HNB 5.0 Chassis Painting

Well, over a month ago, I said that I would attend to painting and designing the chassis. I changed gears and designed/built the cabinet first. I only needed to add a few more holes before I put a coat or two of primer on.

I counted 46 holes that I drilled in this chassis! Every control, switch, wire, or bolt that mounts to and through this thing has it's own hole. This amp is about as simple as it gets, so you can see how complicated the whole process gets. After primer, I applied white paint. I am using non-fancy spray paint from the hardware store, or maybe even Wal-Mart. The white layer is actually a flat finish, not satin or glossy. I think I will put another coat of flat white on just to make sure I have good coverage.

The next stage will be to mount the white chassis onto a huge plank of oak to create a drawing surface. I will use some of my old-school cartography skills (and tools) to layout the faceplate design on the chassis. This will use technical drawing pens and regular old-fashioned India ink. Then, I will put a clear coat of lacquer to lock in that design and make it shiny. It should work out well, but - I am getting nervous again. Well, it worked out okay last time.

--gh

Name 25 Cities of the USA

Heh, when I first saw the 25 Cities of the USA, I misread the directions. I didn't push the start button, I just went and mentally named all of the cities. So, I guess I cheated a little - but I knew where each city was.

Got it in less than a minute, luckily.

--gh

Stuff that we learn

Okay, I have experienced theThe Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon personally, and am waiting to have it occur regarding my knowledge of that occurrence. (I guess Baader-Meinhof is usually recursive in nature.) Basically, when you learn a word, phrase, or piece of knowledge for the first time - you are destined to have it come up again within a day or so. That is the essence of Baader-Meinhof.

So, you will probably experience the word "Baader-Meinhoff" in the next week. If this is happening more often - perhaps the Internet is really to blame. I mean, I read about this from a link from Digg. Within a day or so, it will be copy-catted on Fark. Eventually, SomethingCool (does that even exist?) will link it - and eventually someone else will bring it up.

Not that it is bad - I think it is an interesting phenomenon - and will try to remember it. File that next to Godwin's Law...

--gh

N.B. I found out how hard it was to type an apostrophe in HTML. Basically, you have to type "'" to get it to look right. Of course, can you imagine what I had to type to make the code in the last sentence work? This N.B. is to state that apostrophes should be avoided in web addresses...

HNB 4.4 Assemble, Glue, Sand, Stain...

With all of the cabinetry cut and assembled, it is now time to apply the glue. You may see a little blue painting tape hanging off the edge - I put that on to collect the excess glue, because removing it after it dries can be difficult in inside corners. I use a bunch of clamps while the Elmer's glue (carpentry glue) is drying. Elmer's works just fine, no need for weird and fancy polyurethane foamy glues (very messy). I have to trust that the joints (dovetail, dado, and mortise&tenon) will hold with the glue only.

With the dovetail joint making router template that I have, a little bit of sanding is needed to knock down the edge. This is fine, because the end result looks very tight. If there is a gap, I will fill it with some wood filler - but very little of this is needed. The Keller dovetail system is a good solution. Also, I will round over the edges fully, making it look pretty amazing, actually.

I cannot remember the name of the stain, but my son picked it out. My first amp was light in color, and he wanted to see something darker. I think it is called "early american" from MinWax, possibly. I only applied one coat of stain, because the poplar was sucking it up pretty well. Oh, I also use some wood conditioner (MinWax) as well, because it makes it more even reception of this stain. This is important for the end of the grain which is seen in the dovetails. A little light-dark-light is okay, but I don't want too much contrast.

Okay, see how the speaker grille cloth really tightens up the look! This is the first time I have dealt with this material. It is acoustic grille cloth, and is meant to protect the speaker, hide the front, and permit sound to pass through. Looks dang tight is what I say.

I put a board across the bottom of the back to keep a foot from kicking out the back of the speaker. You may be tempted to say I am breaking my rule about not using fasteners, because there are two obvious screws holding this in. However, this needs to be removable, in case the speaker needs replacing or something. Yes, it probably makes the cabinet a little stronger, but it would have been fine without it. Technically, if you remove it to take out the speaker, then I am confident that the amp won't fall apart.

The speakers are mounted from the back. The baffle has t-nuts on the front, and the screws go right through and mount this. This means that you don't have to take the grille off the front to mess with the speaker. Of course, we hope that this never needs to be messed with anyhow - but I want this to be as close to a professional job as possible.

Here you can see how the dovetail joint looks rounded over. This is with two coats of clear polyurethane finish, so it is nice and shiny. I must have pushed that chassis in and out of the cabinet one hundred times during this build, because it was going to be a nice and tight fit. Here I can see that it will all pay off. I put rubber feet on the bottom, mounted the speaker, and put a handle on the top. I am very tempted to put metal corner protectors on this. I have some, but they will need modification. Of course, it looks awesome without it. But, the corners are the most vulnerable with this cabinet, and it is meant to be portable. Because I rounded the edges, there are some parts of the dovetail that are a 1/4" which might just pop right off (?) if it is struck to hard against a door, or car, or whatever.

So, now I need to get back to the electronics of this thing. There are a few more holes to drill in the chassis, and then it needs to be painted (and designed!). Then, there is the soldering, then testing.

--gh

HNB 4.3 Chassis shelf

With the dovetails routed out, now I need to build a shelf to hold the amp chassis. Here you can see my thumb holding the chassis inside the empty shell that will become the combo amp. My desire is to build a cabinet that is structurally solid without fasteners. Building a shelf right in will make it very solid.

In furniture-land, I think this would be called a mortise and tenon joint. I do not think I have an interest in building furniture - but I can really get into the allure that it holds. Of course, I would be the type of hobbyist that uses a router to do such things, since my real hero is Norm Abrams (and not Roy Underhill). Now you can see how integrating dovetails, mortise/tenon, and dado joints makes a strong structure for such a small little box.

I like this picture, it really shows how rough my carpentry skills are. Note that the front of the cabinet does not really line up on the corners. The funny thing is that some 60-grit sandpaper will clean that right up. I have been told by more hardcore enthusiasts that sandpaper should never really touch fine furniture. Well, luckily a guitar amp could not be considered "fine." Anyhow, here you can see how the shelf will hold the chassis.

Okay, maybe building some furniture would be fun. Here is my combo amp serving as an end table with a drawer! I will actually need to cut a bit of the shelf out, though, because some components of the amp (important stuff like transformers and tubes!) will hang down. That is what the picture below shows.

Luckily, I remembered to cut a dado joint near the front of the shelf to receive the speaker baffle. It would have been harder because the cut on the dado into such a delicate piece later. Here you can see the backside of the cabinet starting to look like my "plans." The speaker baffle is sitting within a groove (dado) cut into three of the cabinet sides, and the bottom of the shelf. The speaker baffle is just 1/2" pine plywood. This would be a no-no if I were building a larger (louder) amp because regular pine plywood has thick veneers, and possible voids within it. The real amp-makers try to use birch plywood that cabinet makers use. If I build anything louder than 5-6 watts, then I will keep that in mind.

--gh

Random thoughts

So, how many blog posts begin with the title "random thoughts?" Probably more than I would like to imagine.

So, I was thinking. I have never worn a pair of cargo pants. Except for the back pockets of denim blue jeans, I own no pants that have pockets sewn on to the outside. Tomorrow I will be at an event where college students are asked to dress up. No doubt, there will be about 5-7 cargo pants in the group of 30+ guys. Shirt, tie, big weird shoes, and cargo pants. I don't think I will be getting a pair of cargo pants any time soon.

I am teaching guitar to a woman who has to drive 20 miles to this rinky-dink town. Luckily, she will do her grocery shopping after the lesson, so it groups her errands. I am surprised that there are so few guitar teachers, and players for that matter, in this part of the Midwest. I swear, in Virginia you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a guy offering guitar lessons.

I have to go to Jefferson City this week. I don't mind the drive, but I get tired of hotel life - I would have been a bad salesman. This trip is only once every 2 months, and for one night! I remember staying in a hotel room with my father about 4-5 years ago. He tried to watch porn. Yup, you read that right. I had to tell him that sitting in a hotel room watching porn was not something that two straight guys do. Daddy.

--gh

Last Weekend, Homeland Security, Moulage, Kansas City...

Last Saturday started out strange. I assisted one of my colleages in coordinating student involvement in a Homeland Security training. Basically, student actors were asked to pretend to protest something, and this went all kinds of wrong. Part of the action play was people getting shot, which you can see being prepared here. They called it moulage, or moulaging the actors - which I am sure is just some made up word. My colleague told me that the trainees did not do so well, a few SWAT folk got "shot," even though only a few Kansas City cops and some protestors were the only ones that should have gotten "shot."

