do the tiny radial cabinets have any damping material inside them?

....good job Jeff ...they look really nice

Greg

1st pair 12 hours including changing planer knives, setting up bandsaw for resawing etc.  Built a trial box from 1/2" ply to test 45 stops on saw and test tapering jig.  I was also salvaging from scrap wood that didn't make things very efficient
2nd and 3rd pair built together for total of 8hrs.  
If I did more I'd imagine shaving another 2 hrs from this now that I'm jigged up and learned from many miss-steps.  I'd also 3d print some more jigs
I saved a ton of finishing time using Rubio monocoat. If you like the look of oil fnishes check this stuff out. the high price is outweighed by the very little amount of material used and time saved, and the finish holds up on floors

Today while cutting some more tiny radial blanks, I fixed my world which has been bent for the past week.  You see, the swings I have been building for the grandchildren use 4x6 posts buried in the ground and supported about 30 inches above the ground.  The rest is just sky, so the pole is allowed to flex making it a self-swinging swing set.  



All was going well for the first few weeks, both posts straight as arrows and perfectly plumb. Then of course one post had to warp. It happened within a few days all of a sudden, and put the top of the post over 2.5 inches out of plumb. Every time I open my shop door to leave, there it is, the perfectly straight and plumb post and the one behind it that is starting to look like a giant boner. So distracting, you just can't imagine.

First I sealed it, all except for the side that didn't stretch.  I watered the other side for a couple days in vane hoping it would swell up and warp back the other way.  God I'm so gullible.  So today, I cut the firkin pole 50% in half, twice, and drove hardwood wedges into it to force it straight again.



Anyway it's plumb again and my world feels correct.  Amazing how something like that simply has to be dealt with or life as we know it can not continue.  Enough things are out of whack on the planet right now and by God, my damn pole is not going to be one of them.

Amen.

Steve

I found this chunk of Exotic KD Afrormosia on eBay and purchased it to make a couple pair of Tiny Radials.



Here is the first pair of cabinets from that wood...



Steve

I'm more of a dark wood guy, but those are real beauties, Steve.

Hi Jeff,

Yea, I've been planing the panels to no less than 1/4 inch.  5/16 is better and I've also been doing 3/8 inch. Believe it or not, my planar (that has tormented me with snipe since I got it), has ZERO snipe with these small panels. It's a miracle. Probably wondering how I got it to do that -- right?  Simple, I purchased a drum sander... that I have yet to use even once on Tiny Radials.

Boy wood moves a lot. A percentage of the panels tend to crown slightly after everything is glued up. It's only usually a few thousandths, but the way the light hits a panel when it is perfectly flat is noticeable compared to one that is not which changes how good the finish looks. So after the panels are assembled and the glue is dry, I lightly sand them to find out where any of the small tear out is that you can't see until it fills with sawdust. Then using that as a guide, I run all four sides through the jointer.  From there I radius the corners and then do the finish sanding and oil it.

Last night I cut a set of panels out of Purpleheart which I find to be much like Wenge - allergic to pattern routing, so I cut them on the table saw like you have been, and found the process to take less time because I no longer have to rough saw the pattern on the band saw first.  I can just take a stack of blanks and cut them all in about 4 minutes.  Before, that part took 4 minutes per panel (32 minutes).

Steve

Cheers!

Nice!  It is really helpful to hear them in different places, thank-you for the videos!

Steve

Nick, that's high praise indeed. And you really nailed it about the 'good enough' category. These little things defy expectations, just like the little Zen amps do, and that makes listening a lot of fun. Having fun while listening is well, listening. Becoming distracted by speaker placement, equipment settings, overall sound quality, etc., takes the fun out of it.

I know I'm having a blast making these. Still refining the process, and the more I do the more therapeutic making them is becoming. Soon, going out into the shop to make a pair of Tiny Radials will be as therapeutic as spending big money on well... therapy!  I love taking something and relentlessly refining it within the point of diminishing returns.

Thanks for posting the pictures and feedback!

Steve

As I listen to this exotic pair of Tiny Radials the 'sound of a tiny radial' beyond the insane imaging, becomes quite apparent... fast and smooth. The two adjectives often compete with one another in hifi, but in this case they are intertwined and make listening over many hours (with a good amplifier) a non-fatiguing and enjoyable experience. Not too many plastic desktop speakers can do that.  If you ad a subwoofer and get it dialed-in right, the experience can become hair raising as though you were setting in your listening room.

Steve

https://decware.wistia.com/medias/bynxm1ayo1

You will have to wear headphones to hear the bass the way it was actually set for the recording...

Steve

Those do sound great.  Was that with the sub?  Also, was the ZTPRE playing?  If so, I'd guess the speakers were putting vibration into it.

Well, these are sounding fantastic with the sub!

Yes, I have several more pair coming soon!

Steve

I just added four pair of Tiny Radials on the page this morning.  One of the woods, Purpleheart, was requested from the wish list and that person was emailed.  Please don't buy those if you're not him!

I have four more pair to add later this week as time allows.

Steve

NATURAL SAPELE IS SOLD

We have 1 pair left and it's 1/4 SAWN WHITE OAK

Here is the most outrageous pair so far...  Purpleheart Terarind made from an expensive bowl blank I purchased on eBay...



I managed to get eight 3/8" thick panels out of this block of wood with virtually no scrap left over.  I don't even think there was even any sawdust left over!  It was a fun challenge to be sure.   I was able to get 7-3/4 of the 8 corners to appear as though both cabinets are made from solid blocks of wood.  I'm charging extra for that.  These are now on the Tiny Radial page btw.

