This homemade Death-Star-shaped subwoofer is for sale on eBay — the winning bidder to pick it up from near Reading, England.
My housemate and I are not known for under-engineering, or even adequate-engineering things, and this is another example of our finest over-engineering.
Inside is a skeleton made from 18mm MDF with curved ribs, approximately 30-40mm thick to make the basic circular shape. It was made airtight from the inside using fibre glass matting, then the gaps between the ribs was filled with chopped glass fibres and resin. A skin was then made on the outside from ply wood. It resembled a large onion at this point, not quite the plan!
The large onion was basically round but needed to be rounder.. So the plywood was covered in fibre glass – it's worth noting this is when we learned that power sanding fibre glass whilst wearing a T-Shirt was not our best idea, all the tiny glass fibres stick in your arms, hair, clothes etc. Safety first kids, goggles, breathing masks and overalls!
The whole surface was covered in car body filler, and sanded… and sanded, then we sanded it some more. It really is properly round and nice and smooth. The equatorial trench was then cut out using a router.
The last step was to paint it, it's two shades of grey, with a black equatorial trench and little white dots speccled over the surface to represent the lights. For further visual enhancement the speaker surround is a piece of polished aluminium.
(Thanks, Renata!)
