Speaker Baffles

[KFTG]

Hi, I am curious if any one can give me different ideas about cutting speaker cut outs. I use a jigsaw with a fine tooth blade and I have had ok success with that. I however am going to make several speaker cabs and the speaker cut outs are the most time consuming part. I am an experienced builder, but I do all my building in my garage. Any help with different ways that may be quicker would be appreciated. I also have tried a router, but that is not so easy a project especially when using smaller baffle boards. Thanks.

[J M Fahey]

Those are about the two most popular ways.
A coarser toothed jigsaw blade will be faster.
Even better is one of those where the toothed edge is angled forward, making them wider at the tip than the base.
I had a few Black and Decker made, with carbide tips, which "eat" faster than my son and his teen friends when facing pizza or burgers.

[Chuck H]

Jigsaw.
If there's a better tool for the garage builder I don't know about it.
FWIW if the time it takes to align your template and jigsaw the holes is a deal breaker, your too slow. Of course that also means you probably still have all your fingers

[J M Fahey]

my respect to you ))

Have we become a Spambot testing ground?
Not to forget that nowadays Ampage is being labelled "this site may harm your computer"
Oh well.

EDIT: Agrafagr's post has been deletd. COOL !!
Don't know if so by some automatic Forum action or by virtue of the dedicated Moderators (nor want to know either) but congratulations.
Maybe logging his IP into a database and looking regularly for suspicious repeating ones might work.
Thanks.

[Steve Conner]

It can be hard to get a perfectly round hole with a jigsaw, especially after losing the first couple of fingers. You can do a neater job with a router, but it takes longer.

I use a jigsaw, and if the speakers are going to be visible, I load them from the front to hide the mess.

[J M Fahey]

*Not* drinking for a least a couple hours before cutting the speaker holes, nor having wifey/anxious doggy/young'uns/etc. in the same room goes a long way into keeping one's fingers attached as God (or Mom) made them, ad I'm not kidding.

[Tom Phillips]

In addition to the excellent advice given by J M Fahey I offer the following as my opinion:

A good jigsaw with the proper blade for the material is the most practical way to go for small infrequent builds.

A router is best...
1) If you are planning to do many of the same cutouts.
or
2) You want a perfect looking result for your small number of cutouts.
Of course you will need to build templates and jigs to support the router work. For smaller baffle boards you need to fabricate extra jig parts to hold your template and baffle board together.

... I use a jigsaw with a fine tooth blade...

I don’t know your definition of fine tooth but, in my experience, people sometimes choose a blade with cutting teeth that are too small, or intended to cut metal, because they want a smoother cut through the wood. You want to make sure that you don’t need to push too hard to advance the blade through the material. When good sharp blade is cutting well then it is easier to guide the blade along the cut line and you end up with a nicer finished speaker hole. The jigsaw design is also important. The better units don’t just move the blade up & down. They oscillate the blade in such a way that it only pushed into the material on the cutting upstroke.

HTH,
Tom

[olddawg]

Most jigsaws and routers have a radius attachment. If you can't find one they are easily made. You just put a screw in the middle of where the hole will be and the stiff radius arm will guide the blade in a perfect circle.

[Chuck H]

Can't imagine why that never occured to me. I just draw my circle and cut it out biasing toward the inside of the line. The hole is nearly always neat enough but if not I use a barrel sander attachement to fine it up. But as I said, it's usually damn good enough on the cut since the board is likely to be painted flat black and hidden behind cloth. If I'm doing a visible wood baffle I often front mount the speaker and the finery of the hole is moot as long as the speaker fits correctly. If I were to rear mount the speaker/s in a visable wood baffle I would certainly bias my cut to the inside of my line, fine it up with a barrel sander and then put a small radius on the front edge with a router. If it were a visible baffle with rear mount speaker/s covered in tolex or vinyl I think my initial cut would be fine and I would route a small radius on the front edge. It doesn't seem to me that any of this takes very long.

Jigsaws are somewhat course tools. Even with a fine tooth there's the risk of burning the wood. Which won't do if it's going to be visible. I'm sure a circle jig would improve things greatly.

[52 Bill]

I don't build cabinets anymore, but I always used a full sized router with a plywood jig that would cut one half of the speaker cutout and leave a center bar that would act as a protection panel. Flip it around and then route the other half.

The last time I had to replace a baffle board, I used one of those small trim routers with its' circle cutter attachment. Press the center point into the wood, plunge the router bit into the board and circle it around. Took maybe 45 seconds. Noisier than all get out though.

[Rhodesplyr]

There's a local business near me that builds their own line of custom speaker cabinets. When I've needed a baffle hole cut, I've taken it to them with the dimensions, and they've cut it for me. They have a large table router with a jig for cutting baffle holes, so the whole procedure from set-up to finished product usually takes less than five minutes, and it's very cleanly and precisely cut.

In general, I've found that it's very useful to make friends with guys who have nice woodworking equipment. They often need minor electrical work done--like replacing a burnt-out switch in a saw--so you can help each other out.

[KFTG]

Well I certainly got an array of comments, one which was borderline calling me slow. I thank you all for your replies. I was curious like I stated if there was maybe a newer or different way of completing the task. Like I said I have had experience in this sort of thing. I suppose the jigsaw method is still the way to go. Thanks

[riz]

Newer way? Yep. I'll be using a CNC machine from now on...

Trying to be supportive here, not a dick, but if you "have tried a router", and are "an experienced builder", I have to wonder why you can't make the simple plywood jig work? It's seriously easy. I drill a 1/4" hole in the baffle, where I want the center of my speaker to be, and calculate where to drill a 1/4" hole in my jig, which I've already contrived to fit the router base, (and plunged a 1/4" hole for the cutter, using the cutter itself with the jig mounted--easy to measure from) to get the cutout the right size for the speaker. Then I use the same 1/4" drill bit I used to drill the holes, as the pin to attach the jig to the workpiece. Friction holds it in place. Step down a couple times in depth. Done. Comes out perfect.

Hope that makes sense.

[52 Bill]

Newer way? Yep. I'll be using a CNC machine from now on...

How many ways can you cut a large circular hole into a piece of plywood?

The only other thing that you can do is to stack a number of baffles together and cut more than one at a time. This will require you to have a powerful jig saw or router and very sharp blades or bits.

[riz]

How many ways can you cut a large circular hole into a piece of plywood?

The thing just kinda showed up in my garage!

Well, since you asked... The other ways I've done it, are: using the jig to make a circular cutout the size I want, and then using THAT as a pattern to cut it multiple times with a handheld router, using a pattern bit; or, slap it on the pin router--a big, heavy machine using more or less the same concept...