"Our stereo is our most prized tool" - Nick Offerman I received Nicks new book for Christmas. It is jam packed with 344 pages of shop tips, jokes and overall is a great piece of well written literature by the Parks and Recreations star Nick Offerman. It's impossible not to read the book without Ron Swanson narrating it my head. The beginning of the book goes into detail on all of the shop tools he uses. He takes two full pages just to talk about table saws. At the end of the section he says the most prized of all of the tools is his stereo. This is my stereo. Believe it or not, these are the same speakers. I got them in 2005. They've always been really good to me, but they don't look very good. I had to cut them in half to get the speakers out. No turning back now. Here is a pile of speaker guts. Here's a neat little trick for glueing up mitered boxes. After all the pieces are cut at 45 degrees tape the corners together and put glue in the corners. Fold up the box and tape the last corner. If it needs more pressure, go around once with tape to close it up. Clamping mitered boxes is almost impossible. Next I cut a groove all the way around it on the table saw and inlayed some maple to add a stripe. Just like your old Pontiac in high school, these stripes give it 10 extra horsepower and make them go much faster. The only drill bit I had that was the right size was for this old brace. Time for arm day. Next I started on the controller box. A piece of 8/4 walnut was cut in half and the inside was carved out to make room. After it was glued back together its hard to see the seam. This walnut is pretty special. I cut the tree down about 18 months ago. My dad sawed it and is has been drying for over a year in my barn. I used about 4 feet of it for the box sides and then book matched pieces for the top. The stripes on the big box are solid maple because I needed a little more width. Using the tape method again. Even on this big box the corners came out perfectly. Glueing it all together. The book matched top turned out great. Little holes in the knots were filled with epoxy to keep the box sealed tight. This might be the scariest part. Cutting giant holes into a box I have several hours in. Over at the drill press I knocked out a couple knobs to replace the plastic ones. Putting it all back together. If you don't know how to solder, it is a great skill to learn. The biggest thing to remember is to heat the object, not the solder. After 3 coats of polyurethane finish I made some quick frames for the speaker fabric. The fabric was a bit tough to work with and didn't stretch over the corners as well as I had hoped. Overall, I'm pretty happy with how these turned out. There are a few things that could be improved on, but that's life. As always, thanks for viewing!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Aaron Whalen:A blog about woodworking in Southwest Wisconsin Previous ProjectsArchives
February 2024
|