How To Build A Subwoofer Enclosure At Home With No Special Tools

i'm going to show you how to build a subwoofer box at home very easily with little to no tools the first thing you're going to do is go to the internet and go here and type sub box dot pro this is a free online tool that will allow you to design a subwoofer enclosure of your choosing then the next thing you're going to want to do is go to the manufacturer website of the woofer that you're going to want to put in that enclosure go down here to the specs see this one says a ported enclosure one and a half to one and three quarter and these are the specs the mounting depth etc after you enter all those uh parameters into where it says box and subwoofer and port you will get the tuning frequency and everything that you want you will then go down to the bottom and these are all your cutouts so we're gonna take a picture of this and let's go lowe's and here we are grabbing us one of these boys right here some of the wood you want to avoid is stuff like this plywood here this chipboard um it's just hard to kind of screw and work and these these edges they cut they flake they get kind of nasty you can see this one here just by pushing on the middle you get those layers to kind of separate you really don't want that you see stuff like this actual chipboard osb type material definitely definitely don't buy this for subwoofer boxes this stuff here is what you want this is mdf three quarter inch melo stores have a saw like this to cut your wood here so we've made our vertical cut now we're going to cut the strips these two strips are going to make all the side pieces all done you can just load these all up in your car these are your cut pieces and the big ones are scrap piece you can have them cut in half or whatever you got to do to fit it in your car because the whole point of this is being able to do this you know in the car so this is your your port pieces left right front back top bottom all right there all done at lowe's all right so now we're back from lowe's we have our speaker box pieces right here we'll get to those in a minute but i wanted to go over some of the stuff that we got from the the walmart of course we have sandpaper now this is for a sanding unit that they sell there but you can just use these as well by hand it's what i've been doing for a long time i picked up some blades to go with the uh jigsaw that i have this was twenty dollars at harbor freight these uh screws that we purchased different sizes for some different things inch and five 8 2 inch i bought the countersink you'll see me use that you don't have to use that there's other ways you can use it you just use a bigger drill bit and a little drill bit it doesn't matter the glue that we have is this gorilla glue it's my favorite like i said then uh optional is poly krill and a poly grill puts a thin layer of like plastic like paint that you can sand off and it makes it to where you can paint the wood and without the wood showing the grain so now we're going to get into the actual box and the shape and how it all come together after we cut them out at lowe's okay so i've taken the time to lay out on the bottom uh piece here all the port where everything goes and the reason why we do this all the way around is so we know where to drill the the pre-holes and what we're going to do is take the top and put it underneath of the bottom just like so i'm going to square them up easy peasy once they're square we're going to run around and drill holes where where all the boards are going to glue in about every three four inches apart okay so now that i've drilled the holes i'm going to come back with that countersink bit that i had earlier and i'm going to countersink all these holes now the top piece is done you'll see the little dimples there drilled by the countersink if you don't have a countersink bit or if you don't want to buy one you can use just a regular drill bit of a larger size perhaps like a 3 8 inch diameter and just drill down a little bit don't drill too far but now all these holes are marked out on the back side and on the top plate they've all been started so now all you have to do on the top plate is come around and drill them out with the the pilot and then go and countersink them we'll grab a piece of scrap and lay it down so we can drill all of our holes all the way through [Music] okay now we're going to flip it over and countersink the opposite side with this bit that's all of our holes right there top and bottom get rid of our scrap piece as you go along you'll have to drill holes in the side of the pieces that screw together that's fine uh you can do those before you assemble them all right so now on the last pieces i've marked these we're going to drill these each put about four screws on each of these that way we can attach them together [Music] okay now i'm going to countersink these as well making sure to be careful to do the correct side [Music] okay so now we're going to break open our package of sandpaper we're going to want to do is sand down the back sides when you drill through it'll leave a little hump that's what you're standing off there's little humps when you drill through we're going to start by gluing the back and we're going to screw to the left and right sides so left side back and the right side we'll actually put the drill bit in we'll line these up like so make little pilot holes start our screws in like that glue you line this up as best you can this is what's going to make your box as square as possible [Music] remember the the glue will hold it together and will seal the joint so that is the back right side we're going to now do the back left side now we're going to actually attach the bottom of the enclosure so if you do like so that's how it sits on the enclosure we're going to flip this whole thing upside down [Music] now because these outside are not secure you have to do the outside ones first to make sure they stay lined up now we're going to put on the baffle which goes here okay so because we're doing this as a anyone can do it in their garage build i want to talk about this port [Music] most of the time you would just use a router and you would router this edge down smooth along with the one on the inside but because most of you probably won't have access to a router i just sanded this by hand using the sandpaper also these holes on the side we're going to fill them in with this putty this putty's like four or five dollars at walmart we're just going to fill in the holes right here let it dry and we're going to sand that down before we put this in there okay so i've let this sit up overnight when i put that spackling on there we're gonna sand that off there and we're just gonna hit these corners a little bit more and try to make these as round as possible now we're gonna glue this port into the enclosure [Music] you may want to take some glue put it in all the seams even if you get glue all over the place it's just going to dry up it dries into a very thin brownish color just like you see right here that's just extra glue it stands right off now we're going to bolt our top on we're going to let this glue dry we're also going to mark out where the hole is going to go on the baffle and i'll show you how we make the hole so to line up our hole we're going to take a piece of scrap wood or anything straight we're going to line it up in this one corner we're going to come to the other corner line it up make a line we're going to go to the opposite corner line it up come to this corner make a line x marks the spot you can do a quick check with the tape measure seven and a quarter seven and a quarter the side it's totally up to you whatever you want to do with that i'm at nine here and i'm at eight and a half here so i'm going to show you one of the easiest ways to make a hole pattern at home that's super round one of the easiest ways is to get a piece of cardboard your woofer if you bought it brand new will usually come with a small piece of cardboard like this or you can cut one out we're going to use this to make our circle template now normally i would use normally i would use something like this it's called a jasper jig but because we're doing this on a budget we're doing this at our garage and we don't have tools or time or anything else we just want a good sounding box we're going to use simple simple cardboard in this case our cutout diameter is 11. eleven point one five inches so we're gonna do um 11 and eighth so we're going to make a mark somewhere over here this mark is going to be where the screw goes in this case i need 5 and 17 30 seconds let's mark that out we're going to run our pilot right down the middle then what we're going to do is put a screw right through that first hole we made right under that hole just like so now our hole here that we made [Applause] there we go now we're going to check this should be 11 and an eighth wow that's almost exactly 11th and 8th so now we're going to need to make our hole we're going to use my jigsaw this el cheapo this has that finer blade that we picked up last night from walmart now this says metal on it but trust me that fine the finer teeth is going to be just fine for cutting this mdf wood without making it chip if you don't have something like this it's a little impact they do so much you put paddle bits on them they work just fine you can buy these kits come with regular drill bits you can get the step bits that go inside of there anything that you can think of for a drill to do this can also do we're gonna make our hole for the the pilot for the jigsaw using this little guy right here [Music] all right now we're just going to cut the hole line this guy up now you really want to pay attention catch a line cut a little bit smaller if you got to but i would leave this line behind you want to be able to see this line just barely when you're done cutting [Music] look at that you see i left [Applause] just the outer edge of my line before you come back and you sand it down [Music] well there you have it that's your harder parts cut everything's glued together screw together holes made test your woofer sand this down make it all nice and smooth get everything where it just fits in there just nicely you can get nutserts if you want to you can get those from lowe's and bolts or you can just use screws like everybody else that's it that's a 12 inch one and a half cubic foot 37 hertz pour it in closure if this was about 35 hertz this port would just be a little bit longer that's all so now that i've got all this done i'm going to take the specking this putty i'm going to go and fill all these holes in and let them sit there and dry for a couple hours come back sand it all down just like the port you have a nice smooth finish you

