DIY Woody Grado/Symphones Magnums - A build diary - Page 4

I'm using the headband assembly from a pair of SR80s that don't get much use.

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It begins again...

This time i'm using a different piece of wood (which i am 99% certain is mahogany this time).  It will be end grain instead of cross grain, and it's not as hard as the mystery purple wood.  It's still plenty hard though, and the hole saw did protest at being asked to cut it, although i think some of that was because the drill wouldn't go slow enough).

The result:

This time i decided it would be better to drill out the inside first, so that i can mount direct to the lathe chuck, and turn both ends so that they're aligned to each other much better.

The forstner bit still struggled to go through in one hit, so i drilled out the centre first with a a 32mm large wood drill...

I drilled that hole all the way through, then used the forstner bit to open out the inside to the lip where the grilles will sit...

Then, mounting on the inside end (larger opening) i used the lathe to widen the outer hole and make the face flush so that i could turn it around to do the same on the inside hole.

It's not going purple, but it's still a nice looking piece of wood.

With a little time spent on the outside it's coming along, and the best part is that it's perfectly round and parallel, not egg shaped as my first ones were.

I need to get the second one to this point before i start to do any complex shaping, otherwise i might get one perfect only for the second one to be too small to copy...

that's all very well, but the pads won't fit yet and neither will the beadband forks...

Smallish update, forgot the memory card for my camera so this is only phone quality, mostly finished one side.  had to make it smaller than i would have liked since i wasn't very accurate with the hole saw...

Few more pics...

Inside endge to outside face is 40mm (give or take a few mil) and they're not going to change now that i have them both within a few mm of each other and sanded up to 600 grit...

One has now become two...

Compared to the purple ones...

And against the venerable RS1s

One side came out a little darker than the other, don't know if it's the wood itself or the way i machined it and it got hot or something...

It's not apparent from the photo, but the drivers are a bit more loose in these new ones than the purple set, but that's also because the purple warped a little after i drilled out the inside.  They are, however, both much better centralised.

Needless to say, they looke pretty good in the sunshine, which is in short supply here in the UK right now...

Next is the nerve wracking and rather permanent measuring and drilling holes for the cable exit and mouning to the gimbals, which i didn't do as well as i would have liked on one side of the purple set, so i'm going to take my time with these and try to make sure they're exact.  After that i can have a listen to make sure that they don't sound worse, and then it's into the dark art of wood finishing...