Audio Rack

When I moved from Mobile to Seattle, my room grew from a small cramped space to a spacious room with lots of windows, and wall surfaces. My previous audio rack was in 3 parts, A small low one on the front wall, limited in hight by the TV, and width by the speakers, in the narrow 9.5 foot wide front wall. The taller stands were off to the side holding most of the audio gear.

In the new space, I now have a wide front wall, but still have the TV hight constraint. My current racks have enough rack space to best accomodate my gear but is rather disorderly in appearance.

I want to build a modular system, and relegate my current rack to holding stuff in the crawlspace under my room.

I could not find an appropriate rack on the web, short of commisioning custom work.

1) Low slung shelving, that is modular, and can be re-configured if/as my system changes. I prefer symmetry, when possible.

2) Color Tone matching for the new speakers. (Steam Punk Audio Rack - brass and walnut)

3) Structurally sized to fit under the TV, and not be so wide as to impinge on speaker positioning.

4) Not be ridiculously expensive.

5) Not require a full workshop to construct.

1) After consideration of components needed to place, and the size constraints, a triple wide rack, of 3 shelves each would fit these needs. Top shelf 24 inches high.

2) I chose a "flexy rack" design for its simplicity and modularity. Also, I had constructed one before, and knew the basics, what I would change from the earlier one.

3) I tried to maximize the shelf size, yet fit all the wood onto a single sheet of plywood. So 9 shelves at 24" wide, and 15" deep.

Bamboo Plywood - 3/4 inch "Plyboo" (Edensaw Woods)

Nine 24" x 15" shelves were cut out of one sheet of this plywood. Edensaw did this with a CAD machine, cutting the panels, and the 4 holes in each. This was relatively inexpensive, and provided a means for me to transport them home in my car, which will not fit a sheet of plywood.

I then used a 1/8" round over bit to slightly round over all the top and bottom edges. Then sanded to 150 grit, per the finishing instructions. This was followed by an area clean up of sawdust. The next day I wiped all surfaces with a damp towel, to both dust, and do a "water pop", which opens the grain to facilitate entry of the oil into the wood during the finishing. I used Waterlox "Truetone" stain system with Clay Color, and then 2 coats of the buff in Tung Oil finish, also in the Truetone system. These were buffed in with a non scratch pad, and then any remaining surface liquids removed with a wipe cloth. The shelf was then hung up to cure individually. Instructions say overnight for next coat, but I did 48 hours due to the cool weather. I left the final coat to dry for a week, after which I waxed all surfaces with Briwax Furniture Wax. While the oil was curing I did the brass work.

Brass Hardware - all 1/2"-13 thread size (McMaster-Carr)

I wanted to match the bronze of the speakers, but bronze hardware was prohibitively expensive, and limited in available sizes. Brass is close enough.

Eight 24' rods, with many nuts, washers, and rubber washers (8 per each of the 9 shelves) + some acorn cap nuts for the top.

I found Washington Precision Machining, who was willing to treat each of the the rods to trimming to uniform length, and drill and tap one end of each to a 1/4-20 size threaded hole, so I can place standard chair footers under each to ease movement, and protect the floor. 2 hours at $115 an hour. They use some sort of CAD/CAM system as well.

This was cleaned as well as possible, I did a vinegar soak on the smaller parts first. Then I used a brass cleaner, P-TAL Brass Cleaner & Instant Copper Cleaner, with a final rinse and dry. Then I protected the surfaces with Brasso on the smaller parts, and Renaissance Microcrystalline Wax on the threaded rods, which were difficult to clean. I also wanted the wax to allow the nuts to move easily.