Rack Build

[Clover]

Somehow, I ended up with more gear than fits on my old hand me down rack and have deiced to build myself a new rack. I figured I may as well share the build here as it goes along. I’m not master woodworker, and just do some as a hobby but that might make this more approachable for others.

Pretty basic design that has 4 shelfs. I’m doing 2" walnut for the frame of each shelf and will use two layers of 3/4" MDF doubled up and veneered on both sides for each shelf. I have some nice walnut burl veneer to use, however, I thought 4 burl shelves would be too much so I think I will just do the top and bottom shelves with the burl and will use maple for the middle shelfs. It may be weird, but I’m weird too and have always like walnut and maple together.

The frame is going to have two mitered rectangles with the bottom being 11" for the amplifiers but the top being about 7". I like miters, but was a bit worried about strength with the weight of audio gear, so I added two mortise and tenons in each miter. I’m also going to add a dovetailed spline in maple at each corner. I’m too dumb to even know if anyone does mortise and tenons and splines on the same miter, but I"m just trying to make it as strong as possible so I don’t worry later. I’ll have matching walnut blocks that will go between the two rectangles which I don’t plan to glue in so I could change the hight easily later by swapping blocks if needed. I think I may add them with a big sliding dovetail that slides in from the front or back, but may just do a couple mortise and tenons for a cleaner look.

Here is a shot of the burl I will use. I’m going to use different sections for each shelf so they don’t look like mirrors of each. Once I add finish, the color in this will really come out a ton.

I loved the grain in this board and felt a bit bad cutting it into heavy 2" strips. Took another couple boards too, but this one was particularly nice.

Every time I fill my dust collector with dust I take a photo as a trophy and there is no chance my dog is missing a chance to go out to the trash. Best shop dog in the world. Figured this is just as interesting a shot as one of me flatting the boards. I hate flatting boards, it’s simply something that needs to be done.

Crosscuts mainly went perfectly other than I don’t have a good way to block off lengths of 51 inches to make a repeatable stop. I had to do those long cuts by eye as best I could, which is not where I excel. So… I cheated and those pieces are off camera.

Got the all miters’ mortises cut for the rectangles and did the first dry fitting. With needing to cut 4 mortises for each of the 16 miters, I made myself a little jig which helped. I’ll be honest and say there are a couple that are not dead perfect when I dry fit everything. This came from me not having a way to block off the long length cuts to make them exactly the same lenght like the shorter pieces. I’m trying to decide if I want to try to buy an extended fence so I can pull that off. It would cost me a couple hundred bucks and require me to recut the long lengths a bit shorter and recut their mortises. My wife thinks it looks fine, but… I’m my own hardest critic and I’d like to get it perfect. I guess after clamping and sanding it would look good and maybe even perfect, but I’m not sure I want to risk it as I don’t want any gaps after glue up.

Might be a week or two before the next update. I want to order some new veneer glue and am tempted to get a vacuum bag setup for veneering and doing bent laminations in the future. It’s a bit funny, I’ll tell myself I’m saving money building something over buying something, then I will talk myself into fancy tools and materials and probably not save a ton of money in the end. At least with audio gear, I can point to something with a giant price tag and still tell myself I saved some money.

[tomhail]

I absolutely love this project and the fact that you are sharing it with us! I’ve never been able to justify buying a rack due to lack of desired attributes (not reconfigurable/customizable, too generic or too exotic) and, of course, the hard-to-justify expense. I’ll be following your progress! I might post a few pictures and description my DIY rack once you’ve completed your build.

One thing to consider, especially if you have a turntable, is to create a cavity in the turntable shelf and fill it with mass/ballast. I went with lead buckshot and mineral oil. I can tap hard on the shelf and the vibration does not transfer to the TT - stomping on the floor is not perceptible either unless one jumps and lands with both feet.

[vieuxradio]

I always like rack ‘n’ roll

[EkW]

That is going to be nice rack. Mine does its job. Got some butcher blocks and threaded rod for equipment. LP rack is stair treads and threaded rod. Here is my cat testing it out.

[club_pizzazz]

@Clover

It’s a bit funny, I’ll tell myself I’m saving money building something over buying something, then I will talk myself into fancy tools and materials and probably not save a ton of money in the end.

Isn’t that the whole point of woodworking? I have an entire garage full of tools and oak boards that I bought like that.

