[black300zx]

Bondo work:



And the tag on the MDF which I got a good laugh from. Does this mean I can ditch the dust mask and not get cancer :-p

[alexlindeman]

Originally Posted by black300zx

does this mean i can ditch the dust mask and not get cancer :-p

yup!

[joeybutts]

Come on Don......These DONe?

[black300zx]

Joey - you must be in my head or something. I actually sat down to post an update, and saw that you decided to bug me for one. I mean come on now - would I ever harass you about dragging a project out?

Anyway, back in February I guess it was, I made a home depot run for my third sheet of MDF and cut it down into 7 strips for easy handling. The garage was a mess and it was frigid out for a while, so that's really all that got done for the rest of the winter.

About 2 months ago, I decide to to out to start cutting out the next batch of blanks. Hmm - where's the jigsaw? Oh yea, my dad's got it up the shop because he's rebuilding the swim platform and engine hatches for the boat. Fast forward a couple weeks and it's now back home.

One Friday I got out of work early and got motivated to work on them. I go out to the garage, start tripping over stuff, and decide that a year or so of clutter should take precedence over finishing these. Cleaning the trash out of the garage turned into shovelling off the whole workbench, which turned into rearranging the whole back half of the garage, making wall brackets for a bunch of the yellow hanging parts bins, and sorting out a half dozen coffee cans of loose nuts, bolts, washers and screws over the next week or two. It was definitely worth the time, as the garage is now more usable than it has been for the past couple years.

With the garage usable now I go to set up the router table, and realize the cyclone separator pulled apart (see DIY cyclone separator thread) and the shop vac is dead. A week or so later, the separator is fixed and I have a nice new shop vac that really kicks some ass.

Enough with the rambling. Yesterday I routed the last two layers flush. Today I cut out 12 more blanks. I seem to have lost the plans which showed exactly how the layers were arranged (ie - when the port layers stop) so tomorrow or Sunday I'll have to sit down and re-run the calcs.



Oh yea - this little guy decided to give me a hand:

[black300zx]

After digging through this thread and the thread at icix, I was able to find myself stating "13 layers down, 33 to go" for a total of 36 layers. Using that I back calculated how many layers of each type I needed. This time I did it in excel and saved it for safe keeping!

For the record (incase my computer decides to crap the bed and dropbox simultaneously falls off the face of the earth):
-46 layers total per tower
-3 base layers
-37 intermediate "port" layers with a braced "port layer" every 10th layer
-5 "non-port"
-1 layer to close everything off

I have 29 down, layer 30 will be the last braced layer (they're a pita). I'll hopefully get that layer on today or tomorrow, then it's time to hit the home stretch.

[joeybutts]

WOOT! Wish I could hear these when done!

[Deja Vu]

Looks sick man nice work

[black300zx]

Knocked out two more "port" blanks, along with 2 "brace" blanks.

Ammo for 7 more layers sitting on top of the table saw; cabinets sitting on the floor on the right:


And another critter joined me yesterday while I was cleaning up the garage some:

[joeybutts]

Love the critters. Seriously. When they just show up to hang out. Feels good for some reason.

Also always love the random ass shots of the stang.

[black300zx]

Layer 30 is done:

[joeybutts]

So awesome.

[black300zx]

Stuffing them with polyfil isn't going to be fun. Glad I have long arms.

Plans for today include routing layer 30 flush, adding the next two layers, then working on cleaning the garage some more.

[black300zx]

37 layers done. Pretty soon they won't be able to tuck under the mustang anymore.


Smoothly guiding a 2'+ tall enclosure with that small of a base across the router table is pretty tricky. As a result, the cuts have been getting pretty funky on the last few layers. These are going to need a good deal of bondo work after assembly.

[joeybutts]

It's still alive!!

And still loving that stang in the background!

[black300zx]

Yup - still alive. Posting pictures of every single layer would get kind of boring.

I think I need to grab some earplugs before finishing this sucker up though. My ears are still ringing a bit this morning from all the noise echoing up through the enclosure.

[joeybutts]

Pictures never get boring.

Maybe you should have done the build in halves and then put the two halves together? That way routing would have been easier? Just a thought....

Any more layers to go?

[black300zx]

The issue with doing it in halves is that the two halves would have to be exactly the same where the met.

Two things have bit me in the ass so far:
1 - I got a little overconfident and halfway through I routed 6 or 8 layers without letting the glue dry; just cleaning the bit off. The thin sections vibrated/flexed where they weren't bradded in, and it got ugly.
2 - The base to height ratio made the whole enclosure a bit tippy when routing it

If I was doing a set of small bookshelves, this would have worked great. For a 46 layer tower, not so much.

If I were to go back to last year and start over, this is what I'd have done:

Draw up the templates in AutoCAD, making every dimension 1/16" undersized. Get those templates CNC cut from a durable material (Plexi, Baltic Birch, etc) by either a local shop or eD. Using these templates, a 3/8" OD bushing, and a 1/4" spiral upcut bit, I'd cut the layers out exactly from the get-go. The bushing would make up for the 1/16" under sizing of the templates.

Along with the templates for the layers, I'd also have a template cnc'd that I would tack to my drill press table for drilling the dowel locating holes.

I'd like to try this method someday. I imagine the cost of getting the templates CNCd wouldn't be much more that what I've spend in jigsaw blades.

[Wolvatron]

Well, if you ever do anything cut, you know who to contact.

[black300zx]

Originally Posted by Wolvatron

Well, if you ever do anything cut, you know who to contact.

I sure do

[alexlindeman]

Any Updates? I sent someone a link of this when the inquired about layering an enclosure.

I thought this was done at one time?