Channel: Trevor Moon

Views: 136,350

Rating: 4.8824625 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: QQqc8m7KMLQ

Length: 18min 35sec (1115 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 27 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Tldr: find a Lowe's that will cut your materials for you. Good luck with that.

[u/Ecw218]

Just finished my first cabinet builds. Harbor freight circular saw was $35 with fine blade was the only “special” tool I didn’t have. Aside from that I used a drill and hacksaw. They aren’t the prettiest but they sound great. I called around to various local hardware stores and got names for 2 local carpenters- one offered to do the cuts for $75 including the MDF but ghosted me before we got the deal done. In hindsight I should have kept on the guy and had him do the cuts, definitely worth it compared to all the time spent as a novice trying to make nice cuts.

[u/GeckoDeLimon]

In the future, you may want to trade the screws for glue & clamps. Screw holes like that will, with time, telegraph through the finish. I have a sub I built about 15 years ago where the paint has actually cracked in neat circles at each putty-covered screw hole as the MDF swelled and shrunk with changes in humidity. I've seen them visible through veneer, too.

[u/vivek_saikia]

Your hands are your special tool!

[u/RealLordTequila]

You can always go open baffle too and get better bass (Eminence Alpha (though Lii-W15 and AE Dipole are better), JE Labs Frame, and a good amplifier. Anywhere from $200 for an excellent sub to, I don't know, couple thousand for a pair of tower subs in open baffle using a trio of Lii W15s per tower, capable of going down to 15hz, all driven by a pair of 600W ServoAmplifiers)

[u/guriboysf]

Bummer he didn't drill those pilot holes deeper... seeing that MDF split like that triggers my perfectionism.

[u/spartasparta]

Will you upload a second video where you finish the sub?

I was really sad when the video stopped after you put together the enclosure! I would like to see the end result