Zebrawood stinks!

[DearSX]

That looks really nice, good work!

Spray from Fabreeze in inside the box before your put the speakers in it and "lock on that new smell"

[neildavis]

Your joinery work is beautiful and took a lot of hard work and skill. I know the HOW-TO, but I couldn't pull it off like you did. My compliments and appreciation of your skills to you.

Thanks, but it's really fairly easy to do those joints with the Porter Cable dovetail jig. I had done some boxes in cherry using dovetails, and that's a little trickier because with dovetails you can adjust both the tightness and overlap. With the box joints, you can only adjust the overlap, and it's really hard to mess up. This was the first set of box joints I've ever done. Seriously, it's really easy if you have the jig. ...and a good sander to remove the overlap.

For boxes this size you don't need the small template and bits, so the basic kit is fine. Woodcraft has the basic model (4210) on sale for $106. If you want to make drawers or smaller boxes you would need the deluxe kit, which is about $70 more. The deluxe kit also comes with 4 good quality template guide bushings. The bushings came in handy for routing the baffle for the pincushion frames. I had a number of SEAS drivers with those goofy shaped frames, and I was able to make a template from a piece of 3/16" plastic by routing around the frame and then using the right bushing and bit with the template. Turned out to be easier than I expected.

[Whitneyville1]

Your joinery work is beautiful and took a lot of hard work and skill. I know the HOW-TO, but I couldn't pull it off like you did. My compliments and appreciation of your skills to you.

[tomzarbo]

Beautiful cabinets Neil!

You don't see a lot of those type of joints, I guess it would look bad if it wasn't done so nicely... Those look about perfect.

And I agree on the odor... I just received a few sheets of birds-eye Zebrawood veneer and my wife and I noticed that it smelled really funky...

TomZ

[neildavis]

It may stink, but it's going to look so sweet.

And I take it you've had time to resume work on the active crossover front?

Thanks all for the nice comments.

The active crossover work is back on track after a pause to rethink the design. I ran into two problems: the CPU that controls the DSP was running out of memory, and the board was too complicated for most people to build (including myself). So I switched to the teensy 3.2 CPU, which is faster and has 4 times the memory, and I'm re-laying out the board to use lots of modules that are readily available online. The CPU is one module. Another is the switching regulator that takes the amp voltage down to 5V. You can buy switching regulator modules for about $1 each, which is about 10 times cheaper than the parts I was using for my own design. And I got rid of the DAC circuitry and I'll be using one of those PCM5102 modules that you can buy for $6. And I got replaced the extra USB control interface with a connector that allows using a low-cost FTDI board or a Bluetooth HC-06 module. So in addition to controlling the DSP from USB, you will now be able to control it from a cell phone.

Using these low cost modules in place of my own circuitry drives down the cost and dramatically reduces assembly time. The board will have pads where you can solder in these modules, and the rest of the board isn't all that complicated--it will just take several hours rather than days to assemble it.

I've been working on the cell phone app, and that is looking OK, and there is still a lot of code for the controller. But yes, it's moving along.

[scottvalentin]

Those look amazing Neil and nice work with the box joints!

[jclin4]

Brilliant joinery! I don't recall seeing that in a DIY build yet...

[sarnella]

Looks like they are turning out great - good job!

[Kornbread]

It may stink, but it's going to look so sweet.

And I take it you've had time to resume work on the active crossover front?

[neildavis]

Both my wife and I agree that the best way to describe the odor from cutting and routing zebrawood is "petting zoo". Not a pleasant smell. And it's not a great wood to work with. I had a 2" thick slab that I got about 8 years ago when my son wanted to build a bass guitar body. When I sliced it down to two 1" think pieces, each side bowed in the opposite direction--about 1" in 4 feet. That's a lot of spring tension, and it's difficult to get the corners to meet without some serious clamping. And it doesn't route well, because the router bit creates fine strings that you need to go back and cut with a knife. Overall, a difficult wood to work with.

But zebrawood is very pretty and the wood is hard--harder than white oak or rock maple.

These will be part of a 2.1 system with WiFi and active crossovers.