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Building Jamborees in the Dining Room


Nat Denkin

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After 26 years looking at the same speakers, I decided it was time for a change. I thought about building a pair of Jubilees, but I really like the sound of Bob Crites CW1526C and wanted to stay with 15" drivers. I also thought the larger throat allowed a shorter horn for the same mouth and Dana Moore's design for the Jamboree 215 seemed a good choice. But, my garage is overcrowded with junk so the challenge was to build the speakers in the dining room. That meant the WAF was critical. I wanted something different and large veneered mid range horns provided the change for my wife to choose the veneer. Team building hint: let your wife choose the veneer and hardwood and she will actually like the speakers that dominate two corners of the room. You have to have a very understanding wife to allow you to totally destroy the dining room for several months (I am rather busy and this is totally hobby...no financial interests).

This is still a work in progress but the speakers are a pleasure to listen to even without the Jamborees getting the cosmetic treatment.

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I learned two things about 3/4" Baltic Birch:

1) a 5' by 5' sheet is very heavy.

2) it is not 3/4" thick.

Perhaps those facts are obvious to those experienced in this sort of thing, but when I built my clones in 1983, I think I was smarter. Certainly stronger!

The sheets were actually about 17.4 mm thick and assuming they were 3/4" meant that I was off by about 1.6 mm. Fortunately, I checked fit before gluing.

To deal with the weight, I paid $1 a cut to have the sheets reduced to pieces I could handle with my 10" Craftsman table saw.

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I started construction in the dining room. Interlocking mats protected the floor while showing off the saw dust before shop vac did its thing. A portable work bench and lots of kreg clamps were not ideal, but good enough for the job. Lots of jigs like the one on the left provided templates for the router to clean up the edges left by the scrolling saw. At this point, it was not too crowded.

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There was no room for the table saw in the dining room so it stayed in the garage. I had never done a 14 degree cut and had to learn about tenon jigs. The length of the cut would have been 3.1" had the wood been 3/4" thick. I lucked out and the saw was able to make the cut. I built a tenon jig because the grooves were too narrow for a commercial jig. Once I figured it out, it was a lot easier than I thought!

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I am absolutely impressed. I can believe the Mrs's let you do that in the house

You got that right.... I think he deserves a standing ovation. Since however, it's 1:47 a.m., perhaps he'll settle for a golf clap as I try to go back to bed.

Nat, I think it's cool as beans that you are pulling this off inside like that!! Bogart looks rather put out though [&]

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I guess you will need to get the grills on the cabinets rather quickly, since now that your wife chose the veneer, she may be getting ready to ask “when will you get those mirrors inlayed so she can actually set up all those figurines?[:)]” Nice work, they look great!

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