KaiserSoze
Addicted to Fun and Learning
- Joined
- Jun 8, 2020
- Messages
- 699
- Likes
- 592
I think this is a much more practical plan. Drilling the three holes for affixing the speaker to the stand is something that you can add later if you want. All you really need to do now is cut, shape and polish the acrylic and attach it to the metal plate. 6 mm is probably thick enough if the acrylic is securely bonded to the metal plate such that it can't lift at the middle (which would accommodate bending down at the edges). It won't hurt to go thicker. 10 mm or 12 mm isn't going to look too thick at all. And as for cutting it, you're obviously going to need some kind of saw regardless, and some mechanized means to trim it down and polish it. If you have a hand-held router you can do most of it using a flush trim bit with bearing to ride on the metal plate, using the metal plate as a template. Or else a small table saw and a means to sand it down to final shape. If you have a table-mounted router you can do it without using a table saw. With either a table saw or a table-mounted router you probably will want to use the miter gauge that slides in the groove, not the rail, because the rail assumes that the edge you slide along the rail is already straight and parallel to what you want the finished cut to be. If you don't have many tools you can probably get by with a cheap jigsaw, but you want to be careful to cut outside the line and you will need to do a lot of sanding to bring it down to finished size. To use a jigsaw you need some means to clamp the work piece down securely to a work table or bench. This will be especially important with acrylic because it will bend, and the teeth of the blade will snag as soon as it bends. (This is another advantage of using a thicker piece of acrylic - it is easier to cut a thick piece of material with a jigsaw than a thin piece, so long as the thick piece isn't too thick relative to the blade length and the reciprocating motion.) You can do most of the sanding with a cheap random-orbit handheld sander, but to get the edge perfectly straight it is best to use a long, perfectly flat sanding block, longer than the sheet of corundum paper so that the sheet will only wrap around the sides of the block and not over the ends. The longer the block the better. Scrap pieces of MDF make excellent sanding blocks. In fact, if you have the means to cut some 3/4" MDF precisely (on a table saw) you can make a long sanding block with a second piece of MDF the same length screwed together in the shape of a 'T'. This will allow you to keep the sanding surface (the edge you are sanding) at a proper 90-degree angle to the main flat surface of the work piece, similar to some of the special cutting planes that traditional work-workers use for putting a proper edge on a board. If you have a table saw or router table with fence, the 90-degree angle between the table surface and the fence can serve the same purpose. In a pinch a good flat kitchen counter or table can suffice if you can figure out something to take the place of the rail, that will stand at 90-degrees to the table surface and stay where you put it. The reason I mention all this is that if you've never tried to plane the edge of a board so that it will come even close to being straight and at right angles to the main flat surfaces of the board, you may be surprised at just how difficult this seemingly simple task proves to be. It is most important to make a couple of practice pieces from some cheap scrap material before you start cutting on the acrylic. Even if you have to buy some material to use as scrap, e.g., a couple of cheap pine boards, this is prudent so long as what you have to pay for the scrap isn't more than what you pay for the acrylic. The first work piece you work on, whatever material it is, is guaranteed to be destined for the scrap pile. As a general rule do not even start to work on the actual work piece until you have completed a practice piece to the very end and there isn't anything about it that you don't like or that you wished you had taken more time with.
