Most people use maple because it tends to absorbe vibration a bit more than some woods, has a tight grain and is a harder wood what you want for a rack. Stay away from pine it is ok but a bit soft I think unless you want to use alot of wood, if you want to go that rout popler is like pine a bit harder and a green tint sometimes, the nice thing is it is cheap. Oak is cheap and hard also but has a ruffer finish and you see the grain.
Any woodworkers wanna offer some advice?
My current living room system uses a pair of VT-100s to drive a pair of Proac 3.8s. I wanted to swap the VT-100s for a D-400 I have upstairs and use the VT-100s elsewhere, but... the D-400 doesn't fit in my solidsteel rack. I briefly considered buying myself a Mig welder and some square steel tubing, but then I remembered I don't know how to weld.
Since I'm sort of casting about for fun projects, I thought of building a rack that is more consistent with the rest of the furniture in my living room--mostly Stickley Mission oak. I'm thinking of a 3 "unit" width rack with two shelves and a top; six 2" x 2" columns with 3/4" W x 1" H shelf supports running along the bottom/middle/top of the front/back, and then similar stretchers running front-to-back. My concept was to sink some metal discs into the stretchers close to the columns, and support some 21" W x 22" D x 1" H granite slabs on cones resting on the discs. I'd build the thing with quartersawn white oak, mortise and tenon joinery, and probably epoxy some nuts in the bottom of the columns to allow me to use screw in cones for leveling the whole thing.
I don't want to build a closed rack; I tend to like the access provided by open racks and the cooling can't hurt either. I know people use a lot of maple in audio related applications; is white oak going to be bad for any reason? Given that I'm probably talking about $1K in granite, is there something better to use? I like the look and the weight of granite, but would, say, corian be better? I know Wilson makes its speakers with corian, but don't know if that means anything one way or the other. Any other suggestions?
Since I'm sort of casting about for fun projects, I thought of building a rack that is more consistent with the rest of the furniture in my living room--mostly Stickley Mission oak. I'm thinking of a 3 "unit" width rack with two shelves and a top; six 2" x 2" columns with 3/4" W x 1" H shelf supports running along the bottom/middle/top of the front/back, and then similar stretchers running front-to-back. My concept was to sink some metal discs into the stretchers close to the columns, and support some 21" W x 22" D x 1" H granite slabs on cones resting on the discs. I'd build the thing with quartersawn white oak, mortise and tenon joinery, and probably epoxy some nuts in the bottom of the columns to allow me to use screw in cones for leveling the whole thing.
I don't want to build a closed rack; I tend to like the access provided by open racks and the cooling can't hurt either. I know people use a lot of maple in audio related applications; is white oak going to be bad for any reason? Given that I'm probably talking about $1K in granite, is there something better to use? I like the look and the weight of granite, but would, say, corian be better? I know Wilson makes its speakers with corian, but don't know if that means anything one way or the other. Any other suggestions?