Greetings...
Well the time has come for me to step it up a notch a make another lot of speakers. In the late 90’s I made these guys using Vifa drivers and Polk Audio tweeters, which actually sounded fairly impressive considering I had never made speakers before.
Last time around I did it the hard way with a drill, a jigsaw, a few half moon files, infinite patience, and more hours than I want to think about. Well this time I want to try using a router... I don’t see why my brother who is a cabinet maker should have all the fun. In fact I really don’t know why I didn’t use one last time; I guess I saw it as one of those tools that only professionals use.
Last time around I used the facilities at a company in Brisbane called Wood ’n’ You to cut all of the boards to size, this time I want to use the router to do most of the cuts and not have to rely on a massive table saw to get perfectly parallel sides (besides not sure if there is a company that lets you do it yourself in Sydney).
For this project I really want to step it up in every way. For drivers I am looking at the ScanSpeak Illuminator 15WU/4741T00 5.25" Midwoofer and the Scan-Speak Illuminator D3004/664000 Berylium Tweeter. For the centre speaker and mains I will do additional boxes with 2 Scan Speak 18WU4741T00 Illuminator 6½" Midwoofers in each. To kick off the project I want to focus on just the five Midwoofer and Tweeter boxes.
Originally when I first started designing the boxes I was looking at building tapered shapes inside a square box to reduce the acoustic issues associated with square boxes, but as the various iterations of the box progressed I eventually decided that I would be better off trying to build the box in slices.
I want to taper the inside of the box (and 3 of the outside faces leaving the bottom flat) so it gradually reduces as it makes its way back to the port opening. I looked on line and I can get an 11.25 degree router bit with a 15/16 cutting face which should be pretty close to spot on.
Now this is probably fairly ambitious for someone who has never used a router before, but I seem to have a knack of being able to make most things work. I would really appreciate any design tips that you be able to pass along to a total novice.
I have already spotted a few decent router circle cutters, and think I probably need to start my project there.