DIY Acoustic Gobo Construction
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DIY Acoustic Gobo Panels |
How To Build Gobo Panels Materials that I used to build these go-betweens
Tools that I used for this project
Inspired by the excellent resource of John Sayers Forum. Keep in mind that I'm sure there are many ways to build gobos, this is just one method that I used. The overall height of the gobo can vary greatly to your specific requirements, for my uses I preferred to keep the box to 2x4 as my ceiling tiles and MDF board already came that size. Also I plan to build two of these modules for greater stacking flexibilites. This is basically a 2x4, two sided box with (2) layers of ceiling tile on each side. I decided to go with 1x10 boards instead of 1x8's because of the overall width required would have made the insulation pertrude beyond the edges. First, get your 1x10x8 board and cut into (2) 4'-0" pieces. Then get your 1x10x6 and cut into (2) 2'-1/2" pieces. Sand your pieces nice to get any miscellaneous burs out of the way.I chose to then stain my sections and apply polyurethanet. Let them dry. Next, get your pine boards and mark their centers somewhere close to the edges as this will help you get your MDF board exactly in the center. Also mark the centers of your drill holes along the outside of the pine boards. Once you have them marked up, get some wood glue on the edge of your MDF board, use the center marks on your pine board and set into place. Once you're all centered up, pre-drill some screw holes along your marked centered drill locations and and even into the MDF a little. Now run a scew in there. The board is now at least semistable enough to check to see if you're centered on the other end. Apply this method to the rest of the (3) panels. In the end, I rain a couple more screws in the joints where the pine boards met.
Before and after shots of polyurethane application I chose not to use the standard Owens Corning 703 because I really didn't feel like shelling out 80 bucks for a case of (6) when I have unlimited access to ceiling tile. Let me tell you about this ceiling tile - This ceiling tile is Capaul Commercial Grade, 2x4, 2" medium density fiberglass. It has a NRC of 1.0. I don't know the complete range of sound attenuation specs on it but it's working pretty darn good for me right now. It came with the laminated skins on it which I peeled off.
Once the pine board box and MDF in the middle is all glued and screwed into place, then we can simply drop in the the (2) 2" layers of rigid fiberglass into each side of the box. Get out your muslin (or equiv., already cut to dimensions that will cover 2x4 with a couple extra inches on each side) and carefully encase the exposed fiberglass to the inside edges of the frame using a basic stapler. Alternately you could build exactly 1/2 of this box and acheive good results - one side absorbing the other reflecting. A small detail of this is shown in below.
That's pretty much it! With all of the tools and materials it should take you about 2 hours to build (not including wood staining & polyurethane) These are little on the heavy side, 48 lbs., and were really meant for me to minimize mic bleed between (2) musicians who wanted to remain relatively close to one another. I had thought about putting a chamfer on the pine edges but decided against as I did not want to risk the edges breaking off, pine is pretty soft.. |