[vieuxradio]

if you’re not in and live near quebec city there’s a guy in St-Croix whose woodworking Is state of the art

He learned to be violin builder but then learn Japanese skill and now is building state of the art woodworking and build a terrific custom HiFi rack for a system it’s so beautiful! Amazing

I am drawing a sketch for him to get a quote

[Clover]

So… I have a bad tendency to love the planning of projects more than the finishing of projects. I do finish stuff eventually, the problem is just that I fill my space with projects until I eventually run out of space and tell myself no new projects until if finish X, Y and Z. However, the planning of projects takes my mind away from stressful things I need to do and into something I want to do. I’ve had some stuff I did not want to think about, so I started another project and the rack has sat on the back burner a bit.

I want to put the old bookshelf speakers I made myself in the past on some stands in my new listing space to see how they compare to the Maggie’s but I don’t have speaker stands. I’d like a set of the solid steal tripod stands but decided to make something out of wood to go better with the furniture in the room. I found the below design I like and decided to try and make my own set.

Someone sells those stands on Etsy, and it feels a bit weird to completely copy someone else’s design for me so I decided to use teak and maple instead of the walnut and maple. The rack I’m making above is with walnut and maple, so I probably should have simply copied the Etsy design but I think the teak will also look nice and I had access to a nice teak board that was the right size. I have also decided to make the maple thicker at a bit under 1 1/2" that go into the teak. I’m not some expert designer, but that will give the golden ratio for the width of open space to maple and should add some strength and stability.

I already cut to size, jointed, and planed the teak and maple. Unfortunately, when you cut teak it loses a lot of the color but as you expose it to sunlight it will darken and even out. I don’t actually work with teak much, so I wanted to lay it out in the sun and let it darken to see what I would get. I apologize for the poor photos, but the below is after a few hours of sunlight.

At this point, I want to give the maple a bit of time after I cut it up to make sure it stays straight so I have the wood on stretchers in my house adjusting to the humidity. As I have thought about how I am going to pull off this design, I know I need these legs to be perfectly strait and can’t have them trying to twist. I think I am also going to need to make myself a clamping jig to keep things straight but I have not figured out exactly how I want to do that yet. All my ideas so far seem like an PITA and would take a decent amount of time and expense to make for one set of speaker stands but I know that these need to be strait and flat to work.

[Elk]

Wonderful project.

[Clover]

Bit of a two steps forward one step back update on the speaker stands. I had sanded the teak bases for the speakers stands and put them back out in the sun to darken. Weather said no rain for four days, but it rained on them. I got them out of the rain within probably two minutes but one side of the freshly exposed and flat food got wet and sure enough all four pieces did warp some over the next couple days. I gave it most of a week to dry out and plained it down flat again today.

While that was taking place, I asked some friends for advice on the pulling off the design of the speakers stands and got a universal, “Don’t” as advice. There are a few reasons, but I have come around to agree with them. I already have the teak and four maple posts, so I simply cut up some more maple to make four more posts. They won’t be as eye catching, but I’m now thinking of experimenting with 3D printing some soft rubber pads from TPU that will go between each leg and the base with a lose and unglued mortise and tennon to keep things aligned. I’ll be honest and say I don’t like the basic four post design as much but it matches other furniture I have well and I’m telling myself that the ability to play with 3D printing my own isolation at each post will hopefully give me a better overall result. I’ll aiming to cut the mortise and tenons and sand this week. Probably have some pictures to share soon.

[Clover]

I also made some slow progress on the rack. I have glued up the four mitered frames and was reminded why people don’t like making long miters. I ended up cutting the long pieces again and then hitting them with a shooting plane to get the lengths exact. Took more work than I was expecting and I really should have sprung for a fence long enough to setup a stop block for those long pieces on my cross cut station. I had to keep at it over and over until I got it right but eventually was happy with the dry fit on all four.

Glue up was frustrating. Adding clamping force and moisture from the glue did its evil work. While I know everything was exact before, I have variation after glue up. It’s minimal, but frustrating after spending so much time early getting everything perfect before glue up. I did it to myself again with the clamps. I was not happy with how the first glue up went and changed my approach for the second, and then changed it again. In retrospect, that was dumb. The difference in clamping techniques seemed to have caused different results and pulled things slightly off. I’m sure nobody will ever be able to tell once it is all complete, but at the moment it is pissing me off. While some will argue I should not have said anything, I personally appreciate when other builders share their struggles so I and others don’t feel like everything goes perfect. It does not often go perfect for me and pretending otherwise is not healthy.

