My mother in law makes rather incredible art quilts that she spends years working on and I had thought I would make her a aromatic cedar case for her current project but my wife vetoed the idea after I bought the cedar. So… I guess I’ll make some nice acoustic panels.
I’ve already milled up some the raw boards to get everything flat and a consistent thickness. I have also cut everything to size. I probably should have taken some pictures of the process but it not like anyone missed anything exciting there.
The panels will be 41" tall by 30.5 inches wide and 9 just under 9 inches thick. The cedar I have is not great quality to be honest but I kind of like a wild rustic look for this so I’m leaning into it. I’m not going to cut out or fill knots as this it actually better off not being air tight and its way easier. Earlier I toyed with the idea of doing lots of wild colored epoxy to fill all the holes but it’s just way too much time. While this is going to be a lot nicer than many DIY acoustic panels, I can’t send 100 hours on these. Still, I have decided to use through dovetails to connect everything. I felt like after stepping up to real aerobatic cedar, I should make these feel nicer than basic panels and use a nice wood joint instead of screws. Probably a giant waste of time, but the end product will simply feel nicer to me. I plan to put some time into this during the upcoming weekend and hope to get into a nice rhythm.
When it came to the performance of these traps, I have opted to go with three layers of Rockwool Safe ‘n’ Sound insolation. They come in 15.25 inch wide by 48 inch tall 3 inch thick panels, requiring 6 sheets per panels I am building. Each bundle has 12 sheets, so three bundles was exactly what I needed. Cost of about $250 total. I could have done it for as little as ~$100 if I had used unbacked R30 pink fiberglass insulation, however, it would not have performed quite as well and I hate working with that stuff. I got into a bunch as a kid before I knew better and I have not forgiven it still.
Google tells me three layers of ROCKWOOL with an 1.5 inch air gap will give me noticeable improvement down to 50 hz and marginal improvement below 50 hz which feels pretty good for my six panels.
I went to Lowes all full of confidence I could get the insulation home in my Mustang. My confidence was questioned when I stopped my cart next to my car and a guy loading up his truck shouted, Ain’t no way!" in my direction. I’ll be honest and it did not look good as I struggled to get one in the trunk, but your old boy sure is not making two trips. I was always going to make this work somehow.
The final combo is to put one into the truck with the back seats down and shove it back sideways once you get it in. You can load the second back in the back seats in front of the back pack if you fold it upright. Last roll ride shotgun
Now my wife needs to pick out a fabric we both like so I can order that. Hopefully I can get through the dovetails while we wait for that to ship. Maybe finish these up in the next two weeks if everything goes okay.
