Julian's Speaker Build Diary....

I would do that mate.

It's getting there eh?

 

I used to go round the insides with wood glue (Evo Stick Resin W as it used to be called) in my speaker building days. I built four pairs, all using 3/4" chipboard and teak veneer (real veneer, not the iron on stuff, my Dad worked for a timber merchant).

 

ok, sounds like a pretty unanimous yup to sealing the box with something. i'll add the transmission line dividers and the deflectors and then seal the box. that way fitting should be easier.
cheers


julian

 

I agree with the use of silicon to seal the joins .
I,m just wondering whilst looking at your pictures.
Are you going to be able to reach through the bass driver hole to seal the last side ?
I,m just wondering , if you can,t, whether you can put some sort of gasket onto the inside of the box( maybe that silicon on a roll ,used for glazing work )so that when you glue the final panel on there is a seal to meet it.
How do speaker builders usually seal the last side?

 

ps , you definately won,t reach once the transmission line is in .

 

kermit,
my cunning plan for the last side is to use a lot of glue on the inside edge of the sides, transmission line and deflectors. hopefully this should squeeze out inside giving me a seal that's better then nothing. that's about all i can think of if anyone has any other ideas for this i'd be grateful.
cheers


julian.

 

making it airtight.

Julian

Provided that the hjoin looks clean you should be able to tell a good seal when you see no gaps or glue coming out of the join. A further way of doing is is that once you aready to put the final side on - before you glue it and see if it lies flat with no rocking. Shine a light across the join and see if you can see any cracks from the other side. If not then it should be trouble free. Remember Ivans advice that if you use 4 panel pins to loacte the panel it prevents the last panel 'swimming' in wood glue. Also wirth remembering that any air loss neesd to get through the foam inserts too as well as your covering, (be it pain or veneer). If you apply veneer then that will cover the joins too.

I have had my SL4s up and running for afull week now - prepare to be amazed!

 

Back to where i was....

The sides seemed to have set pretty damn solid so i've glued the internal transmission line in place. all that's left now are 5 braces that go between the line and the box front / back and that will be pretty much that for the woodwork for speaker 1. except for the other side panel of course.
before that goes on i've got to line the tl with the foam and do some drilling to locate the fixings for the drivers and crossover.

here are the obligatory pics for progress today....



and



i've now got to try to find some wood that i can use for the braces.....
cheers


julian

 

just a quick question,
the small peices of batton , will you be using them on the other side of the speaker or will you be pinning and glueing in place?

cheers,

rob.

 

pinning and gluing is the recommended method however i should be able to use battons on the baffle edge as i'll be able to reach through the driver cutouts and tl exit.
cheers


julian

 

Julian,

Nice job!

I assume the small circular cut-out in the rear panel is for the binding posts/

How are you going to connect cable to the terminals for the mid/tweeter that are the other side of the TL partition?

Steve (former owner of TDL Monitor speaker system for 15 years!!)

 

yup the crossover board with the binding posts is screwed on over the hole with some draught excluder as a gasket.
once i get the crossovers back i'll see what size wire that nice bloke tony has used and drill a couple of holes in the tl's then poke the wire through and bung up the holes as best i can, probably with some foam from the tl lining. this is so that i can (at some point when i have some dosh) replace the normal wire tone's going to use with some of his top hole stuff.
cheers


julian

 

Why not block the hole with some silicone sealant, if you place hole in top it should be pretty easy to remove with bass driver out, and will give a better seal.

 

Talking of TDL, Julians speakers have remarkably similar internal construction to my old TDL studio 1 speakers. Looks like Ivan may have taken a bit of inspiration from the old TDL designs!

 

speaker cable and sealing

Hi all,

Ivan recomends sealing the holes with hot melt but I guess anything would do. I use some Gale speaker cable internaly. I had rather alot of it and was thinking of using two conductor sper side, (alomstlike internal bi-wiriing), but Ivan recomended I stick to one.

Hope that helps.

 

as i'm hoping this will be my 'final' speaker (for the forseeable future - or unless i win the lottery) i'm likely to fiddle with things this means things like the crossover, drivers and internal wiring need to be easy to remove once the cabinet is sealed up. this was my original motivation behind wanting to make the x/overs offboard - the lack of a decent off the shelf box for reasonable money put paid to that for the moment but later it will be done.
cheers


julian

 

Keep up the good work , Julian , I,m really enjoying reading it.

"this was my original motivation behind wanting to make the x/overs offboard - the lack of a decent off the shelf box for reasonable money put paid to that "

Just out of interest , is there any reason why you don,t use the ready made compartment thats going to be at the bottom of the speaker ?(the base/stand.)

If you are worried about needing mass in the base, then you could lead line it first (really cheap way of adding mass ) Then stick some dynomat to the lead to protect the c/o or even build a smaller box to go inside the large lead lined one .

 

i did think about that but to be honest if i'm going to make the crossovers external i'd rather they were completely disconected physically from the speaker alltogether. the other option would be to get an active crossover between the pre and amp(s) but that would be a significant cost increase if i wanted to use amps that matched my 250 - i may toy with bi-amping with some big digital amp on the bass but that will have to be way in the future.
cheers

julian

 

Julian - how big does the case for the crossover need to be? Surely there's something cheap available? I only had trouble finding something for my amp because it had to be pretty big and I wanted it to look nice. You can hide xover boxes behind the speakers so any old naff thing from Maplin or RS should do. Also, LesW @ Avondale is worth asking if he has something suitable which I think he probably would.

Michael.

 

michael,
the standard x/o is about 280 x 160 mm and there are boxes that would be suitable (just) however as at some future point i'd like to tweak things, i wanted something a bit bigger. this is where the problems start as boxes for this size are upwards of 50 quid each. if i want something other than a bog standard beige plastic box the price is even more. to be honest i'd rather get the speakers up and running now and then find a decent box i can live with at a later date rather than rushing into things and not get what i want.
cheers

julian