Hardwood vs. MDF for a DXT-MON build.

[antennaguru]

Well looks like everyone was right, my pine classix II speakers have begun pulling themselves apart at the seams. The baffles have begun to warp. An fairly cheap but costly in time lesson to learn. At least I learned it now before embarking on other projects. I tried repairing this epoxy but it just kept pulling. These cabinets even have L brackets inside on all joints and it wasn't enough. Don't make the same mistake I did.

Guess I'll be picking up some MDF here soon.

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Simply butting boards together with some glue and some metal L brackets on the inside is frankly a rather poor way to achieve solid, lasting wood-joinery. Add to this that Pine is a very soft wood, loaded with pitch, and prone to cupping, etc, and you can understand the failure you experienced due to weak joints. If you do not have the tools to make proper wood-working joints, and/or do not own lots of wood-working clamps, then an effective approach would have been to use lots of flathead wood screws to apply the effective clamping force for you - albeit you then have lots of screw heads to fill if that bothers you.

Next time you build some speaker cabinets you might try using a wood joinery technique that provides more joint surface area, applying lots of glue, and using many clamps for the full drying time to achieve better results.

Solid Oak kiln dried hardwood boards are easily sourced at box stores like Lowes and Home Depot, and hold up fine in this application - with proper joinery, glue, and lots of clamps.

 

[D!sco]

Brad nails work equally well and are much easier to install. They also take up much less surface space, but again- lots of work to cover up. I prefer them when I do a paint job on top. Bondo the holes, sand everything flat, throw some paint on. Nobody knows you put two dozen holes in a front baffle, and you don't even need much in the way of clamps.

 

[antennaguru]

Brad nails work equally well and are much easier to install. They also take up much less surface space, but again- lots of work to cover up. I prefer them when I do a paint job on top. Bondo the holes, sand everything flat, throw some paint on. Nobody knows you put two dozen holes in a front baffle, and you don't even need much in the way of clamps.

Yes, assuming you have a pneumatic nail gun plus a compressor. However my nail gun and compressor were much more expensive than my biscuit cutter and clamps (Post #31), which are very effective and leave nothing to fill on the exterior surfaces when you want to see wood grain.

One word of warning if you use metal fasteners is to not hit them with the round-over bit in your router as you round the baffle edges.

 

[jtgofish]

Jarrah is a really excellent timber for cabinets.Slow growing,medium to high density,short grained and sounds excellent.I built these Meniscus Kairos in curly jarrah.
Grado also uses it for cartridge bodies.