[loud whirring of drill] [♪] What do you get when you combine some scrap wood, your band saw and a couple of enjoyable days in the workshop?

Well, on today's episode of the Woodsmith Shop , you'll end up with a smartphone amplifier.

Inside, there's a specially designed sound chamber that enhances the sound that comes from your phone.

So, whether you're listening to music, podcasts, or even your favorite woodworking show, you'll be able to hear it loud and clear, no matter where you are.

It's time to start building.

ANNOUNCER 1: Major funding for the Woodsmith Shop has been provided by: ANNOUNCER 2: Old Masters.

Craftsman-quality stains and finishes since 1953.

ANNOUNCER 1: Additional funding provided by: ANNOUNCER 2: Titebond wood glues, the pro's advantage.

ANNOUNCER 1: And by... ANNOUNCER 2: Kreg.

From the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

ANNOUNCER 1: And by... [♪] [drilling] Chris, you were the designer of our smartphone amp, so where did the idea come from?

Well, I enjoy listening to podcasts and music in my shop, but you know, the phone is just not quite loud enough.

I can't stray very far away from it.

So, I decided a great project for us would be to build a small amplifier for a smartphone, make it a little more useful, make an interesting woodworking project.

I kind of like it because it's a cordless, wireless, battery-less way of getting a little bit more sound.

You know, one of the things that we deal with with the magazine-- and you and I take questions on quite frequently is, we've built this project and we've shown it made out of X-Y materials, can I make it out of this material instead?

Yeah, and it is a question we get a lot, and from our standpoint, we are always giving people direction on how we built it and what we built it out of, but we're not necessarily telling them what to build it out of or how to build it.

So, you can stray in both material selection and processes because there's different ways that you could get the same result.

Right, and so that's kind of the approach that we're taking with this smartphone amp.

The idea is that it's a small project.

We could easily cover almost every step in this episode, but we wanted to change things up a little bit just to reflect that ability that you have as a woodworker to change things up and still stick relatively close to the techniques in the plan.

Exactly.

For example, I'm going to build my amplifier basically using the same processes as we show in the plans.

I have this really nice blank of tire maple.

It wasn't quite wide enough, however, so my center inlay, instead of being a narrow piece of mahogany like the original, it's a little bit wider walnut, and as I add the additional strips, they're going to get a little bit smaller.

So, I think it'll be interesting when it's completely done, and that's just one example of how you can change, and you have a different example on how you can change the materials.

Right.

Rather than go with a single blank and adding some inlay strips, I'm going to stay with just a solid block of wood and then cut it up into its final shape.

So I chose Wingate.

It's a really dense, heavy, exotic wood, so I think it'll work great as an amplifier, but it also has a really attractive dark tone to it and real straight grain that I think once it's all finished, it will really look appealing.

Well, I thought I'd have a little fun with this project, and so what I did was to raid my scrap bin of all the colorful, interesting pieces of wood I could find, cut them up, and essentially made small cutting boards and stacked and glued those.

So I'm kind of excited to see what this will look like when I cut it round and into its final shape.

And one of the other things I like about this project is the chance to work on some specific techniques.

You're going to spend some quality time with your band saw here.

That's right.

So, it's a good time to put a nice, sharp, 1/4-inch blade on your band saw, get it tuned up and ready to go.

And then when we wrap things up at the end of the show, we're going to come back and show off what all of our projects end up looking like.

So I think you're going to get things started then.

Exactly.

I'm going to head over to the bench and I'm going to show you how you get started on doing the inlays into this blank.

Now look at what we're talking about.

I'm going to be building my amplifier based on a set of plans we have, but I'm going to change a couple things.

Let me show you what those are.

The first thing I'm going to change is, my blank is one piece of stock in thickness, and if you take a look at the plans, you'll see we talked about laminating a top section, a bottom section, and the center.

That's just to get yourself a blank that's thick enough to make the amplifier.

Thick stock's not readily available everywhere, so we just showed gluing that up.

But because this was thick enough, I'm not going to worry about that.

So, this point, we're ready to tackle the other laminations, and those inlays are going to be nice and curved.

Now, to cut nice, even curves, we really need a good pattern, and the pattern is available with the plans.

And speaking of plans, they're available on our website WoodsmithShop.com.

So, I have the pattern printed out here.

I'm going to do something here first before I glue it on, and that is, I'm going to split along the center line.

