bummer. Waiting on some answers to continue, cause it looks like 5, 6, and 7 will fit with no issues. Only minor warping, once the panels are screwed in it should straighten out fine.

Always begin with a nice frosty mug and a good DIY beverage for your DIY project.


P1 P2 and P3 on securely, no issues at all.


But what do we have here? P3 is a little long...


My cutting inaccuracies exposed!


Broken clamp...doh!



P5 seems to fit well.

Also I have another question.... I'm going to buy one of the Dayton SA240 240W Subwoofer Amplifiers......but do I want the one with the 6db boost at 30Hz or not???

http://www.parts-express.com/pe/show...number=300-804

OR

http://www.parts-express.com/pe/show...number=300-805

I was going to order this tonight but I guess it'll have to be tomorrow morning...