Below is a photo of the four frames stacked on top of each other. The two shorter ones on top so it looks nice.

I also spent a while staring at the walnut burl veneer that will go on the top and bottom shelf. The cheap conservationist in me wants to cut to preserve as much of this sheet for future projects as I can, but as I look at the really high level pieces, the difference between a nice project and a special specific wood selection. To me, the piece flows best sideways and I think the center will be vital as the center won’t have any equipment on it and will be exposed. The top and bottom shelf will be very similar, which I was trying to avoid at first. However, after looking at my burl, I think the below rectangle I have portioned off and the portion to it’s right are the nicest areas for my piece. The wife gave her approval tonight, so I’ll cut it up this week and start gluing together the MDF for the shelves.

Not audio related, but also tossed together some walnut and maple for a couple cutting boards. While I like the basic design, I plan to stack them, cut a design and swap pieces from on to the other. Unfortunately, the bandsaw seems to be broken and that will need to wait for a new motor. I shoved the two boards together for the photo below but they are split in the middle between the thick maple and thick walnut pieces.

I also played with the new laser at my maker space for a bit. It sure is nice and they probably should not leave me alone with the thing. I really need to learn to use this for than making signs to annoy my wife and other dumb stuff, but I’m still too stupid so… here are some audio related trails. The signs for the wife I better keep private.

[Clover]

Been making more progress on the rack build. I now have all the MDF sheets for the shelves glued together. Nothing exciting there, just took time as I could only glue one shelf at a time in my space.

I also finally cut up the veneer. I had been putting it off as I played with ideas of how best to use the burl I have. I’ve never bought veneer so expensive before but I found this incredible sheet that I think will make this piece special. I’ve resisted all my urges to conserve the as much of this beautiful wood as possible and I cut out the best parts for the shelves. It killed me to do this, which is why I sat on it so long. However, there is only one way to build the nicest piece I can and that is to use the best parts. Quality costs but it matters. The burl will be used for the top and bottom shelves and the maple will be the middle two shelves.

I want to make the miters as strong as possible since audio gear is heavy and I don’t want to worry at any point in the future. I already have two mortise and tenons in each joint but am adding a dovetail spline as well. I’ll be honest and admit it is partially for looks too as I think dovetail splines look really nice and it will allow me to add in a few more maple details.

Cutting the splines went perfectly and at the moment, I am really happy with how they came out. No blowout on a single cut and taking my time paid off here.

Cutting the maple dovetails slots fought me a bit. You try to make small increments to get the fit perfect, but I was not happy with my first set and thought it was a bit loose so I had to start over. I ended up with what seems like a perfect fit while dry fitting. It’s possible I’m going to have wished I gave myself a bit more room for glue, but right now it seems to be a remarkably good fit.

Next, I will be glueing up the splines and trimming the shelves to their final exact size. Once their size is final and consistent, I’ll glue on the veneer. I was not able to talk myself into buying the vacuum bag setup I want and I can’t use the heat bonding method I’ve used to veneer in the past with these special woods, so I’m stuck with the crazy harmful chemicals. Lucky for me, my state has not banned them yet. Unlucky for me, I’ll need to setup a workbench in my garage again and deal with nasty chemicals for multiple days as I veneer the 8 shelve sides. Even with my garage door open, and the door to my house shut, this is going to bring me grief from my wife. That women’s got super senses. She sees like an eagle and has the sense of smell of a dog. That’s not good for me since I have been told I both look like a dog and smell of one too.

[Clover]

Got some more work done on the rack over the past week. The main thing was glueing in the dove tails splines and then cutting off the extra. With the joints being as tight as they were, I was comfortable using blue painters tape as the “clamps.” The painters tape can be stretched a little which will apply pressure, which worked out well here. To avoid getting dust on another project, I decided to cut off the excess with handsaws in my garage. I figured it would be good for me and would help build that skill, but it wore me out. After making the first set of cuts with my big hand saw, I came back through and recut each with a flush cut saw. I’ll admit there is something really satisfying about making a clean flush cut with a hand saw but it sure is a lot more work. I’ve now moved on to sanding but really should cut my mortises before I sand much farther.

After the glue up of the MDF panels, I wanted to recut the edges to get everything crisp and square again. I did get that taken care of this week as well and now should be ready to glue veneer onto the bottom of each panel.