Basically these five lines are showing where our inlays are going to be cut into our blank.

But because I've already added that central inlay, I'm going to split this here... and then I'm going to glue these patterns on each side of that wider inlay.

Now I can go ahead and use a little spray adhesive to mount these on there.

Then I'm just going to position this on the blank.

You want to make sure it's nice and square.

Otherwise, your inlays are going to look a little goofy and they won't be symmetrical.

Okay, with that side on, let's get the other side in place.

There we go, and I think that spacing is going to work really well with that wider inlay, and each inlay I'm going to add is going to be a little bit thinner.

So, I think it's going to look really cool.

So like Chris mentioned, a sharp blade and a well-tuned band saw are a necessity on this project because we're asking our band saw to do something we don't usually ask it to do, and that is to cut a clean, glue-quality joint.

So, a sharp blade, a well-tuned band saw, and steady, even cutting pressure are keys here.

And here is where I'm going to take a different tack again from the plans.

The plans outline cutting one inlay section first and then gluing the inlay in and then coming back and cutting the second one.

However, I have a pretty good way to glue those up, so I'm going to cut them both at once.

Now I'm going to start by working on the two innermost inlays.

When we get those cut, then we'll head over to the bench to get them glued in.

So now that we have the first two inlay sections cut, we can come back over here to the bench to get everything glued up.

Now it's important to note: Once you cut those sections apart, you don't really want to touch those edges that the band saw cut.

What you're looking for is you're looking for a clean, tight joint that when it's together, it's pretty much invisible.

So, what we're going to do is we're going to take the inlay sections-- in this case it's just walnut that I cut from a larger blank-- and we're going to sandwich those in between those sections.

And if you do sand or touch the inside of this with a scraper or a file, what you're going to create is a little bit of a gap, and that's really going to show through on the finished piece.

The inlay, especially with this walnut or the mahogany like we used originally, has a little bit of compression, so any little minor bumps will really be absorbed with sufficient clamping pressure.

And speaking of clamping pressure, these are a little tricky to glue up because there's a lot of moving parts.

So let me show you how I do this.

I like to start with a pair of parallel clamps.

Set them a couple inches apart just so I can get my blank in there.

Then, I like to flip these sections on their edge.

What that does is that exposes three of the four glue surfaces that we need to have glued before I clamp it together.

When I go to slip in this last lamination, I'll apply glue to that inside face that's missing from this orientation.

Now, when I get glue on here and start applying clamping pressure, these are going to want to move.

The glue's pretty slippery and it acts as a lubricant.

So, what I'm going to do, I'm going to take a clamping cull and I'm going to apply that to the back side, and that's the side that these inlays are going into at a 90-degree angle.

What that's going to do is, it's going to give me a good reference so I can clamp each of these sections if they do start to move, and I can squeeze them back into alignment.

So, I'm going to get some glue on here and bear with me while I get this all glued up.

[♪] Now I'm going to apply that cull, so we'll slip our inlays in there.

We'll start bringing the clamps in, and the clamping process for this is slow and steady, adjusting, adjusting, adjusting, especially when the stuff starts to move on you.

I'll start by applying clamping pressure to that front clamp and then the back clamp a little bit.

I can see-- you see I have a gap up here, and that's where I will use that cull to pull this side back into alignment.

And here it's just back and forth with the clamps, just making sure you close up those sides all around those inlays.

Now I'm not terribly concerned if my inlays go all the way to my clamping cull because this is a little bit oversized.

When I trim it down, it'll be fine.

Applying clamp pressure until I have good squeeze-out on the inlays, and that looks pretty good.

Now I can remove these culls.

Once everything is held in place, they don't-- they don't need to be there.

All right.

Now that looks good.

So, the process for cutting these outside inlays once this dries is exactly the same.

Again, slow, even pressure with a sharp blade, and those will go in just as easily as these did, and actually they'll go in a little bit easier.

These ones I'm going to use are a little bit thinner.

And again, it's just walking the clamps back and forth and pulling everything tight to those culls.

So once all the inlays are in and it's all dry, you can go ahead and cut the sound chamber.

But I'm going to leave that to Chris to show you how to do that.

[♪] With our block all glued up, the next step is to form the sound chamber of our smartphone amplifier.

And the first step to do that is going to be to rip our block into three pieces-- two sides and one center section that's going to be 3-3/4 of an inch wide.

And with that centerpiece, we flip that on edge, we use a template, and that's where we cut our sound chamber.

