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And so it begins...

P

paulski

pfm Member
Well, after several years (!) of procrastination I've finally committed to building the Ergo IIIR speaker as designed by James of this parish. I've had the drive units and crossover components in boxes for ages so all I have to do is build the cabinets, how hard can it possibly be? In all seriousness it's probably taken me this long to work up the courage to tackle this build because the cabinets have some challenging aspects. Having re-read both James' and Gareth's excellent threads and also with the assistance of Gareth's documentation (for which many thanks!) I feel ready to begin. I could never dive into a build like this, I need to understand how it all goes together before I start so I can mentally plan out how I'll tackle each element, these threads have been a huge help.

I fully expect this to be a fairly protracted build characterised by bursts of activity and periods of no progress, there's so many other things to do that I'll have to take the time where I can. Yesterday I bought about a tonne of 18mm MDF for the carcass and the cladding (I plan to veneer the cladding myself) and today I started cutting... Just the sides so far with the first used as a template and the others routed to match (I finished these where the router cutter couldn't reach after taking the photo).

sides.jpg


I'll probably cut the rest of the boards to size next before working on the various routing tasks required for assembly of the basic box.
 
A Festool man! You do mean business, clearly. In which case, I expect a thoroughly professional job, no less.

My own E-IIIRs are now over ten years old and they give me musical jollies everyday. They would be thrilled to know they are about to become siblings to yet another pair.

Go well, Paul. I'll be here cheering (and supporting) from the side-lines.

James
 
Well done, getting started is the biggest hurdle I always think. I'll look forward to seeing them grow.
 
James said:
A Festool man! You do mean business, clearly. In which case, I expect a thoroughly professional job, no less.

My own E-IIIRs are now over ten years old and they give me musical jollies everyday. They would be thrilled to know they are about to become siblings to yet another pair.

Go well, Paul. I'll be here cheering (and supporting) from the side-lines.

James
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Sad to say it's the only Fessy item I have! Yet. The rest of my power tool lineup is lowly Makita and Bosch but all very functional when properly employed. I really do hope that I can do your design justice, I've got a timeline for the various stages that I'm not going to publish but I really need to get done by mid 2017. That said I won't rush if it means I run the risk of compromise.

Thank you for your support and I know I can I count on you for advice along the way. I think these will be number 6 if I'm counting correctly with Mr Tibbs' pair being the only non-R pair.
 
Hey, congrats on getting started Paul.

My new workshop is rapidly approaching usability status and your activity plus a visit from Simon (Audiosmile) recently have been stirring my ERGO senses.

Must finish mine and see if my thread still lives.
 
cutting42 said:
Hey, congrats on getting started Paul.

My new workshop is rapidly approaching usability status and your activity plus a visit from Simon (Audiosmile) recently have been stirring my ERGO senses.

Must finish mine and see if my thread still lives.
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Thanks, Gareth. You must now finish yours before I finish mine!! Post some pics of the new workshop when it's done, the old one wasn't too shabby so the new one must be amazing. My 'workshop' is just my garage, most told need to be set up before use although I'll try and get to a semi-permanent set up for the weeks ahead at least until I'm done building the car as.
 
paulski said:
My 'workshop' is just my garage, most told need to be set up before use although I'll try and get to a semi-permanent set up for the weeks ahead at least until I'm done building the car as.
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That's the worst part of using the garage as my workshop. At my previous house, where all the Ergos were built, there is wood dust EVERYWHERE even after I had swept, dusted down and vacuumed all surfaces. I think this is why I haven't been able to bring myself to make sawdust in my new (now 4-year old) home.

Yet, I have kept all my tools including a Scheppach planer/thicknesser (used once), router table, table-saw, compound mitre-saw, three routers and squillions of clamps, and a small stack of hardwood timber (mainly Sapele).

Never say never, but right now I feel very content to watch others' Ergo adventures from the side lines and wait for another compelling reason to get dusty again.
 
James said:
That's the worst part of using the garage as my workshop. At my previous house, where all the Ergos were built, there is wood dust EVERYWHERE even after I had swept, dusted down and vacuumed all surfaces. I think this is why I haven't been able to bring myself to make sawdust in my new (now 4-year old) home.

