Prages
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This is copied from a thread I did on another message board. Excuse any references to dates or other board specific events.
Last Friday I picked up what I consider the deal of the year...a 1984 Marshall JCM 800 head...cost $381.60 after tax. The amp sounds amazing, but as you can see, the tolex has seen better days:
Also in the pic you can see my road tested Peavey 412 cab (loaded with Celestion G12T75s). The cab sounds great, but also shows some battle scars.
Well, I decided that I was going to recover the set, but rather than rip the original tolex off the Marshall, I've decided to build a new head cab, that way if I do decide to flip the amp, it'll still be all original.
I got a good start today. Building a head cab is really not too complicated if you have a table saw and a dado blade at your disposal.
I bought an 8 foot long, 10 inch wide, 3/4 inch thick piece of clear pine for the cab. I was going to do it in 13 ply baltic birch, but the solid pine was about 1/2 the price, so I went with it.
I measured the outside dimensions of the original head and cut my pine plank into the appropriate size pieces.
Now, I built a speaker cab about 2 or 3 years ago and made a finger joint jig. It's basically a piece of wood used as a backing block with a 'key' made of hardwood. The key has to be exactly the width of your dado blade, and has to be exactly as far away from the blade as the blade is wide. Then you screw the jig to the guide on your table saw. If you get this jig setup right, you can cut all your finger joints in about 5 or 10 minutes and they fit together perfectly.
The jig:
The jig in action:
I got a little ahead of myself and forgot to take a picture, so I went back and set the wood into the jig so you'd be able to see how you just move the piece of wood over to the new dado cut with each consecutive pass....ignore the fact that there are already three cuts past the blade.
You have to make sure that you have the cuts offset on the pieces that are being joined together. So on one side, you'll have a cut right on the edge of the wood, and on the piece that joins it, your cut will be the width of the blade into the wood. Here's all four outside pieces with the cuts.
Here's what they look like when you put them together.
Then, I applied the glue (I'm using Titebond yellow wood glue) and clamped it all together, making sure everything was square. I didn't have long enough clamps to clamp it lenthwise, but I did have a bunch of ratchet straps, which work perferctly for my purposes here.
Now I'm just waiting for the glue to dry overnight. Tomorrow I'll sand the joints flush and put a 1/2" roundover on them using a router. Then I'll glue in some stringers for the front and back faces of the cab.
Hopefully on Saturday I'll be able to cover it with burgundy tolex (the same thing I've already used on the cab (sorry no pics yet) and mount the chassis and hardware.
So far, I've spent more time typing out this thread than I have on working on the cabinet. Once you get the jig made, keep it for future projects. I've literally got about 20-30 minutes of work in this thing so far...tops.
Last Friday I picked up what I consider the deal of the year...a 1984 Marshall JCM 800 head...cost $381.60 after tax. The amp sounds amazing, but as you can see, the tolex has seen better days:
Also in the pic you can see my road tested Peavey 412 cab (loaded with Celestion G12T75s). The cab sounds great, but also shows some battle scars.
Well, I decided that I was going to recover the set, but rather than rip the original tolex off the Marshall, I've decided to build a new head cab, that way if I do decide to flip the amp, it'll still be all original.
I got a good start today. Building a head cab is really not too complicated if you have a table saw and a dado blade at your disposal.
I bought an 8 foot long, 10 inch wide, 3/4 inch thick piece of clear pine for the cab. I was going to do it in 13 ply baltic birch, but the solid pine was about 1/2 the price, so I went with it.
I measured the outside dimensions of the original head and cut my pine plank into the appropriate size pieces.
Now, I built a speaker cab about 2 or 3 years ago and made a finger joint jig. It's basically a piece of wood used as a backing block with a 'key' made of hardwood. The key has to be exactly the width of your dado blade, and has to be exactly as far away from the blade as the blade is wide. Then you screw the jig to the guide on your table saw. If you get this jig setup right, you can cut all your finger joints in about 5 or 10 minutes and they fit together perfectly.
The jig:
The jig in action:
I got a little ahead of myself and forgot to take a picture, so I went back and set the wood into the jig so you'd be able to see how you just move the piece of wood over to the new dado cut with each consecutive pass....ignore the fact that there are already three cuts past the blade.
You have to make sure that you have the cuts offset on the pieces that are being joined together. So on one side, you'll have a cut right on the edge of the wood, and on the piece that joins it, your cut will be the width of the blade into the wood. Here's all four outside pieces with the cuts.
Here's what they look like when you put them together.
Then, I applied the glue (I'm using Titebond yellow wood glue) and clamped it all together, making sure everything was square. I didn't have long enough clamps to clamp it lenthwise, but I did have a bunch of ratchet straps, which work perferctly for my purposes here.
Now I'm just waiting for the glue to dry overnight. Tomorrow I'll sand the joints flush and put a 1/2" roundover on them using a router. Then I'll glue in some stringers for the front and back faces of the cab.
Hopefully on Saturday I'll be able to cover it with burgundy tolex (the same thing I've already used on the cab (sorry no pics yet) and mount the chassis and hardware.
So far, I've spent more time typing out this thread than I have on working on the cabinet. Once you get the jig made, keep it for future projects. I've literally got about 20-30 minutes of work in this thing so far...tops.