I have here the center portion I just cut from the band saw of this smartphone amplifier.

What I've done is I've used some spray adhesive and I've attached a paper template which shows me where to band saw for the sound chamber of our smartphone amplifier.

The first cut I'm going to make is I'm going to cut the bottom of the sound chamber, and I can do that in one pass on the band saw.

Cutting the top of the sound chamber, however, is a pretty tight radius here, so I'm going to take several cuts to create that.

[♪] In order to get the very best performance we can out of your smartphone amplifier, it's important that the surfaces within the sound chamber be smooth and therefore reflective of the sound.

So, in order to do that, I'm going to start by using a sanding drum on my drill press to smooth out the band saw marks.

From there, I'll start hand sanding.

To make the most of the soundwaves that enter into our sound chamber so that they reflect and therefore amplify, it's important that it be a clean, tight surface.

So I'm going to make sure it's well finished, and I'm going to do that by pre-finishing these surfaces 'cause if I wait until later, it's going to be pretty tough to get in here.

So what I want to do is apply three coats of a hard-drying clear finish to the top and bottom of the chamber but also to the sides.

And if you look here, you'll notice that I have added some pencil lines to this side that show me where the parts are going to eventually glue onto that side, and I want to make sure that I don't apply any finish to these areas and compromise a good glued joint.

[♪] The first step in gluing up our project is going to be to apply a little bit of glue to the bottom of the sound chamber.

Smooth the glue out evenly but don't put too much glue on this.

We don't want to have too much squeeze-out into the chamber itself.

Now, if you do get a little bit of squeeze-out into the chamber, that's something that you can take off with maybe a wet glue brush or a piece of a rag.

But it's a little tough to get in there, so if we can avoid getting any glue in there, that's what we want.

So, I'm going to set the bottom of the sound chamber in place on my side, and I'll now apply glue to the top.

With that in place, I'll go ahead and put the other side in.

Make sure everything is aligned properly.

And the first thing I'm going to do in clamping this together is because I have the top and the bottom floating between two sides, I'm going to just pinch the very middle of our box here to keep things from moving.

Here we go.

Now that I have the center pinched in place, I'm going to go ahead and add additional clamps front and back.

And there we go.

Now we just wait for that to dry and it'll be back to the band saw to cut out the circular shape.

The last stage in our amp project is to give it its final shape, but before taking care of any layout, I wanted to smooth out the surface once the clamps came off.

So, what I did first is use a carbide scraper, and this tool I use to scrape off all the globs of dried glue.

From there, I grab my block plane as you saw and smooth down the surface, and that takes care of any of the final smoothing that I need to do up top.

It also gives me a nice, smooth surface for doing a layout.

The thing is though, with this particular block, and the Wingate that I'm using, pencil lines just don't show up all that well.

So the solution that I turn to whenever I'm working with dark-colored wood like walnut or woods with a real strong grain pattern like oak is to lay down some strips of masking tape where I'm gonna do any of the layout.

So, I'll put a few on each side here... And the pencil lines show up really well here.

Now both Logan and Chris are gonna go with a round amp when theirs is done, but I'm a Gen Xer and a little bit of a contrarian, so I'm gonna try a different shape.

I'm gonna use a square to lay out some center points.

And then I've set a compass to create a half-round shape on the back end of the amp.

So I'll use one center point to draw in each arc.

By this part of the project, you should be pretty comfortable using your band saw.

The key thing here is starting the band saw blade so that it doesn't skip along the edge.

Make a smooth, even cut, staying as close to the layout line as you can.

Well, here's the kind of surface that I'm looking for when I'm removing all the blade marks to get down to the final shape of my amp.

Now you can see the starting point over on this side where there's quite a few blade marks left from the band saw, and where the band saw transitions from the back and into the curve and then on to the side.

There's a pretty distinct lump there.

So, when you're sanding away these things, I'd like to avoid sandpaper as much as possible.

Instead, what I'm gonna do is use a file, both to remove the band saw marks and to ease that transition, so that I have a curve that flows smoothly and evenly from the side on to the back.

What you're trying to do here is make a nice, even curve.

So you're keeping your wrists loose as you follow the contour of the amp with the file.

And the key here is that you want to engage more of your senses.

I usually look with a raking light from the side to see how I'm doing on removing the blade marks, but then I also want to feel with my fingertips to notice where any irregularities in the surface are, and I can address those with a file.

