Lots of woodworking this past week.
Firstly, I had to glue up the sides of the cabinet. I expected to have to do a lot more sanding to get the edges to line up but it ended up being relatively straight-forward. The corner clamps I purchased ended up being perfect to get those 90 degree corners.
Once I got to the last side I had a bit of a shift, I ended up having to force the fit a bit and clamp under strain. I think it’ll be ok. Picture 3 in the next set shows the misfit. Maybe this would have been better if I glued all 4 sides at once?
While that was gluing I moved on to some of the side panels. I whipped out the router to make the speaker baffle hole. Luckily this is very forgiving, the panel is spray painted black and covered in cloth so the hole doesn’t have to be aesthetically pleasing.
After I routed that I glued the frames around the baffle. I had to glue the last side on later because I didn’t have enough clamps.
I also made the cutout for the rear controls on the back top panel. I used a handsaw, skill saw, and router to make this cut!
Once the cabinet body had been glued, I started going at the angle cut. I thought this would be a nice angled skill saw cut, in and out 20 minute adventure - I was very wrong.
Here’s the first angle I drew.
The line across the top is correct because it is measured from the back of the cabinet. The angle was totally off when I lined it up with my metal chassis however. After going back and forth, recalculating, redrawing, I found my mistake.
The entire front of the cabinet is angled off the vertical from the bottom at about 3 degrees. I saw this in the design and naively thought I could ignore it, but at the top of that 3 degree triangle there’s an opposite side of 19mm! That ends up being a big difference in where the angle gets drawn at the top.
Here’s the final lines I ended up drawing for my cuts. Notice as well the angle at the bottom doesn’t start at the bottom of the cabinet, it starts at the top of the bottom piece’s thickness (18mm up)
I ended that day without cutting because I couldn’t line up my skill saw properly and I didn’t want to make a mistake at this crucial cut.
After sleeping on it, I ended up buying jigsaw blades but they didn’t fit in my jigsaw, so I returned to the skill saw. With some patience and some thoughtly placed squares and clamps, I ended up making all three cuts. The 3 degree angle on the two sides and the final angled cut across the top.
Very happy with how this turned out!
Next week I plan on taking the router to round out all corners, mounting the interior beams, then spray painting the inside black. Tune in to see how far I get on that