The first thing to do was to make the stack of boards, that make up the speaker. With my previous speakers, I had sawn each board individually with a circual saw. Although this works and even produced accurate results, I'm glad that this time I could use the new table saw. And I was done in about 45 minutes, compared to the two and a half days for the other speakers (I admit: they were bigger and had more parts, but still!)

Instead of standard butt-joints, I decided to go for something a little more fancy. And it proved to work excellent: A perfect fit, and square corners, right out of the box :) It is a little more sawing work, but it saved a lot of work later on

I first planned on using the router for this job, but then thought of an other way. I removed the protective cover from the blade. Moved the fence real close to the blade (width of saw is 3 mm, 9mm needs to be removed, so the fence was 6mm from the blade). Precisely adjusted the height of the blade to 9mm and cut some testpieces. After some final adjustments, the settings were correct and I could cut the corners out of the boards. In this image you can see that the original blade is still on the machine. I didn't fit the new blade (which is more suitable for cutting mdf) because that one is very expensive and I'm still not completely good with the table saw. I didn't want to ruin it.

Next stop: The template for the baffle. Routing a circular hole is easy: Drill pilot hole, mount circle jig, set radius, route, done. So I won't bother you with that. No, what I find really difficult, is routing square holes! I already found that out with my previous speakers and now I have to make a square hole again. I already worried about this weeks before the actual construction. One day my wandered off, and I thought of a contraption that would be just perfect: Take 4 square pieces of mdf, mount them in such a way that the space between them always forms a square (or rectangle). Preferable sliding so you can easily set-up different sizes. Sure enough, the first Klang+Ton magazine that followed had such a thing featured in it! Only made out of aluminium, and costing 850 Dmark (around 425 euro).

So, I thought of a different way. I needed a square, 94mmx94mm hole. So I used the table saw to make a strip of MDF 94mm wide. Positioned them correctly on the template. (By simply placing one piece between two others. So the spacing between them was exactly 94mm, and the width of the two opposing pieces is also 94mm). Screwed two strips along these two, cut out most with the jigsaw, and finished it of with the template bit in the router. Tadaa, perfect square. What? My explanation is incomprehensible? Just look at the pictures, They explain everything.

The routing of one of the baffles. Now that the template (and thus the hard work) is done, a 5 minute job.

Driver holes routed and countersunk. T-nuts mounted. I couldn't resist fitting it together to see how well it fits. And it does fit! Whoohoo...

Since everything fits, why not start glueing the thing together? And so I did, and first I glued the small seperate enclosure for the tweeter in place. I routed small countersinks for the panels, so they are kept securely in place.

And the rest of the box (except for the back) in clamps.

The sides are rounded with a round-over bit. And the surfaces are smoothed with painters putty, to obtain an even surface for the veneer. On the next page, you can read how I applied the veneer.

In the meanwhile the speakers are fitted with the drivers, have been measured and a first attempt at designing a crossover is made. Read more about his on one of the the next pages.