Once you have the blade marks gone and you have a smooth curve, you can go to the next tool, and that's to use a card scraper.

And what the card scraper does is polish away any of the file marks that are leftover on the wood, and also with this Wingate, it really burnishes the surface, giving it a nice shine.

When you're working with a scraper, you wanna go with the grain as the grain goes downhill as it goes from the side onto the back of the amp.

That way, it's gonna give you the smoothest surface and won't cause any tear-up.

Now even though I have a little bit of work here left, I wanna show you one final detail.

I'm gonna add a chamfer to the top edge and the bottom edge of the amp.

With this Wingate, I don't really want a heavy profile on there, but I do want to ease the edge so it's not gonna get any splinters or be too sharp to pick up and handle.

And once that's done, the amp is ready for some finish.

One of the highlights of any project is when that first coat of finish goes on.

Now because I wanted something that would dry quickly but still look great, I'm going to use the same finish that Chris used on the inside of the sound chamber.

I have some clear shellac here that I'm gonna wipe on.

To apply it, I have a small cotton pad, just a section of an old tee shirt that I've wadded up and then tied with a string.

What I can do is dip the pad into the shellac.

Tap off the excess.

And then I'll just wipe it on in smooth coats.

All the way around.

[♪] Using a cotton applicator like this allows you to put on real thin coats so that you don't get a lot of sags or runs in the finish.

There.

In just a few minutes, the shellac's gonna be dry and I can wipe on a second and then a third coat, and this project will be done.

Speaking of which, I think it's time we got the band back together and see how the other two amps turned out as well.

One of the advantages of building a small project like this-- at least in my book-- is how easy it is to be able to change things up and really make a difference in how it looks.

Exactly, and I'm glad we did this on the show because we could each take our own individual paths and show everybody how you could really change it up.

Uh-hm.

You know, a Woodsmith plan could be built as per plans, but we want to encourage you-- make your project your own, make some changes.

Yeah.

So, when I built this smartphone amp and I used a solid block of Wingate, one of the things I was concerned about was that the glue lines would be really visible in the finished project, but once I got it all sanded up and finished, the glue lines really blend it.

You can't see 'em at all.

And you know, I more or less followed our plans.

I made a few small changes with the sizes of the laminations, and when I finished it, because I had that really nice piece of tire maple, I used the aniline dye to really make that grain pop, but I think it turned out really nicely.

CHRIS: Well, I cleaned out my scrap bin, of course, and came up with a really colorful and interesting-looking piece.

I think though it's best for playing music of the 60's and 70's.

[laughter] If you'd like to make your own smartphone amp or at least have some plans to deviate from, they're at our website WoodsmithShop.com.

You know what I think one of the greatest things is?

They all sound great.

PHIL: Yeah.

I think we've got to get our smartphones out and try it.

Today was a little bit of a project-building showdown where Logan, Chris, and I each started with an original design from Woodsmith magazine and took it in a different direction.

The plans for this smartphone amplifier are at our website WoodsmithShop.com.

You know, frankly, it's what we hope you do with all of our project plans-- find something that inspires you, whether it's the overall design of the project, maybe one of the details, and incorporate it into your own projects and then take it in a whole new direction to personalize it.

And it can be something as simple as changing out the materials or even going with a different finish.

This painted one is going to my brother-in-law, and it's painted with the colors of his favorite baseball team.

It's just one of the reasons that I just love woodworking.

After you've spent some time in the shop, I hope to see you right back here for another episode of the Woodsmith Shop.

NARRATOR: If you'd like to get more video tips and techniques, sign up for the free weekly Woodsmith eTips.

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Sign up at WoodsmithShop.com.

Everything in today's show comes from the newly expanded Woodsmith Guild Edition with shop projects, plans, tips, and techniques.

To get a free preview issue of the Woodsmith Guild Edition and a free Woodsmith book, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

In addition, past seasons of the Woodsmith Shop are available on DVD, or you can watch them online from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

For more information, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

ANNOUNCER 1: Major funding for the Woodsmith Shop has been provided by: ANNOUNCER 2: Old Masters.

Craftsman-quality stains and finishes since 1953.

ANNOUNCER 1: Additional funding provided by: ANNOUNCER 2: Titebond wood glues, the pro's advantage.

ANNOUNCER 1: And by... ANNOUNCER 2: Kreg.

From the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

ANNOUNCER 1: And by... [♪]