Here is the final result.  Click on it to see the video containing both units.



https://decware.wistia.com/medias/hiecxasje8

Steve

A couple 6-packs of Tiny Radials ready to ship...

Amazed you can tell any of those woods are beautiful from such a poorly lit picture...

Those are KD Afrormosia.  I have enough of that wood left to do a couple more pair.  It also seems like a fairly stable wood that machines fairly well.

One of the things I've been noticing as I make these with different woods is that the fantasy of creating the 1/4 inch panels ahead of time and then cutting them to shape and assembling them at a later date is not going to work with probably at least half of the wood types.

This is because the panels warp.  If a finished panel at 1/4 inch warps, it's junk unless you want to wrestle it back to flat during assembly.  This is why I start with 3/8" panels, they store better and if they do warp it's no problem to straighten them down to 5/16" or even 1/4" panels just before assembly.

I am enjoying the process of refining the process... right now my focus is on finish sanding techniques.  Tonight I did a pair in Sapele but tried the monocoat "chocolate" finishing oil.  They recommend 120GRIT because the oil bonds to only the ends of the fibers or something... anyway I took it to 220 instead of 320 or higher and this dark oil/stain showed up over 1 million swirl marks.  If I had a surface drum sander where the sanding paper floated on a cushion of air above the drum so it couldn't heat up... I could put all three grits on one drum and sand in one direction with the grain and get it perfectly flat like the jointer does, but with a candy ass finish and in about 90 seconds.  So I'm waiting for that to arrive.  I know what it feels like to be a Decware amplifier or speaker customer... waiting is so hard.  :-/



Steve

Great fun, I've been following this thread for months.

As a desktop speaker-

What is the best way to hook up tiny radials to a mac computer?

3.5 mm to ???

Thanks. - Dan

I am in the process of adding more Tiny Radials to the page.  So far on the page there are 18 pair. 16 pair are sold. I have another 8 pair nearly done.  



Interestingly, I have just hit a total of 25 pair and I told myself that's probably how many it's going to take to get my system dialed-in, because that's what it takes for an amplifier. Believe it or not it's pretty easy to build a single amplifier (or speaker), but nearly improbable that you will be able to repeat it 25 times. This weeds out beginner's luck and flukes.  

With these Tiny Radials the process is really starting to get refined. If I stick with a single wood, and make say 10 pair in multi-day session, I can do it in 2.5 hours per speaker. But, if I do it in different woods, one at a time, I am averaging 4 to 5 hours per pair.  I'm OK with that right now, as it's just more challenging. One of the places where I really die on the time is the top diffraction lens. I'm getting easily an hour into a pair by the time I sand and paint it to an acceptable standard. So as was always the plan, to take all income from Tiny Radials and re-invest it in tools for my wood shop, tonight I decided to buy a 3D resin printer to make this particular part. I should be able to print one in black with the same satin finish as the paint I use but with built-in stand-offs that would also be black. Not having to make this part from wood would take a lot of the headache out of making these speakers.

I have already had a new friend from across the street who is talented with 3D printers do a quick prototype with a filament type printer just to see what would happen... shown below:



I still have to assemble this and listen to it. The driver is too big to push all the way down with any hope of ever removing it so that is why you still see a gap. The enclosure itself is surprisingly stiff and with some weight added to the plinth might sound good, who knows? When I get time I will of course try it and let you know. This is what gave me the idea to print the top lens for the speaker using a high resolution resin printer. They have a nearly mirror finish unlike these filament printers, and are a lot faster. I think it's the next step for the lens as I can also refine it in ways that I can't do with wood. So over time it could become even better.

Also, as I like to do with any new product, I have been just living with Tiny Radials and listening to them exclusively for about the past month. Since much of my listening is done while working, with the music being more of a background groove, that incidentally comes from a room next door giving it an indirect and non-invasive but at the same time almost more realistic sound...  that has just been replaced with these Tiny Radials here in the same room with me an less than 6 feet away on average. Adding the subwoofer from parts-express.com has created a viable replacement for background music while I work. I really lacks nothing and sounds similar enough to what I normally do that I'm not missing anything. This is really far better than I anticipated, because in this application the speakers have to perform well beyond what is needed on your desktop 16 inches from your face.

On another exciting note, I have been hunting down small blocks of super exotic woods from around the world, a block that is around 2 inches thick and 7 x 7 inches is enough to make a pair of Tiny Radials -- if you don't make any mistakes. You can spend between 75 and 250.00 for a small block of wood this size --usually from Thailand and other similar places.  Burls that only grow in the center of rare trees and too small to make anything large like a regular book-shelf speaker. So what an opportunity that Tiny Radials can be make out of these incredible woods. So I have also ordered several amazing blocks of wood, averaging $150 each, some more some slightly less, and am really looking forward to seeing how trick can we make a Tiny Radial!

At the same time I am looking forward to dedicating a weekend even now an then to seeing how many I can make from a single type of wood to load up the page with Tiny Radials that cost closer to my $250 target : )

So that's the update, and looking forward to pictures and comments from the buyers who will hopefully continue posting their impressions here in this thread.

Thanks,

Steve

Yea, if I successfully print some to my liking, I'll put a few on the page.

I had an antique burl wood bowl years ago I sold for 2500.  It didn't look near as good and you couldn't hear anything out of it!