Battens and Markings

I thought I did these markings correctly but that was a bit of a mistake-I didn’t take into account the stretcher frame would probably need a couple of mm more space (I don’t want it sticking out the front so this was just for caution. Remember the speaker cloth has to go round it too as well as the lining around it.)

Here are the first markings I did wrong.

The top board all marked out for today.

Here are the side boards marked and ready for today (done last night). They have marked slanted vertical battens due to the slant of the speaker. The battens are therefore slanted (achieved by sanding to a slant).

Here are my four base battens glued and screwed.

The work of the day. You can see the markings.

Here are the tools I used today to cut the battens.

Some of my hand sawed poorly cut battens. Nothing some sanding shouldn’t correct though.

So over the past few days I cut and fixed some battens to the bottom board. The magazine only suggested gluing the battens but I’ve put screws through the top of the batten, into the board to add rigidity as well as PVA glueing them.

The magazine didn’t originally require battens along the side of the base board but I added them anyway. This will strengthen the side boards massively but you will need more batten wood. Another downside is that it will increase resonance which may be a good or bad thing. My personal view is that the overall strength of the cab is slightly more crucial than the resonance (although these battens will have little affect to resonance anyway). Due to this, I will be adding side battens to the top board too-which is todays task.

One thing I’ve noted is that the baffle board will be slanted slightly-as will the stretcher frame (made from same wood as the battens). The stretcher frame is a frame that is covered in speaker cloth and placed in front of the speaker. I’m still figuring out how this will be attached to the baffle…

Because the stretcher frame is made from the same wood as the battens (softwood), you need to place the baffle the width of the wood behind the front of the speaker cab (in my situation this is 18mm-mark using the actual wood instead of the guided measurements though. I will not be making the stretcher frame quite yet though.

Today I will hopefully cut the side battens and sand them to a slant. I might even get round to fixing them and some of the top board battens.

At some point I’ll also need to paint the baffle board black. This is because the baffle board is visible through the stretcher frames speaker cloth on the front.