Month: December 2020

Walnut Speaker

Quarantine project: My brother and I each built a custom powered Bluetooth speaker using PDF instructions from https://kmakits.com. The instructions tell you which electronics are needed, and rough lumber dimensions. I deviated quite a bit from the instruction when making the wood enclosure to achieve the look I wanted – the end result turned out great! The speakers sound fantastic.

When deciding to make the speaker I knew I wanted to use Walnut, and that I wanted a good mix of heart and sap wood. I also knew I wanted to incorporate metal somehow, and originally intended on doing a brass knob and brass splines. The brass quickly turned into copper (I preferred the orange/rose tones with the dark walnut), and ended up only doing the knob in copper as the copper stock I ordered for the splines wasn’t thick enough for the saw blade. The box features splines from spalted maple (my brother used this wood for his speaker face). The speaker has 2 walnut feet with a slight pitch to project the box upward slightly.

For the back I painted it matte black to give it a finished stereo vibe, and added a red led for power status to go along with the power switch, power input, aux input, and aux speaker out. Decided not to include the optional batteries for this project as I didn’t intend for it to be mobile (future speaker build with leather strap? yes please)

Copper knob from https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheRightParts, this guy was great!

Construction:

  • Original piece of lumber 3/4″ Walnut
  • Cross cut sled action
    (my brother Jon)
  • Grain wrapping / box glue up
  • Gluing splines
  • first coat of Tried & True Original Wood Finish
  • Copper/Brass knob samples from Etsy
  • spline cutting jig
  • speaker cutouts before routing with chamfer bit
  • Lots of sanding
  • drill pressing front holes

Planning:

  • 3D Rendering
    (Blender for Mac)
  • 3D Rendering
  • 3D Rendering
  • build notes