The TNH Amp - Chassis 2.1

Here is the front panel, all inked up. I have blogged on this process before (Mr. French, and HNB) - but basically I am just using the old pen-and-ink technology with Leroy lettering tools.

TNH are my son's initials, and it is an homage to the HNB, (based on his grandfather's initials). They share a middle name.

If you can't read the front inscription, it says:

"Put silk on a goat and it is still a goat."

Tyler found great meaning in that Irish proverb, or wherever it came from. Of course there is a goat next to the input jack, and there will be two plastic goats on the top. We even remembered to mark and drill the locations for their feet, so that it can be screwed in permanently. (So, the 51 holes I wrote about last time could have been just 47...)

This picture looks pretty good, but there are some issues with the finish. He really wanted something that was more of an off-white, and an ivory spray paint looked great. However, the store did not have this in a flat finish and I thought that satin would be fine to hold up to the lettering. Well, it did, perfectly. However, there must be something in the satin part of the finish that interacted with the lacquer clear-coat. We got some orange peel going on. A bad spot is on the side, and it will be hidden in the cabinet. Another bad spot is on the top, mostly under the output transformer. As things go, that's not so bad either. There's a small spot on the back, near some wording, that does look more on the obvious side.

If any of the front had been damaged, I would have scraped the paint off and started over. The lettering is only about 2 hours of work and it would have been worth it. But, luckily, the finish looks mostly okay, and what you will see when it is in the cabinet won't even be noticeable. So, we'll leave it as is and I have learned to ONLY put a flat paint under any kind of clear. (I need to sandwich the lettering in between the color and the lacquer, so I always will put a clear coat on my builds with this kind of lettering.)

However, I'm looking at it right now, from across the room, and it looks fantastic. The controls and transformers aren't hooked up to anything, the guts are empty. Next step, preparing the turret board.

--gh

P.S. The GAIN and master VOLUME go to 11.

The TNH Amp, 2.0 - Chassis

...maybe it was just the school year, and the home renovation, and spring/summer yard/garden work - but we FINALLY got back to working on the TNH amp. My goal is to finish it before August 1 - because that will be 1 year!

Today we began by drilling the chassis. I like to use a standard Hammond 2x8x16 aluminum chassis. The aluminum drills well and takes paint (and Bondo) well. We counted that this simple piece of metal will have 51 holes in it! That's a lot of drilling. Of course, every hole needs to be double checked with the parts to see that they are the right diameter. All of the holes are circular, drilled, except for the mains power entry. That has to be an odd shape to accept the IEC power connector (that's the style that you find on the back of some appliances like computers). I like IEC connectors, but it is a pain to use nibblers to nip the metal out little by little.



Here is the chassis with every hole punched in it. The two big ones on the top are for the preamp and output tube mounts. I have to use a unibit (stepper) because they are so huge (the largest one is a full inch). I've heard of some people doing this with hand-drills and spade bits and it's incredible that they have success. Nothing makes amp building nicer than the $99 drill press that we use.

Tyler wanted to move the controls around so that there is a reasonable gap between the input jack and the first knob (gain). That is where some artwork, or lettering, etc., will go. That will be shown next, after it is painted. (It's in the basement with a primer coat now - no need to take a picture of that, though.)

We used dish soap to get it cleaned up, and put some Bondo (car repair filler) in some of the corners to make the chassis look more consistent. When it is painted up, it will look nice.

I'm getting excited about lettering this amp, it should be fun.

--gh