West Coast, so a bit of warmth from the North Atlantic Current - a toasty 11°C this time of year!
My niece has been doing fresh water lake swimming for the last 18 months and swears by it, even done it with ice on the lake. No thanks!!
Wow, 11° is almost warm! The German baltic coast has 5° at the moment. I guess I wouldn’t last for a minute in there.
I looked at the picture of @Graeme_Finlayson in the ice, and turned the heating on.
Well the weather’s been a bit drier the past week and a bit, so a good time to bust out the grinders, get busy with the TIG welder again and crack on with the plinths.
First one finally completed:
Congratulations Graeme, those look fantastic.
I’m sure I am not the only one that has been eagerly anticipating viewing the finished result.
Amazing. I feel I need to go back and read through everything again. Such an impressive build. Congratulations.
Did you change the plinth design or are those the welded cut outs from earlier. Looks like a block.
Thanks!
The design hasn’t changed.
The same 3mm thick top and bottom plates with 3mm thick strip around the sides. All TIG welded up, void space filled with steel blasting shot and welds ground smooth before satinising with a 46 grit polishing wheel
17 kg for each plinth. Brings the gross for each speaker to 71 kg. Each one is heavier than me!
Wow Graeme this is amazing work and great to see it coming to an end. With so much weight they will help keep the house stable.They look absolutely stunning.
How has Mrs Mad Scientist taken to them now, have they grown on her?
Love the attention to all the details, with the wiring color coding obviously marked according to wavelength.
Enjoy
When I first wheeled them in, she said we needed a bigger house and immediately started looking at potential properties in the area. She ultimately decided we’re staying though, so I guess they have grown on her!
Definitely a keeper then
The speakers - or Mrs. Mad Scientist?
I realised I kinda skipped ahead with the process of making the plinths.
Here’s a few of the second one:
Welded up, ready for grinding
Welds ground flush
Quick buzz with a stainless wire wheel for cleanup before acetone wipedown to prep for the last weld pass.
Hopefully, if it’s not chucking it down tomorrow, I’ll post up some further progress photos. This past year has been a real learning curve. I’ve learned so many things about wood working, carbon fibre, epoxy resins etc. and a ton of stuff about abrasives and polishing, especially in relation to epoxy and stainless steel.
Already some future projects are being formulated…
What a stunning high quality finish, well done. I have really enjoyed the process photos as you progressed and the lessons learned along the way. As the saying goes ‘A man who never made a mistake never made anything’ or something like that.
Now onto that dual 18” active sub woofer project then…
@Graeme_Finlayson, I have enjoyed immensely watching you build your speakers. You obviously have mad skills and knowledge. Thanks for sharing your year-long project with us.
That said, there is only one thing I don’t quite understand. That is this…
@Jim_F , it’s long been known, here in England, that there are many strange things and practices that originate from the wild and rugged land to the north of our border
Laying down the last weld pass on the corner prior to the final grind and polish:
Second plinth will be finished this week.
Confounded by the weather yet again. Managed a little grinding yesterday in-between downpours.
Eventually got the grinding of the “final” weld pass finished this evening, only to find a couple of imperfections to reweld:
Chewing through a lot of argon, but still ~110 bar (~5000 litres) left in the bottle: