Tempest Project - Update (pics) (1 Viewer)

[Kerry Hackney]

I have the cabinet finished now except for the polyurethane top coats. I should have it working by mid-week. Here are a few pictures of the finishing steps.
First is Debbie applying the stain to the front.
http://hometown.aol.com/ipoweret/images/staining.jpg
She is much better at this kind of thing than I. You will notice the base is not the dowels that are in the plans. I wanted something with a bigger scale to give some weight to the bottom of the cabinet visually.
http://hometown.aol.com/ipoweret/images/basestain.jpg
Finally, here's yours truely standing behind the finished box. For scale I'm 6'/ 220 so you can get some idea of how large this is.
http://hometown.aol.com/ipoweret/images/subbuilder.jpg
I also had the idea that if I had added faux doors to the front this would have looked a lot like one of those Chinese campaign chests that are very chic. Debbie agreed that it would have looked nice. Oh well, maybe the next one...
BTW, I am very sorry for the really crappy AOL servers. They are a joke but thats all I have right now.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Kerry is not as frightening looking in person as he looks in that last photo.

 

[Brian J Dupuis]

Kerry is not as frightening looking in person as he looks in that last photo.

Ah, but do you feel compelled to call him "Sir"?

 

[charles_w]

Is Anybody else having trouble accessing these pics?

 

[Brian Steeves]

Is Anybody else having trouble accessing these pics?

Just keep hitting refresh and they will eventually load.

 

[Kerry Hackney]

For those who may have tried and could not get the pics to load, AOL seems to have solved some of their problems.

Everything seems to load pretty well today. Tonight is the final assembly. I'll mount the drivers, ports and install the stuffing. Tomorrow I'll post some initial impressions of how it sounds. I will do some measurements over the weekend to see what kind of in-room results I get.

I'm sorry for those who may have been frustrated by my pages refusing to load.

KH

 

[Jack Gilvey]

I finally got to see the pics. Beautiful work, Kerry.

 

[Ryan Schnacke]

Kerry

Very nice work. I love seeing pics of DIY stuff like this. It really helps me decide what I should do. Other Tempest-sub builders might want to know the alignment specifics.

 

[Kerry Hackney]

Thanks Ryan,
I am using the "Adire Alignment" straight off their web site. 214L tuned to 15.4 with two 3" ports. There is more info on my site. Link Removed
I had an earlier thread that explained it a little better.

 

[Dennis_H]

Well Kerry, your sub is the last straw... I just can't stand it anymore, so I'm finally going to build one in the next few months. Originally, I was going to use 2 Tempests in an IB configuration by filling in a large pit in front of my fireplace. The filling in the pit fell through, so I was going to do the coffee table route, but finally scared myself away from that because there would be no corner loading and the near field response would probably not be as good as I wanted. The sonosub route was calling my name till I looked at the pictures of your sub and decided it was time.

I ordered the Merle band clamps, MLCS 15th anniversary router bit set, 1/4" spiral upcut bit today to get started. I had already purchased the PE 250Watt plate amp with remote a while back. So now I just need to buy the Tempest. I think you just used the standard Adire alignment off their website, right? I love the look of your sub and I think I'm going to try to emulate it pretty close. Won't dado the panels though since I don't have a saw for that. I'll start sneaking in the MDF, but I think my wife is going to start noticing when I the garage (and any of my free time) starts getting taken over.

So thanks, now I've got the sub fever again and there aren't going to be any antibiotics this time...

 

[Kerry Hackney]

Dennis,
I'm flattered that you like my sub. Once you start making MDF dust it's gonna be hard to hide from your mate. But, she'll come around I hope. As for my sub, the only thing I would do differently is use 1/4 oak instead of birch plywood for the laminate. Birch is kind of funny about taking stain and can be blotchy. Oak usually isn't. I used the birch because I had a Home Depot gift card and my local HD had crappy looking oak. It had big dark mineral stains all through it. Other than that, I would build one of these exactly the same. Don't worry at all about the dados. You can easily screw/glue this together and then laminate it with the plywood to hide the screws. I would probably coat the screw with wood glue so it never moves for good measure.
If you need any help or second opinions just ask.
Your wife is gonna notice for sure when you fire it up. She can run but she can't hide....