With two sheets of 3/4" MDF, plus two layers of veneer and the glue layers, I’m going to be around 1 3/4" thick in my estimation. I built the frame at 2" thick to give myself just a bit of room. Now the plan is to get the bottom of the shelf perfectly flush with the frames, That will leave around a 1/4" recess to each shelf from the walnut frame. Once I have the panels veneered and the mortises cut in everything, I’ll dry fit and measure the exact recess I have and plan to use a chamfer bit to slope the inside edge of the frame down to the recessed shelf. I’ll likely do a matching chamfer on the front edge of the frame as well. Hopefully that will keep it looking like custom furniture instead of something mass produced, even though it has a simple overall design.

I changed up the plan on the veneer a bit too. I’m going to use the plain maple veneer for the undersides of the shelves and ordered some curly maple for the two middle shelves. Originally I had planned to do a plain maple with the thought of the burl being the focal pieces and not wanting to have crazy grain for every shelf. However, I really like curly or flame maple and just kind of associate it with hifi/rock and roll because it is used in so many electric gutters and have decided to give it a try and see how it looks in the rack. If I end up thinking it is too much, I’ll flip the panel so the plain maple is on top and will just eat the extra cost.

I also have another project I had stuffed in the corner after I screwed myself with a poor job during the glue up. It actually is pretty similar in style to the current rack build but I did not have a full rectangle to clamp up the miter joints evenly and some joints slid around on me with the way I tried to glue everything up. I had been thinking I would use a router to carve out the corners of the miters and inlay a new contrasting piece of wood but had put it off as I considered trying to do a fancy custom inlay. This week I bailed on that idea and simply went to town with a sander to remove anything that slid too far from flush. While I’m still mad at myself for the failed glue up, the fix really was not that bad and I think I still came out okay for what it is, which is a simple bench for my wife and I to take our shoes on and off at. After the sanding I applied a hard wax oil to finish the walnut and used a special Osmo oil that does not yellow the wood for the maple. Now the problem is my wife wants me to make something to replace the piece next to it, which she now thinks looks cheap,

[Clover]

Sorry, been a while since my last update and this ended up being a long update without a ton to show.

I remember when I started this I thought it was going to be a simple build. While the design is basic, I should have thought through all the steps in detail and realized how long this would take. I don’t have a ton to show for this update but it was a lot of watching glue dry on my end. However, I’m now done with the veneering and everything ended up going well. Below are all four shelfs with the nice side up. The curly maple veneer I got ended up really really nice and I was thrilled when it showed up and I got a look at it. I’m pretty sure I’ll use those sides up facing up even though I had originally planned for the maple to be a more plain wood as a break from the burl.

I really like purple stained grain popped figured maple on guitars but am worried this is just too much for the piece. I probably won’t go for a color dye but I’m thinking I may still pop the grain while keeping the natural maple color. Anyone want to talk me into a color though? I’ve never done it.

I ended up doing more research on veneering because the burl is difficult to work with and expensive. Turns out that figured maple is also has issues in different ways and my old method was going to be a bad fit for both the burl and the maple. The pros mainly use vacuum presses, but I’m at 6000 ft of elevation and typical vacuum presses won’t get enough pressure this high up for maple, so I gave up on that path. My main method in the past was a heat lock glue, but you don’t want to use that with maple or burl either. I ended up using Better Bond Titan DX after some research and it seemed to work well. I think I have a good bond fully covering both sides off all four shelves.

I was only able to do two sides a night, so it took four nights of work to get through the veneering. The pros online recommended doing two coats of the glue and I simply followed their advice letting the first coat set up before I laid down the second. Fortunately we have been getting some rain in my area, but the humidity slowed the dry time of the glue and I had some late nights as I watched glue slowly setup. That is just the old woodworker way of saying I rocked out to my music late into the night four nights in a row. I still need to trim the excess veneer off each panel, but I plan to use a router with a downward spiraling flush trim bit. That will make a ton of dust, so I’m going setup a bench in my driveway and do it out there. I need to clean my old bit from the last time I used it first.

I also cut all walnut frame pieces that will go along the sides running from the front to the back of each shelf. When I cut off the edges with glue spill out from each shelf, I shorted the shelves a bit and needed to cut the walnut frame pieces to match. Those cuts all went well and dry fit looks good at the moment.

