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Port and Plate

I had already done the first cabinet and showed some of the finished pictures.  But I was too focused on not screwing it up to take any pictures during the process.  I had a little more confidence that it would work out this time, so I brought my camera to document why I was so nervous last time.  I’ll tell the story in the captions.

First I loosely draped the piece over the back and clamped down the top end to keep it aligned. Razor blade to cut out the circle. The material is airtight so it doubles as a gasket.

You can see the fabric starting to bend up after lightly pressing in the port.

I absolutely love these screws. Made by Highpoint - the aggressive threads do well in MDF.

As you can see, this doesn't look good. The first time around I was very concerned that I wouldn't be able to get this to lay flat.

After all 4 screws installed.

Not 3 minutes with the iron and it looked like this. I added an extra thick layer of glue on the mdf surrounding the port and the plate on top of the thin layer that covered the entire back.

Quite flat.

Plate hole after cutting through the fabric.

This is after pounding the plate in place. If I were to redo this, I would make the recessed hole a little wider. The combination of a mental error, production variance, and limited router bits left me with this. But it fits, so it's okay.

Okay - even though I had managed to do it on the first one, I was still very nervous about this.

After several minutes of ironing. There are two tiny little spots where the outer layer of the fabric got a little kinked, but it is only noticeable at close inspection. I don't imagine anyone other than me will ever be scrutinizing the back of these speakers. I can live with it.

Close to perfect is good enough in this case.

Looks far better than I would have expected from the picture after screwing in the plate.