Thoughts on this combo - BZ Tweeter and Dayton Epique

[PWR RYD]

Pretty pieces of maple. One of my favorite species. What's your planned finish for them?

[jml]

I have done tung oil before and really liked the results, but I am going to do some tests with Rubio Monocoat this time, and if I like the result will go with that. I’ve seen it used with a lot of success on tabletops, not sure how hard it would be to apply vertically on speakers.

Cheers!

Joe

[jml]

Greetings!

I hope to make more rapid progress on this project over the Thanksgiving weekend. Recently I rebuilt the inner MDF cabinets due to some warped MDF in the originals. When demoing the old cabinets, I was pretty shocked at how little pressure it took to break the butt joints. In the 2nd generation, I used dominos, which made glue up much easier and hopefully added a good bit of strength.

I acquired some more curly maple and milled it down, so that the front and rear baffles will be the same thickness, and have started the cutouts for the inner baffle. I wish I had been able to get a bit longer curly maple (or that I was better at planing), because I got a bit of router snipe that I’m going to have to deal with.

My wife got me a 3-1/4 horse Triton router for Father’s Day this year, and I first used it on this project. I wasn’t sure what to expect, as I had only ever cut holes with my 1-3/4 DeWalt, but the difference was very noticeable. The DeWalt always whined as it cut and felt like I was forcing it a bit. The Triton barely flinched when cutting full thickness passes in 1/2 and 3/4 MDF.

Cheers!

Joe

[PWR RYD]

Looks great!

[jml]

Spent a few hours in the shop this weekend. After 4 hours of routing, I was starting to question my decision to use so many drivers haha! The process was compounded by needing to cut holes for the inner and outer baffles. I also did a scoring cut with a down-spiral bit on the hardwood, and then switched to an up-spiral bit for the full depth and through cuts. My intent was to minimize potential tear out on the maple, and it did give a super-clean edge.

I still need to cut the through hole for the tweeter, which you can see in the picture I cut an insert stencil to make the rectangular hole for the tweeter. I’ll insert it into the tweeter cut out, then rough cut it with a jig saw, then rout it clean with a flush trim bit.

Cheers!

Joe

[silverD]

Exceptional work! I'll be keeping an eye on this project.

[jml]

A few more update photos. I finished all of the driver cutouts. The BZ Tweeter design is not a DIY friendly shape. The corners of the rear box get pretty close to the outside edge of the faceplate, and they have a very tight radius, so I wasn’t able to do all the work with just a flush trim bit.

Unfortunately, while chiseling out one of the corners, I cracked the baffle, as shown in the last photo. This was pretty much my worst nightmare. The more hours I had into each baffle, the more nervous I was getting that something would go wrong… and it did. Fortunately, these will be laminated onto the MDF inner baffle, so I’m not worried about the structural strength of the crack, and once stained dark, it won’t be very noticeable. I don’t have it in me to start again.

you can see the oversized front and rear inner baffles in the photo below. I find this is the easiest way to get perfect edges… I’ll simply flush trim them when dry, and then do the same when I fit the outer baffles.

I applied 3/4” sonic barrier on all interior surfaces before gluing the baffles, because it would have been a nightmare to try and install it afterward.

Cheers!

Joe

[jml]

Just a quick update. I got the inner MDF cabinets done and prepped for the first sheet of veneer. I’ve never veneered before, so we’ll see how this goes. I am using a 2 ply curly maple veneer, and tightbond cold press veneer glue. The glue spread really nicely with a glue roller. As you can see, I basically just kept adding clamps until I ran out of clamps.

cheers!

joe

[jml]

Veneering is done. I was very happy with the performance of the veneer glue. I trimmed the excess with a 1/4” down spiral flush trim bit and it left a really clean edge. I decided to stain the veneer before gluing on the baffles, just in case I get some glue leakage. I was worried that if I had to sand some glue spots I might sand through the top layer of veneer accidentally. I am a bit worried that the veneer and the hardwood are going to take the stain differently and I’m going to have to do some work to color match. We’ll see…

Cheers!

Joe

[jml]

Final update for the weekend - all the baffles on, flush trimmed, and round over complete. The photo from the top shows the layers of MDF, veneer, and hardwood. I am planning to attempt an aluminum top and bottom plate for these, and I’ll probably get the finish done and start taking some measurements while I’m working on that.

[DaveFred]

How far down are you going to take those BZ tweeters?

[Wolf]

Manufacturer says 1kHz is doable for the B model, and Rick used them down to 1.8kHz in the Purezza. I have a set of B as well. We'll see what I end up doing with them.
Wolf

[jml]

I suspect I’ll end up crossing somewhere around 2-2.5khz, but I’ll have to wait until I get measurements and start modeling.

Cheers!

Joe

[jml]

On the bright side, the color match between the hardwood and the veneer turned out ok! It’s not perfect, and in hindsight I should have considered cutting my own veneers to have a perfect match.

Unfortunately, I ended up with some pretty bad planer marks. I could not feel these at all prior to staining. At first I thought it was just grain pattern, but clearly I’ll need to sand down again and refinish the baffles. The picture below is the worst of the 4, but I plan to redo them all. I used an oil based stain, so I’ll probably wait several days for it to dry before sanding.

Cheers!

Joe

[buggers]

I call that giving my speakers character