Next steps is going to be cutting all the mortises for the mortise and tenons. I planned that out the other night and came up with 264 mortises remaining to cut. I’ve done 64 so far, so this piece is going to have 328 total mortises and 164 tenons. Certainly a new record for me and probably over the top but I don’t want to worry about it holding anything in the future. This bad boy is going to be built to last. I already have an expensive tool to help with cutting mortises and this will help me feel better about buying it.

While I have been working on the rack, I also cut bevels into the speaker stands bases. I now plan to inset the posts of the speaker stands some from the bevels and think this will help it not look quite as basic. I also used a laser to burn in some Grateful Dead art into to top of each speaker stand. The speakers will cover up the art, but I think it will still be a fun detail and I have been enjoying playing with the laser to see what I can pull off. This little arp piece comes out well on my tests so I decided to use it. I’ll guess I have not taken any pictures but I’ll be doing the mortises for the speaker stands soon and will have pictures of them together relatively soon.

I have also been 3D printing isolation footers for the speaker stands. I have been using TPU, which is a flexible plastic like what some phone cases are made from and I have been experimenting with the wall thickness and percentage of infill. So far, I have printed four sets of increasing softness but still think I might need to go a bit softer. I’ll test what I have now before I print off any. more. Below if the first set of 8. They might be suitable for the rack when it is done but are way too stiff for speaker stands.

I had to put a hole in the wall to fix the valves on my shower and decided to make a magazine rack to cover the “access hole” instead of patching the dry wall. First, I resewed some scrap maple I had kept for a couple book matched pieces. I then cut angles into the piece until it felt right, (14 degrees) and I cut two groves into each panel for some thin walnut scrap I had to fill the gaps. That all went smoothly. However, I had been toying around with the idea of making a maker mark/logo for my custom pieces. I had made a quick logo on the laser, but foolishly forgot the scale of the screen was not what the laser was set to and I ended up with the logo being about twice the size I wanted. This feels like the universe telling me to stop playing the fool and I think now might have made the magazine rack of shame. Sanding down to eliminate my laser mistake would compromise the groves, so I think I’m just going to glue it together, finish it, and let it be a lesson.

I also rebuilt our mantel. We had thrown a quick fix up over the old dated mantel for years and it was finally time to do something nicer. For a while I wanted to use some big nice pieces of walnut I had found but I wanted the joints to be clean without any end grain showing and had convinced myself I needed to cut a long miter the entire length of the mantel, which I new was going to be hard to get right. While doing the veneering, I realize the pros generally just veneer these big mantels and decided to do the same. First, I built out the mantel using 3/4 inch baltic birch plywood. I used bondo to fill the countersunk screws and gaps and then applied a couple layers of shellac which I sanded smooth.

I have also cut out the walnut veneer I’ll use, which has a 3M peal and stick adhesive already applied to it. I have never used the stuff before but I don’t need to worry about solvents from glue inside my home. I was able to cut the roll I had in a way that I think the grain will wrap around the sides really nicely. Now the trick is going to be getting it all lined up when I apply it. That is normally not too bad but my pice is attached to the wall and the side you would normally trim the excess off of if what I need to line up. We will see how well I can actually pull this off but I should be able to finish this up over the next week.

[Elk]

Good work.

The 3M peal and stick is great, even and strong. But unforgiving.

And I really like using a flush cut bit. Efficient, easy, satisfying.

[RonP]

That was fascinating! Keep them coming.

[Clover]

I made some more progress on the rack build and it continues to come along nicely. Since the last update I got to use my big fancy Festool router and my new big fancy 3/4 inch flush cutting bit to trim the excess veneer. They were both a bit of a splurge purchase for me before, so it was nice use them and have them work beautifully. Nice tools are things of beauty. I pulled the panels out into my driveway to try to avoid getting dust all over my car build and was expecting the wind to blow all the dust away overnight. What I failed to remember was there basically adhesive on one side of the dust so it all just sat on my driveway for a couple days until I admitted my defeat and went and swept it up.

One I had the panels veneer trimmed to size, I was free too start cutting all the mortise that will hold everything together. I want the panels to be flush along the bottom with the bottom of the walnut frame and have a small recess down from the frame to the panel along the top of each shelf. This turned into a really fun problem to figure out exactly how I needed to mark and cut everything so I could be consistent and get everything lined up. Yet again, I found out this was going to be way more complicated than I expected.

