Pictures of my Thor project

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in various stages..

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Brian
 

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I guess so... I made all of the external cuts longer then necessary, and they came out looking great with the belt sander.

I have a couple of questions about Thor:
a) will spikes help the sound of the speaker? I have seen no finished Thor TL speakers that used spikes.
b) will the extra .5" on each side of the front baffle change the sound of the speaker that much? I read about baffle sound frequency, but will the sound difference be noticible?
c) anyone have any tips on finishing red oak?

This is my first speaker project, and first time since early high school, since I have worked with wood.

--
Brian
 
I am surprised it's coming so fast. I t looks good too.

I noticed you will have some closed cavities inside the box, you might consider filling them with sand. As to the spikes, or any sort of legs you'll have to decide for yourself by listening tests, because it also depends on the floor the speaker is standing on.
I wouldn't worry about .5" of a difference in size.
I'm not much expert on finishing the oak, but you might use some sort of stain and maybe water based laquer. Maybe the experts at your local Home Depot could shed some advice.;)
 
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There actually will only be two small closed cavities, which are created on the bottom where the 45 degree angles used in the transmission are. I was thinking of filling them full of something, but I have not decided yet what to fill them with. The bottom part has inserts to make it easily to screw on and off, to adjust the stuffing. I have read that Thor will take quite a bit of adjusting the stuffing to get it to sound optimal. The crossover goes in the base, and I will mount the jacks to the base as well. (my friends are mounting his jacks to the back of the speaker, not the base). I have two weekends working on thor so far... basically 4 - 12hr days, and I am quite satisified with the progress so far. Basically now, I am held back a bit by the lack of clamps and waiting for glue to dry. (have one set of 6 clamps for gluing my speakers, and two friends have their own). My two friends started a week before me, so I was follow their lead, getting it done pretty quickly.

For finishing, I picked up a bucket of red oak stain and polyurethane. I am planning on getting them sanded down with 220 grit paper, cleaning off, and staining, then moving on the polyurethane, applying many coats.

They are quite heavy. The unfinished speaker (mdf covered in the red oak) weighs 70lbs without the base and speaker components installed components. I imagine that they will weigh in around 100lbs each after making a heavy base and finishing.

--
Brian
 
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fcel,

Well.. I like the idea of a transmission line speaker, and the Ariel seemed too hard for a first speaker. I looked at a few other designs. Finally, I saw an article in AudioXpress about building Thor, and they rated it quite positively, so I decided to give it a try. Also, I saw several other designs using the Seas Excel speakers, so that bolstered my support for Thor.

I have the article posted at:
http://brian.prohosting.com/nancy/thor.pdf

It was in the magazine in July.

The kit costs $960 without a cabinet from madisound.com and includes everything that you need in a nice kit: assembled crossover (will take pictures later), woofers, tweeter, Nordost internal cable, stuffing measured out in two bags for each part of the transmission line, cabinet jacks (i am not using them, as they are kind of cheap) and sealing material for the base.

Wood is up to you. I paid $14.99 at HD for a sheet of 4'x8'x.75" thick mdf, bought glue, screws and more, which was split 3 ways. As far as tools, I am using my friend's tools. Red Oak was $6 a foot, and I had to buy 18 ft for 2 fronts, 2 backs, 2 tops. The sides were cut from a 4'x8' sheet of .75" plywood with red oak on the outside, which costs $50 a sheet. Don't forget a can of stain and polyurethane.

I would put the overall cost of the project at $1300 for a pair assembled, but you could save quite a bit if you did not use red oak and stuck with plain mdf, but I wanted something that would look nice sitting in my room.

I am hoping that it sounds good. :yawn:

--
Brian
 
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Peter, I had access to a router, and routed the outside oak part, but forgot to route the inside of the speaker opening, and I will spend some time sanding smooth and rounding with 60grit paper. It is just mdf, so it should sand easily away.

If you look at the second picture, you will see that the outside edges were rounded, and the speaker mounting place is set in with a router.

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Brian
 
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Brian,

You are surely the speed king. It just a week ago you found the Thor article in the Audio Express.:) Your going to be done in no time.

They look like their coming along great. I'm sure they will sound pretty good as well. You'll be able to tell us how the Aleph sounds vs the Leach.

You might want to practice your staining techniques on some of your discarded cuttings. Finish sanding the test piece as you would the the speaker. Staining is a bit of an art. I'm assuming you have some instructions.

Good Job,
Rodd Yamas***a
 
I was struck by your comment of using belt sander to make front flush with the sides. Here are some of my favourite bits. The first one is perfect for above task, second is good if you have to trim the inside of the driver opening, third for making round edges, forth for cutting round holes for drivers (I drill the center hole in the piece, measure the radius, insert the drill in the table and rotate the piece, cutting out the circle), next one is not that stiff so I use it for thin materials. last one is good for trimming inside of the cutout. Router is the most usefull tool for woodworking (especially if it's mounted on a table).
 

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Rodd,

There were two Thor articles in AudioXpress, the one that I have posted at:
http://brian.prohosting.com/nancy/thor.pdf
is from the July issue of AudioXpress, the latest issue just goes over the construction, while the July issue goes over only the design by D'Appolito (sp?).

Once I finish them, I will try them with both amps, and see how they compare. As for staining, my two friends building Thor with me are a step ahead of me, and will start staining first, so I will be able to see how it goes with them and practice on scraps before actually staining my pair of speakers.

Peter,

I am not really experienced with the routers, I have used a table top router for rounding the sides, and a normal router with a template for making the indentation for the woofers and tweeter, but that is all. I purposely made the sides 1/16" too long, so that I would have extra space to make up for any inaccuracies (none yet), so taking off 1/16" off each side with a belt sander isn't too bad. I am also kind of worried about using a router, because the to red oak layer of the plywood isn't too thick. When I get a plunge router of my own, I will experiment on some scraps myself with bits, but for now, I am just using the tools that my friends have laying around. Thanks for the advice. I also want to buy a router jig for cutting the driver holes, instead of using a jigsaw.

Jason,

I bought all my drivers from Madisound:
http://www.madisound.com/thor.html

As for canada, http://www.solen.ca has the kit, and I think the parts available seperately.

http://www.zalytron.com/ has just the drivers. $136.50 USD for one woofer. W18E-001 is the model name.

Definately read the pdf article on my site about Thor, along with the article in this month's AudioXpress, if you are interested.

As for doing the crossover yourself, and buying the drivers, look at the crossover schematic and cabinet design at:
http://www.seas.no/thor.htm

I am following the exact design for Thor posted on the seas.no website, except for that the external walls are 1.5" thick instead of 1" thick.

PDF of cabinet in inches:
http://www.seas.no/kit/THORIN.PDF
PDF of cabinet in metric:
http://www.seas.no/kit/Thor cab.pdf
PDF of crossover schematic:
http://www.seas.no/kit/FILTER_THOR_ODIN.pdf

This is my first speaker, so my main goal was to choose a stable design for a transmission line, and build it to the best of my abilities.

--
Brian
 
BrianGT said:
Jason,

As for canada, http://www.solen.ca has the kit, and I think the parts available seperately.
I was going to buy the Odin MkIII Kit(w/o boxes), but Solen just jacked the price from $1280can all the way up to $1720can!!! :redhot:
A 35% percent increase!!!

So that plan just flew out the window... They lost me as a customer.

If you want to buy just the drivers, Zalytron is the cheapest I could find...
 
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