Speakers 2 - Aft Speaker Boxes

Tonight was one of those nights when not a lot went right. I wanted to make some progress on the transom area so that I can finally drop the cockpit decking down, but it's slow going. I started out with some wiring. All the wires back there except the horn/bilge now have terminals. Everything's official - Ancor marine wire with heat shrink tubing.

Rear wiring done except for the bus bars and bilge pump.

That left a pretty hefty check list, still:

• Build speaker boxes
• Install bilge pump (haven't gotten it yet)
• Run wiring and bus bars
• Build laz "floors"
• Prep and paint

As a work colleague would say, the long pole in the tent is the speaker box build. I started by applying a nice layer of epoxy on the circle cut outs that house the speakers. That went ok, and I wiped up any runners before it would affect either the paint or the transom. But even then, I realized I only had one latex glove left so had to be really careful not to muck up my exposed fingers. A quick run to the Big Box Store solved that. (I checked on my lumber order while there. It's still a week away.)

I then measured and cut the cleats that would form the frame of the speaker box. The speakers I have are low profile, but they still jut in about 1 1/2". Allowing another 1/2" for the sound and fury, I'm looking at a 1 3/4" frame with 1/4" backer. The problem is in my rush to put down the laz cleats for the floors some weeks ago, I grabbed whatever I had available. That meant the bottom cleats are a different size than the top cleats. Oops...

The speaker cleats started life as a block of pine lying around the shop. Actually, they started life as a pine tree, but who cares about that.

Block o' pine. Not sure where this came from.

Block o' pine ready for duty.

I assured a dry fit then epoxy'd them up.

Fits pretty good.

Epoxy'd and cleated. This will be watertight.

I drilled a hole in the inboard cleat to run the speaker wire out. This is now filled with epoxy but I'll drill a smaller hole. This is of course to prevent seepage back here. I'm not real happy with the close ups of epoxy runs under the cleats, but not much I can do (or more importantly, want to do) about it. This is the sealed up, watertight, non-visible area of the transom. I would've liked to be more conscientious here, but wasn't.

Something to note is that the manual asks to put the cleats that ride on BH 8 facing inside the cabin. If I did that, I'd have internal speaker boxes and given much more attention to the squeezeout. In any case, I think it's much better to face these inside the laz vs. inside the cabin.

Well, watertight except for the hole I've drilled for the speaker wire. But if water gets up that high, seriously...

I then found some marine ply scrap and cut the backer. I dry fit this and it looks good. But I want to epoxy this on both sides before installing it. This will be glued and screwed to become a permanent part of the build tomorrow. Some folks wondered how I'd make aft speakers watertight. Well, here it is.

Backer fitted. There will still be plenty of room in the laz for assorted junk.

Some fancy jiggering got the port box done and acceptable, but the starboard side is a bit off. I got tired of trying to fit cleats so I quit for the night. One of these days, both sides will be even.