To get the bottom of the shelfs line up with the frame even though they were different each a different thickness, I needed to reference off the bottom of both for my mortise cuts. I originally thought I could line the shelves up with the frame and mark them both together and cut to match but learned I needed to transfer the lines to the other side of the frame and be very mindful of what side was going where when everything was flipped the right direction.

My wife had bought me this awesome saddle square for Christmas that really came in handy for transferring all these lines around to the other side of the wood. It was one of those things that the right tool makes all the difference and while this seem simple and straightforward, I had to transfer a couple hundred marks to the opposite sides of the boards and even with the right tool this took probably around four hours to think through fully and get everything marked. I had to keep in mind where everything would be when the panels were flipped over and keep everything in line and organized. Even with all the planning, I got a panel wrong and needed to put some extra cuts in the walnut to get things lined up. I probably should not have said anything about it. I filled the holes and each was completely covered up in the joint so nobody would ever know, but I think people should share their woodworking mistakes so others don’t feel a need to be perfect themselves so I will admit my error.

Once I got everything marked I had to setup various temporary jigs to allow me to be as repeatable as possible on the frame. Those cuts went smoothly and dry fit came together nicely. I seem to have forgotten to take pictures of most of the jigs but it was not anything too fancy.

First dry fit of the frame pieces.

I lost count of the mortises I cut, but I"m pretty sure I topped 250 and didn’t look back. Took some time to pull off but they did come out well after I fixed the error I mentioned above from screwing up the rotation of a panel when flipped. None of my mistakes will be visible, so who really cares, at least that is what I am trying to convince myself. However, once I got them all cut and went to do dry fits, I realized despite me trying to simplify this by making it two chunks that I will later fit together, this is still going to be a nightmare to glue up. I did figure out the order of operations, it is just going to be very difficult to pull off as quickly as I will need while the glue sets up. In fact, I think I might use epoxy instead of glue to give myself a longer setup time to work. I really don’t want this thing to fight me long enough that the glue starts to setup before I get it fully together.

The plan is to start with one panel and one side of the frame, then rotate the peice onto the frame once they are together and drop the second shelf into position like you see below.

I found it somewhat difficult to try and line up the shelf but it was doable by myself with a little luck. The shelf with the side frame pieces that will need to be attached when the shelf is put in place wights just over 50 lbs, and are too bulky for me to hold at eye level, so I end up lining it up as best I can from a weird angle and then try to lower it down onto the tendons I have sticking up from the frame. Once I have the two shelves in place, I have to get the other frame piece to fit over each of those 21 tenons sticking up and slide down into place. One of the two went together surprisingly easily, but the other took some persuasion and choice words. 21 tenons is probably the most I have tried to line up at once and I am a little impressed with myself that it will go together.

I did 3D print some dry fit dominos that you can spot a few off in the photo above. They were actually fantastic for dry fitting and move a little easier than the wood, but I have only printed off about 25 so far in the size I was using for this project. I plan to print some more as I did prefer working with the 3D printed ones than wood for dry fitting.

Below are some shots of the very first dry fit. I’m going to make a few adjustments to get everything perfect as there are a couple things that are just a little off. My wife did not spot them so nothing too bad but I think I am tweak a few things and get things just right with some effort.

The shelf in the back will be the top and I have 8.5 inch pieces that will go between the two frames. This puts the walnut burl as the very top and the bottom shelves with the two maple shelves in the middle.

Here is a bit better shot of the top. Though the finish is going to bring the color out a lot I still think it looks great even unfinished. I really think that is an exceptional chunk of burl and am happy I chose to cut out the best parts of the sheet instead of trying to minimize the amount of scrap. It cost me but it came out beautifully.

Below is a better shot of the recess down to each panel. I’m not sure it comes through well in the photo but the maple makes it a bit easier to spot. I had been thinking of doing a chamfer/bevel down to the shelf but my wife thinks I should leave it how it is and likes the consistent hard edge. I’m not sure. I was thinking I would need to do the chamfer to make the recess look intentional, but now that it is there, it already looks intentional and has a decent ratio to it. It might be easier to judge from the earlier photo with both frames on my workbench laying in their normal orientation. Any of you willing to share your opinion?

