Speaker Progress 04

Long post coming. I took a lot of photos.
Something interesting to note about this speaker is that it sounds really quite good with EQ, even at this stage. Maybe I just didn't know how to equalize the other speaker, but I remembered it sounding much more harsh or tinny. The new speaker I could run full-range in a pinch. I'll have to do a side by side comparison sometime.

 Marking the side(s) for cutting. I wish jigsaws could cut straight...
I'm going to have to use a lot of elbow grease and sandpaper to get things straight.
I did just get a rasp, maybe I'll try that to save a few sheets of sandpaper.

Testing on a scrap piece of plywood first.

Tracing handle outline.

Measuring cutout

Routing cutout.

Routers make a lot of sawdust! These pictures don't even really capture how much.

That's the real reason safety glasses are a necessity. The router was blowing clouds of sawdust towards my face at times, without the glasses it would all have ended up in my eyes, and that has a tendency to stop progress for a while... Afterward I had to clean the glasses, they were really dirty.

Also, that was a blue jacket underneath all that sawdust...

Handle fits!

Nice even pilot holes.

I only put in the side screws because I'm not putting any weight on the handles yet, and I'll have to take them off again when I paint it.

For scale :)

I put most of the photos at the smallest default size to economize on space. Click for full size.
Again, I'm really looking forward to giving my system a chance to breathe outside with some decent volume. Even running the DR250 as a full range speaker I haven't gotten past 1V, and that was plenty. On my regular speakers (Polk Monitor 40's) I used to put a spare analog meter on them, and I would typically run up around the middle of the 5V range. There's a big efficiency difference!

Speaker Progress 03

The back of the speaker is on! It was something of an exercise in frustration, but I finally got everything glued and clamped up. Below, pre-bending in progress. I set it like that and left it for a day before I bent and glued it flush. It bent pretty nicely, I probably didn't need to pre-bend it, but it didn't hurt.

Next, actually gluing! (and nailing and screwing...)

In the bottom photo it's actually glued in place. I figured I'd leave the straps on until I get it trimmed up some more just for safety. 

Next: sides and tweeter module!

Life

Figured I'd combine a few posts here.

A little late, but Christmas lights!

Classic warm white is my favorite type of Christmas light. I'm not a big fan of LED Christmas lights. There are some good ones,  but they're hard to find. Flickering electric blue really just isn't the feel I want for Christmas. Sorry for the poor quality photo, little handheld camera without a tripod, so I had to boost the ISO a lot to keep it from getting blurry. It's a pretty good point-and-shoot, but shots like this need a tripod. Good OIS is a wonderful thing, and my camera does have that.

Speaker progress:

Sides are on. Now I just have to make the front tweeter module,
cut, bend, and mount the curved back pieces, and put the sides on.
Crossovers are wired, (need to be rewired though) separate high pass and low pass. I've already been wiring it up just for fun, and it's very efficient. A Walkman can drive it to a comfortable general listening level with ease.

Computer stuff:

When a GPU doesn't fit... I think I'm going to build an external GPU box for it so it's not exposed. Another option would be cutting a slot in my hard drive cage so it would fit, but I only have 5 hard drive mounts, so I don't really want to give up any.
(There's usually 4, and I don't even want to think about how many partitions...)
Or I could get a new case, but I like this case, so I don't really want to do that.
I've been running external GPU's a lot recently simply because for various reasons, mostly because they're just too big and don't fit. Note the PCI-E (2.0) extender.
Why hasn't NVIDIA released a single slot 750 Ti ? It would be perfect for a multi-purpose server.
Dual graphics cards are great. I can set one to render, and one to display so I can do other things while it's rendering, and it hardly slows down any! Or if I want maximum speed I can set them both to render.
Projectredwall.blogspot.com for recent work.

The shed's almost done. Waiting for a thaw.

Speaking of snow and cold and all that, I usually don't mind cold much, but 30 degrees and 15mph constant wind can get cold really fast when you're not dressed for it. At work two rooftop heaters went out the other day, and I had to go up and check things out, also replaced the filters while I was up there. The snow and ice had gotten into something, so once things warmed up they came back... Seems like that's how things often work.

Break has been good, but I'm looking forward to getting back to college and seeing my friends. My schedule is going to be tough though. I have classes at 08:30 every day, and I'm not a morning person... Oh well, I'll survive.

In other news... How does a battery terminal get that corroded !?

When I was cleaning it up, the clamp was so corroded it just snapped, and I had to replace the whole thing.

Drawing

I don't draw much as I'm not very good at it, but every once in a while...

Playing around with Krita and a Wacom

--Edit--

And then I went crazy and tried all the brushes just for fun :)

Speaker Progress 02

Made some progress on the speaker, more photos:

Internals together:

Back braces. Bending plywood to fit this section is going to be interesting.

Glue applied, ready for a side.

Both internal sides on :)

Looking forward to having a matched set of mains. These will be awesome set up properly outside.

Shed Construction 01

Some more photos from construction of the shed:
Lots of lumber!

Unloading...

2x4's were a lot easier to unload than the plywood/pressboard/siding.

This is about a week behind, so I have a good bit more to come soon :)