Projects: Oak Speaker Stands with CD Storage

     Projects: Oak Speaker Stands, with CD Storage

Another all original design by none other than myself.

Design Goal: By woodworking, create an elegant way to properly support speakers, and store compact disks for easy access.

Reason: I just couldn't find decent speaker stands or CD holders that were of high quality. Many commercial units are poorly constructed. Typically made of particle board substrate, or extrusion metal pieces, or pipe. I found a few made from pine, and one of oak, but even they were poorly made, and didn't have cd holding capability or built in speaker wire. In addition, nearly all were overpriced and imported from non-democratic nations. I guess people just don't want to pay for quality.

Design and Engineering: Oak will be used for the pillars and birch veneer plywood with oak trim for the top and bottom. Also, oak trim on the oak (more on this, read on). Pillar supports will be 5 inches apart to accommodate the width of CDs. CD disks will rest between pillar elements supported by acrylic slats at 15 degree angles to not only better see CD titles (tiled up), but keep CDs from falling out via gravity. Space for at least 50 CDs per stand. A third pillar is needed to prevent CDs from falling though because of the 15 degree angle, to hide speaker wire, add stability and additional strength to the assembly. All major joints are doweled with 3 3/" dowels in each pillar side and one on the CD pillar stop. Trim is butt glued to the edges of wood. The bottom plate piece is made larger than top to increase tipping angle, which is about 40 degrees. Bottom plate has feet to prevent speaker wire from becoming crushed and destabilizing the stand. The top plate has extra coats of polyurethane to prevent wear.

Materials: I used red oak everywhere except the top and bottom plates. The top and bottom plates are 3/4" plywood with birch veneer, but could be any veneer on plywood you wish (I had birch laying around from previous projects). Slats are clear acrylic, and would be even nicer if you can find tinted (smoked) acrylic. Wire is high quality speaker wire 14-2, clear. Hardwood 3/8 dowels hold the thing together. Finish is wipe on poly by Minwax. I used screw adjustable furniture feet as a base, but would recommend getting speaker spikes (conical daggers that point down to hold up your stand on needle points).

Major Tools Used: Small 10" Table Saw, 10" sliding miter saw, drill press, hand drill, buffer/grinder.

It all started well. I bought a project grade red oak plank, ripped it to 3.5 inches wide then cut it to the 35" length to end up with 4 pillars for 2 stands. The big challenge, to cut over 50 slots in these planks at 15 degree angles and exactly the same distance apart. Plus, the slots need to be a mirror image of each other on each pillar and perfectly lined up. This is not an easy task. I designed ingenious alignment jig as well as free hand methods on scrap wood, but couldn't get acceptable results. This killed the ingenious idea. See following pictures:

Scrap wood trials, not acceptable, slots could not be made to line up. Also as you see in the first picture, probably dangerous as well.

So, the method I finally came up with was to paste paper drawing printouts generated by my computer autocad program directly to the surface of the wood. Using 1 to 1 scale this gave me a pattern of where exactly to make the cuts. See the drawings. Sawing directly over the patterns yielded 4 perfectly slotted pillars. Slots were cut using a sliding compound miter saw set to 15 degrees and the 1/4 depth adjustment to repeat the same depth over and over. It is very important to have a blade width to cut exactly 1/8 width slots. This way when you get 1/8 thick plastic it will slide and fit into the slots.

Paper pattern generated by autocad and a good printer glued sticked to surface of plank The result, perfect even slots. A must or the plastic slats won't line up.

Next major problem, as you cut these slots, the wood will warp like a banana!   I thought "oh NO, all that nice oak ruined" Back to the drawing board (computer). Only solution was to make 1/4" oak trim to attach to both edges of the pillars, this would also keep the slats from falling out, and make the edges look much nicer anyway. Edging was planned anyway, but I originally thought I could use 1/16, but 1/4 inch looks much better anyway. Of coarse this required a jig to glue on, but I also needed one to drill holes for the dowels. So the jig will be used for both holding the wood flat for gluing edges, and for vertical drilling for dowels. After gluing the edges, the pillars were still warped a little, but much better. Once assembled, there would be zero warping. Another problem solved.

Clamping of edges. Planks had warped badly, so had to clamp to solid 3/4 plywood to straiten them out to glue on oak edging. Close up of gluing. Hint, use masking tape on jig where edges are glued to prevent gluing pillar part to jig!

Before applying the edges it was best to drill the holes for the dowels. I decided to use 3 dowels per side. Drilling the holes perfectly so everything lines up is critical. I highly recommend using a dowelmax jig which I do not own, and didn't use on this project. I made my own jig which kind of worked. It was hard, and the jig took me 2 weekends to complete, and was the same jig also seen above for gluing the warped pillars. You must use a drill press or the dowel holes will not be strait. See the pictures:

Jig loaded with pillar work. Note the 3 3/8" holes in the jig at the top. To use just line the drill bit up to the hole and drill with out scuffing hole, or jig will be useless. Do on both ends of pillar. A distance shot of the entire operation. Notice how I used such a small drill press then turned it around 90 degrees to drill into the plank. It wasn't too stable, but good enough with the jig holding the work.