Yet, I have kept all my tools including a Scheppach planer/thicknesser (used once), router table, table-saw, compound mitre-saw, three routers and squillions of clamps, and a small stack of hardwood timber (mainly Sapele).

Never say never, but right now I feel very content to watch others' Ergo adventures from the side lines and wait for another compelling reason to get dusty again.
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You need to move to the hand tool side of woodwork, much less dust much quieter.

Pete
 
James

I have always admired your speakers and your efforts in designing and building them. Do you have a handle on how many of your speaker designs have been built and are in use?

Cheers
 
Clay B said:
James

I have always admired your speakers and your efforts in designing and building them. Do you have a handle on how many of your speaker designs have been built and are in use?

Cheers
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Appreciate your sentiments, Clay.

Half of my designs are one-offs. These are the E-I, E-II, E-V, E-VII and E-X. No plans were ever documented and it'd take someone rather determined to reverse-engineer them from pictures. I kept the E-X and Stevea has the E-V.

The other half have siblings.

E-III or E-IIIR - hacker, bemused, Mr Tibbs, cutting42 (still WIP) have a pair each.

E-IV - AshleyD has a pair, but this goes back ten years and I haven't seen him around for a while.

E-VI (a.k.a PFM Special) - chiily has a pair.

E-IX - this is the most prolific, mainly because I've published the design and made it available to anyone to build. There must be at least a dozen pairs out there.

James
 
That's a beautiful shop, Gareth! A lot of thought has clearly gone into it, and I appreciate the "Man Cave" sign. My space is still full of other people's boxes....
 
It looks like an excellent space to build stuff although I'm not sure how you cleared that with HQ. If I was to have one of those erected in the garden the assumption would be that it was a summer house or children's den!

There's been minimal actual construction in the last week or so, I've been hampered by issues with tools which has resulted in some new arrivals. I'd forgotten that I lent my Makita router to a 'friend' who buggered it so I've had to bite the bullet and get a new router. I decided to splash out and went for a Festool which will be lent to precisely no one. I've yet to use it in anger but the quality of construction is clear from just handling it. Whilst I was plundering the bank account I also invested in a Kreg router table. I've been meaning to get one of these for ages as the old table (not even sure what make it was) was falling apart and was a liability. The Kreg is a mini-project in itself taking several hours to assemble all the parts. Foolishly I didn't think to get any bolts to mount my old Triton to the table once I have those it'll be good to go.
 
James said:
E-IX - this is the most prolific, mainly because I've published the design and made it available to anyone to build. There must be at least a dozen pairs out there.

James
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At least, I've built 6 pairs, 4 or 5 from the thread I started, a test pair and a spare test pair. Hopefully I'll build many more and Tony L will continue to get a donation each time.

Stefan
 
paulski said:
It looks like an excellent space to build stuff although I'm not sure how you cleared that with HQ. If I was to have one of those erected in the garden the assumption would be that it was a summer house or children's den!
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Oh! it is excellent. Approval took 10 years more or less from the first submission of plans and replaced a playhouse as the kids are 18 and 15 now, their needs have changed but mine have not ;-)
 
So after my slightly false start I've made some progress in the last couple of days. All the 18mm MDF parts are cut and I've routed the trenches in the sides (pics later when I've recovered).

What I've discovered is that several hours of table saw and router action is bloody hard work when I'm a) not as young as I once was and b) used to sitting at a desk all day.... I'm bloody destroyed and in need of a bath and a beer or several. That said this work is infinitely more satisfying than what I do to earn a crust.

I made a template to route the sides using a 30mm guide. It worked well enough although despite my best efforts to accurately build the template the vertical trenches are misaligned by almost 1mm when comparing a left and right side. Easily resolved but annoying nonetheless. Whats a little more troubling is the the 18mm trenches are too narrow for my MDF sheets which appear to be a little more than 18mm. I'm sure that if I run some sandpaper over the edges they'll tap into place but I'll save that test for tomorrow...
 
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