I also made a bit of progress on the speaker stands but I still have not fallen in love with them. I used the router table for a heavy chamfer of each post corner. The chamfer will be better for sound reflections, but I’m not sure I like the look. It did not really turn out how I was picturing and I’m trying to decide if I want cut even more off or accept it. If I accept it, I just need to sand everything then glue to together and add finish.

In additon, I also cut up a bunch of cedar I had to start building six sound absorption panels. They will be 30 inches wide by 41 inches high and 9 inches deep. I think I might start a separate build thread for them though.

Lastly, we got the laser fixed and I went back to working on a piece of art for my uncle. When I went to see a Grateful Dead cover band with him recently, he mentioned that “Wharf Rat” had hit home and ment more to him recently as he has become a therapist helping kids rebuild their lives. So, I pulled what I hope will be a meaningful lyric for him and added it to the piece I have been working on. I still need to clean it up, but here’s what I was able to get right off the laser. I’m going to use a really nice piece of ambrosia maple with a ton of variation for a frame. The ambrosia variation will work really well with miters to show the grain wrap that will go around the top three sides and I will leave the bottom with the broken board open and unframed. I think it will turn out great.

[Clover]

While I’m looking into different finishes to decide what I want to do for the burl and the curly maple, I started another project for the listing room. My maker spake has a CNC that I was certified to use but never really got to using. It’s a nice tool to have access to, so I’m starting my learning process by flattening a slab I’g going to turn into an end table that surrounds my subwoofer.

I found this great olive wood slab that I thought would be a really cool piece for this. Olive wood has really beautiful grain in my opinion and I don’t often see big pieces in my area. I think olive trees only produce olives for so many years and the orchards cut them down and replant new trees, so they don’t tend to get super old or huge. While the piece is beautiful, it was very warped and not even close to flat. However, that is where the CNC came in. I’m going to leave the live edge on one side but I already cut a strait edge to line up with the front of the subwoofer opening. I’ll use the laser to cut a decretive grate that will go over an acoustically transparent fabric cover.

I haven’t settled on a design for the grate yet, but my wife was asking for something organic along the lines of the below.

I ran this massive 3" surfacing bit, but it still took me around 5 hours to flatten the slab. One odd thing about working with olive wood is the smell. It’s got a unique olive oil kind of smell when you cut it, which some people like. I don’t. I wore a mask the entire time, but it turns out my body does not get along with this species of wood and it just got worse for me. After cleaning up, I continued to feel worse and ended up vomiting for a while and got a bad headache. It sounds like I may have gotten Organic Dust Toxic Syndrome or had an allergic reaction and I had to call poison control. Ending up getting a long lecture about the dangers of wood dust. The CNC really threw a ton of dust with the snowplow passes I was doing with the big bit and the bit was too big to run the dust collection surround on the bit. While I was wearing a mask, I guess it still did not cut it over prolonged exposure or my beard interfered with the seal too much. Anyways, not fun but I’ll be fine. Unfortunately, I think this will be my last project with olive after how my body reacted.

On the bright side, I think this will be a stunning piece. I’m going to miter the pieces to get that waterfall grain wrap around the subwoofer. I’ll also add inlays that will span areas of the gap and hold the crack closed. I’m undecided on doing more traditional bowties or going for something wild like the grateful dead dancing bears. I’m tempted to try to use the laser to make myself five bear templates out of acrylic that I can use with a router to make the inlays. If I’m honest with myself, that is probably more wanting to try something new and different and the bowties would probably look better.

[joe-appierto]

I hope you don’t mind my inserting myself into this. I became curious about whether your reaction to working with the olive wood might generalize to an olive oil sensitivity. So I asked the Google AI and got this response.

AI Overview
No, you do not need to abstain from consuming olive oil. Inhalation or contact allergy to olive wood dust involves wood sensitizers or tree proteins, whereas olive oil contains virtually no intact tree or fruit proteins, meaning it rarely triggers cross-reactive food allergies.

Understanding the Reaction

• Wood Dust: Reactions to wood dust (like contact dermatitis or respiratory irritation) are triggered by specific chemical compounds or particulate irritants in the wood.
• Olive Oil: Refining and pressing remove the allergenic proteins.
• Cross-Reactivity: Eating the oil does not usually provoke a response just because you reacted to the wood.

When to Be Careful

• Stop use if you ever note a direct, adverse physical sign after eating the oil.
• Watch for mouth itching, hives, or stomach pain.
• Consult an allergist for formal testing if you have persistent worries.

Again, my apologies if I’ve overstepped.