Time to drill holes in the end plates. Learning from the pattern idea used to make the slots, I did the same to drill the holes on the top and bottom pieces. This worked very well. I used a sharp object to press pin holes into the wood when the pattern was on it. removed the pattern and drilled the holes with a 3/8 brad point drill bit on the drill press. Use a brad point bit, and drill only half way, then switch to a regular bit.   If you don't have a brad point, buy one. The drill press is a must too, as to drill all the way though the plywood would be bad, as well as not getting strait 90 degree angles on the holes.

Best to use 11x17 paper if you have such a printer. Mine is only 8.5x11 and I had to carefully line it up to the corner and edges. This is critical, or your holes will be drill in the wrong places! The drawing contains centering and registration marks just for this (the red lines). Remember drawings are 1:10 you will need 1:1 to print any patterns. Many programs scale, if not email me. Using a sharp scribe to mark the centers and perimeter of the holes to be drill. Before drilling remove the pattern. Drill with a brad point drill about 1/2, then switch to a normal drill to prevent drilling though to the other side of the piece.

Cutting the edging for the plywood top and bottom are strait forward, and I used the miter saw for this. I used oak cabinet moldings which already have a nice contour and thickness.

From another oak plank I cut the center cd stop pillars which is two pieces. Using the table saw, I cut a lengthwise groove down (not on the drawings) the center to contain the speaker wire.   Also a notch at the top to the wire could escape, and a drilled a hole in the bottom plate for the wire to come out to the amp unit.

Before final assembly I sanded, stained, and finished all pieces with Minwax wipe on poly. After finish dried I polished it (rubbed out) on the two top and bottom plates, after about 3 coats.

I then cut the acrylic plastic slats for holding the CDs. This is a lot of work since there were so many (I think like 120 I made) to cut.. It would have been best to use a special blade just for cutting acrylics, which I did not use. So, I had to buff the edges (all 240 edges) to get them smooth. Then had wash the pieces as well. This took like a month.

I assembled the pillar units first. The edges were already glued on but the slats had to still go in. To do this the pillars were angled about 45 degrees. I then inserted the slats one by one at the corners. Once they were all in I installed the center brace (needed to also help with warp, and keeps slats from popping out). This requires glue, so be careful. Next I brought the two pillars to vertical parallel to each other. This has to be done with much care or the plastic slats with pop out of place and you will have to start all over again. Remember once you add glue, there's no going back. Sounds hard, but wasn't too hard.

Now to install the top and bottom plates. Also glued the center support together. I checked dowels for fit, and assembled. Have to remember to route that wire!

Stands all finished ready for speakers and CDs Notice the hidden wire, which goes though the center support.

If you would like to build this stand yourself download the scaled 1:10 drawings Autocad dwf or Acrobat PDF (adobe).

Email me for tips and additional information.

Email:Sorry it's a graphic so you can't click on it. This is to prevent spam mail. ( Note: it's an underscore then the letter "o", and not a zero, then another underscore.)

Feel free to use these plans for your own stand. I take no responsibility or liability for the content of this web site and drawings, use at your own risk. All information is presented here is honest, true, in good faith, and to the best of my abilities. These plans are NOT to be sold anywhere, and in the public domain. Mass production of this stand is prohibited (unless you go though me :) If you post this information to your own web site, please give me credit.

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Last updated: March 30, 2008

Scrap wood trials, not acceptable, slots could not be made to line up. Also as you see in the first picture, probably dangerous as well.

Paper pattern generated by autocad and a good printer glued sticked to surface of plank	The result, perfect even slots. A must or the plastic slats won't line up.

Clamping of edges. Planks had warped badly, so had to clamp to solid 3/4 plywood to straiten them out to glue on oak edging.	Close up of gluing. Hint, use masking tape on jig where edges are glued to prevent gluing pillar part to jig!

Jig loaded with pillar work. Note the 3 3/8" holes in the jig at the top. To use just line the drill bit up to the hole and drill with out scuffing hole, or jig will be useless. Do on both ends of pillar.	A distance shot of the entire operation. Notice how I used such a small drill press then turned it around 90 degrees to drill into the plank. It wasn't too stable, but good enough with the jig holding the work.

Best to use 11x17 paper if you have such a printer. Mine is only 8.5x11 and I had to carefully line it up to the corner and edges. This is critical, or your holes will be drill in the wrong places! The drawing contains centering and registration marks just for this (the red lines). Remember drawings are 1:10 you will need 1:1 to print any patterns. Many programs scale, if not email me.	Using a sharp scribe to mark the centers and perimeter of the holes to be drill. Before drilling remove the pattern. Drill with a brad point drill about 1/2, then switch to a normal drill to prevent drilling though to the other side of the piece.

Stands all finished ready for speakers and CDs	Notice the hidden wire, which goes though the center support.