I must be really bored these past 2 weekends. Decided I needed a stealth box for the ride (2005 WRX STi). This will house one one 10" JL w6v2 sub. I havent decided if I will paint or carpet the enclosure, I'm leaning towards carpet. Not sure if my car show days are over but, figured carpet is more durable and less sanding, although paint looks so much nicer. Anyways onto the pics. I'll post more as I make progress. I only get to work on this in my spare time.

Dre

 

how heavy is that unit (with and or without) subs in it ?

Austin

 

it is going to be a lot lighter then any wooden box thats for sure.
I am rebuilding mine this summer, just gotta buy another bucket if resin ($25 at west marine).

This time though I think I am going to try dipping the strips of fiber chop mat in a plate of resin then apply to try and reduce bubbles.

 

Sounds messy. Select Products makes a fiberglass bristle roller thats supposed to help with air bubbles. Any big bulblles i found I took a sharp object and "popped" the bubble by makinga hole in the chop mat and pushing the bubble out the hole I made. I have to get some new pics up. I cleaned up the edges and started sanding/shaping the enclosure.

 

That's nice. I wish I had the patience to do a fiberglass enclosure. How long did it take you to do all of it??

 

as long as you get the right amount of catalyst in the resin, it drys up pretty quick actually.
doing 3-4 layers they drying is a good 1.5 hours.

Here is a link to the one I made:

http://slakin.net/SubBox/

I am thinking if I can find a way to not spend too much time and money on these boxes that I will make a few for sale.

 

Make a mold!

Take one of your completed boxes, find a line you can bisect it upon, and cut it into two halves. Once you have your two halves, you coat the outside of each half with mold release wax. Next you shooot it with tooling gelcoat (think of it like a really thick paint that is super tough). After you shoot the gel, you start laminating glass on top of that. Make the mold beefier than your part so it will resist deformation when the temp swings as the catalyst kicks off when you're laying parts up. After you have built up a good .5" to .625" of glass and it's cured, you're done. Pull your orrignal enclosure half out of the newly created mold. You then repeat the same process for the other side of the enclosure.

Once you have both molds complete, you reverse the process to make parts Wax the snot out of the mold with mold release wax. You have two choices at this point. If you want gel coated enclosures, you would shoot a very thick layer of gel to give you enough depth to sand smooth irregularities. If you want to go the carpet route, or finish sand the part and paint, you would move straight to the fiberglass lamination onto the wax. Lay the box up approx .375" thick and it should be plenty strong. You could try doing a layer of roving/chop mat, then a layer of cloth, then another layer of roving for better rigidity.

Once you pop your parts out of the mold, you take another strip of glass, and glass the seam that brings the two parts together. Do a nice heavy weight roving on the outside and the inside, and you're styled.

It's a lot of work to make the molds, and especially if you're going to sand them smooth for tooling gel coat so that they will produce smooth parts, but if you wanted to crank out 20 boxes, that's how I'd do it. You can get most of the stuff you need through paint and body shops much cheaper than what you'll pay at West marine. FYI markup on most marine items is a minimum of 100% over cost.

Hope that helps,
Chris

 

not a bad job at all i must say.. looks like its going to be preaty custom...

 

question for you guys who've made your own:

I tried a fiberglass box in the past. It didn't go great but i'm not giving up just yet. The one thing i could never figure out was, how with such an odd shape did you guys measure the correct cubic volume necessary for the sub?

 

water or packing peanuts.

 

<<using peanuts in a 12x12x12 cardboard box.

 

calculus...

 

I've never made a fiberglass enclosure before but I'm contemplating one for my wagon. How does the glass perform with a stupid powerful sub? Is it anywhere near as stiff as mdf? I love the flexibility a fiberglass enclosure offers but I'm worried about degrading sound quality. I've never heard a glass enclosure before.

 

as long as you put enough glass and resin down, it is very sturdy. I layered mine to about 1/6" and I could stand on mine and it didn't crack or break. I weight about 285 so its pretty strong.

I think if you did about 1/4 of glass you would get super solid box.
Another thing I read when using fiberglass, is to use MDF where possible. e.g. flat spaces.

I got a lot of my info from this page: http://web.njit.edu/~cas1383/proj/main/