2397 Horn Project

[Mr. Widget]

Why would the vanes tend to be wobbly with dowels?

I would use dowels myself if I didn't have the luxury or maching the parts with my CNC router, but that said as wood expands and contracts over the years dowels become loose. Dining tables with doweled skirts and chairs made with doweled legs tend to get loose to. It is just the nature of wood. Obviously bouncing on a doweled chair will accelerate the process, but typically dowels are not the method of choice for joining wood at 90° angles to each other.

Widget

[GarMan]

I agree that for a piece of furniture like a chair, which experiences high load and lots of movement, dowel joints are not enough. I can also see how JBL's 2397 can have its vanes knocked loose over time if it spends much of its time on the road. Judging from the surface conditions of 2397 I've seen on the used market, they weren't exactly handled with care.

However, most DIY smith horns will end up having a very boring and quiet life at home where glued dowel joints should be sufficient. If fact, I believe that if you have long-grain to long-grain contact between vane and plate, a straight glue-down should be enough for home use.

But then again, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing well. With an engineering background, I see (and have fallen for) the appeal of pushing the boundaries of over-engineering.

It's ironic in some way. The more attention you put into the details of the build, the better you'll treat it in its use, thereby, making all the details less necessary.

gar.