I left before things got hinky. I do not care for physical performance, it makes me feel awkward. This includes actors, clowns, circuses, rodeos. They make me feel really wrong. Add photographers to that, and street performers, and you have the septa-fecta, or whatever that would be. Surely I am freaked out by more than this. So, I left and prepared to go to an air show.

Here you can see the B2 stealth plane thing. These things may be deployed all over the world, but they take off and land in Whiteman AFB in central Missouri. This is about 70 miles from Kansas City, so it is not a big trek. Oh, except that they told us it was over the Bronx an hour or two earlier (Yankee Stadium flyover). ...and, you can see my finger also!

Taking pictures with a cheap camera phone is kind of fun. You have to hold down the "shutter" and be still for about a second. Somewhere in 1/2 to 3/4 second it will snap. This means for action shots you have to "take the picture" about a half second early. So, it is more fun and kind of like sharpshooting.

--gh

HNB 4.2 Ripped Potential

I just love how the cabinet starts out as a board with so much potential. Remember that this is some 1x12 popular. I like to put dovetails on the whole width, and then rip it to the proper dimension later. This is because I don't think I could rip it and then make dovetails that would line up very well. I mark a front and back on the cabinet as a huge 12-inch deep box first. Then I disassemble it for ripping.

I really have to get a new table saw some day. Fairly has been talking up better table saws and has got me thinking. I did not do such a good job of ripping these pieces. Part of it is the table's fault, and of course some of it is mine. Well, I guess I would like it to be all my fault, with no tooling errors working against me. No worries, though, I can sand most of what does not line up anyway.

Here is a benefit of routing the dovetails and then ripping. You end up with cool looking left-overs! I have some of these from my first amp, in pine. I think I would like to route a slot near the bottom inside and put some 1/4" plywood in to make a tray. Not sure what I would put in it, but it might be good for something. If you can think of something better to do with it, please comment.

Now it is starting to look more like a combo amp! The chassis is really held in there by my hand, you can barely make out my thumb at the top of the photo. Luckily, I have enough wiggle room for some paint on the chassis, and finish on the cabinet. It is going to be so tight that it will look like I planned it that way. Yeah, that's right, I think I planned a tolerance of 1/100th inch!

--gh

HNB 4.1 dovetails!

I'm a cheater, here is my router and dovetail joint jig (KELLER). Someone once suggested getting a dovetail saw just to overcut some of the cuts to make it look home-made. Well, that would be a little excessive. I am using my table saw as a work table. I think I know why some people say that they would like a real workshop when they build a house. However, I can't complain, I really can't.

Here are the top and sides, routed for the dovetail joints. This only takes about 10-15 minutes, so it is really convenient. The joints are tight enough that I will not use any screws, or corner bracing. It frightens me a little when I put the edges together. I am always afraid I will break one of the pins.

I was a little concerned about this. I cut the width of the cabinet so that I only had about 1/20th of an inch wiggle room for the chassis. Kind of a dopey thing to do, but with careful measurement and routing, this thing will fit extremely well. Add a little paint on both sides of the chassis, and some finish on the cabinet, and it will be a tight fit. The kind of tight that looks good, I hope.

The cabinet has not been ripped yet, so you are not looking at the real edge. Still, this gives you a feeling for what the final product might look like. Remember that this project will mount the chassis upside down in the cabinet. The tubes and stuff will hang down. Come to think of it, I need to make sure that the transformers and tubes do not get in the way of the speaker. This is why some combo amps have the speaker off center. Not that it would be too noticeable, with the grille cloth and all.

Here's a little preview of what things will look like some day. If it seems like the pins are a little long, that is because they will be sanded down. Once this thing is done, I will glue it up and then sand everything to make it nice and tidy. I like working with wood. I really, really, really like it.

The next step is to fit a shelf that the chassis will sit on. This is also how I will fasten the chassis, rather than screws poking up through the top. After that, I will route a channel to contain the speaker baffle. This hunk of 1/2" plywood that will hold the speaker is another reason why I can hold the thing together with glue only. I'll show you later.

--gh

Screw Mexican Sovereignty

News flash, Dog the Bounty Hunter (Duane Chapman) was arrested today. I remember when that serial rapist was tracked down in Mexico (heir of Max Factor enterprise), but I had not remembered that it was Dog the Bounty Hunter who tracked down and brought this guy in. Stupid Mexican government, bounty hunting is illegal there.

I can't believe the United States would even consider extradition this guy. He's cool! The Mexican government does not care about U.S. laws, so I think the U.S. Marshals should just let this one go.

They should claim they lost him, and then snicker every time he airs his'elf on his show each week.

--gh