Progress! Now that all of the holes have been drilled I can move onto the reinforcement rings and back of the shell bracing. I just got the first coat of paint on and I'm liking it. I had to do some careful arrangement with the rings so that the front shell has something to register onto the back shell. The front has some nice translucency to it. 

 Now, a little more work to complete the finish and I can work on the dish which these sit on. 

 And...yes...the speakers do fit inside. I checked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, onward with making my globes and its time to make the front screens. However, in the absence of spinning perforated aluminum I am faced with drilling the hole pattern. The pattern is critical to get just right, so after laying out the dots in as close as possible to the proper interval I can see some of the pattern emerge. Now I get how to draw it out and in order to repeat it accurately I am making a simple fiberglass of 1/16th the globe overlay on which I will put the pattern and repeat it. I started with a spare globe shell on which to practice the layout. Lots of work ahead of me! But this should make it simpler.

 

 

 

 

For those of you who have been following my Clairtone Project G project:

Well, after nearly screwing up catastrophically making the mold (wouldn't come off of the pattern!) I finished cleaning and polishing the mold in order to make a laminate for my repro Project G globes. Monday I made up a small test sample to see if it would come out OK...And it did!

Next, I gathered up my courage, laminating a full demi-globe, risking total failure. My son asked me, "So, what's the worst that can happen?" The worst would be that the laminate would NOT come out of the mold and I would have to start over. Do-able, but wasting a great big pile of work that I would rather not do again. So, buying new mold release wax and using polyester resin this time, and carefully and gently spreading the gelcoat so as not to work it into the wax...I made a full laminate.

Left overnight to cure, I pried along the edge, and pulled. All of a sudden...POP! out it comes! All nice and smooth. I cut more fibreglass pieces and tomorrow I'll laminate the second globe back. I could have done it today but I really didn't feel like facing the wonderful aroma of polyester resin two days in a row. Plus, I had paying work to do in the shop.

 

 

 

A little more progress on the mold for the Clairtone globe shells. I had a lot of problems getting this off of the pattern, neccesitating quite a bit of remedial work. The residue is cleaned out, sanded, and coated with new epoxy. I have about 5 coats on and I am letting it cure hard before sanding and polishing. Pretty soon I can take some laminates from it! Then I can progress on making the rest of the cabinet and stand. THEN I can put the components in and use it.

I've been listening to my new speakers for awhile now. The sound is very articulate and transparent. They don't have the bass extension nor the "openness" of the previous Studio Reference Monitors, but the bass is very precise. It is also very present once the volume is put up a little to moderate levels.

These are the speakers which will go into my Clairtone Project G build.

I keep referring to these as "Deathstars", for obvious visual reasons.

There is a flange that runs around the mid-section of the speaker cabinet that will allow it to be mounted in the globe enclosure. I felt that it would be easiest to make the flange in two pieces and have it supported by a smaller flange.

After using epoxy to seal the wood grain so that the paint goes on nice and smooth, the surfaces are sanded and given the first two coats of paint. I will continue to work up the paint finish till I like how it looks. OK, so it will be mostly hidden inside of the globe, but I am thinking that the front globe screen may have a fairly open weave and be quite revealing of the cabinet within. It is far easier to make it look good now than later.

My speaker cabinets are coming along. I routed the front baffle in order to receive the driver, glued the front baffle onto the cabinet, and cut the bevels on the front edge.

Got a start on the speakers for my Clairtone Project G reproduction. This cabinet will sit inside of the globe. It is octogonal in shape and will use the Mark Audio Alpair 12 driver.  Plans are from Dave at Planet 10 HiFi.

I put the drivers into the new loudspeaker cabinets last Friday and fired them up. My first impression was that the sound was adequate, but these drivers take a long time to open up. 100 hours of playing minimum. After the weekend they sound really nice.


The main resonant cavity is lined with about 1/2" of cotton insulation to minimize reverberations. The back one these cabinets is recommended to be removable so that adjustments can be made to fine tune the box.

The second side is the lat panel to be glued on.

Clairtone was a leading Canadian Hi-Fi company, originally based in Toronto, then in Nova Scotia. They operated through the late '50's till 1972. Their demise was a function of growing too big too fast and taking "advantage" of some appealing relocation support.

Anyway, their flagship console was the "Project G", which is still very desirable, G for globes,a nd only about 400 were ever made. I can't afford an original and I am tired of all sorts of components cluttering up my living room. What to do, what to do? I have decided to make my own. It will be very updated and function as a media center. Our new TV will be mounted on the wall directly above and behind this.

Learn more:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2pAJmlJ43s
http://www.clairtone.ca/
http://www.facebook.com/tbl#!/group.php?gid=189723222231


The interior is revealed by sliding back the tambour lid. By coincidence, we have acquired an original Garrard Lab 80 turntable, the correct unit for the Project G!
The speakers used a 10" Wharfedale driver mounted on the face of the back hemisphere. The front was a double layer of spun aluminum, the interior was natural gray and was perforated with many holes. The exterior was black anodized aluminum and perforated with many, many holes!
You can see that the holes were of two different sizes, the interior shell have large holes while the exterior shell had very small holes. The overlay created an appealing pattern.

Now I have to decide how authentic I am going to be and what impact authenticity will have on the end result.

I have finally started towards making my Clairtone "Project G"!

I have joined the DIY Audio Forum: http://www.diyaudio.com/ Lots of good information and good people there. My path has lead me to Dave at Planet 10: http://www.planet10-hifi.com/index.html and Mark Audio drivers: http://www.markaudio.com/

Step one is to develop the speakers. I have decided to use the Mark Audio Alpair 12 full range driver. The challenge is the enclosure. The Clairtone had 18" diameter spheres, but there is not design ready for a sphere of 18". Dave at Planet 10 is developing a series of plans for this driver and I am in with the beta development/testing group. I am going to build and test some enclosures that he designs and the designs will become part of his plans offerings.

So, anything that I build will need some sort of reference, a standard against which they are compared. Towards that end I have decided to start by building the Mark Audio Studio Reference Monitor for the Alpair 12 driver, plans for which can be found here: http://www.markaudio.com/plans

The standard materials recommended are 3/4", 18mm Baltic Birch plywood as it is uniform in consistency and stiff for its weight. I am using cabinet grade Birch plywood here, even though it has an Aspen core. As I was originally just going to make some MDF boxes this is already a big step up.

Here are the panels cut and ready for assembly.

And I had to make a circle cutting fixture for my router to cut the hole for the driver. I didn't mind too much as it will be very useful for the guitar building! I made it big enough to use for the 18" globes for the Clairtone.