I had visions of this extremely heavy 3’ long x 2’ diameter barrel that probably weighed 20 kilos flying off the lathe and knocking a hole through the wall. Alan was looking pretty nervous at first whilst getting the initial passes with the gouge done.
Anyway he managed to produce a pair of beautiful Tom-Toms on the hybrid lathe that the Yankee Workshop would be proud of.
After a lot of measuring and nervous whittling, they eventually fitted in the jeep and we got a proper idea of what the finished thing would look like.
The project was well into its fourth month at this stage and we were all getting a bit bogged down with it. The Tom-Tom’s appearance re-invigorated the project and we pushed on keen to see the job finished so we could hear it properly. Whilst Alan was finishing the lacquering, we started experimenting with lighting. Neons would have been good, but they are a bit over the top in a confined space and are noisy electrically, that would probably have produced a buzz over system. We started playing around with Diodes in clear plastic tubing, this worked a treat. Kerry started making up loads of tubes with inwards facing diodes in each end. We mounted these around the inside of the cabinet just out of view. The effect is this red and blue light that makes the amps etc look as though they are floating. Very cheap and very effective and surprisingly, not as tacky as you might think. We also built a few miniature diode spotlamps by putting the diode inside some black nylon tube. This enabled us to light up specific areas without have an obvious light source. All in all it worked out well. Alan built up a neat console in the rear centre of the cabinet which houses the CD changer and the Navigation DVD unit. It was then a case of styling the front and rear doors of the cabinet. I had fancied doing an American-Indian sort of theme for some time and as the vehicle is a Grand Cherokee, the theme was entirely appropriate.
We decided to hint at some of the Totem pole styles. The windows in the cabinet would hint at the wings of a Thunderbird, the Square locker on top of the cabinet (that houses the headphones) hints at the face with 2 large square eyes where the headphones live on charge.
Once we had these as a design cue, all the other panels followed suit. We fitted stainless steel mesh around the lower areas of the cabinet where the fans are located. Eventually it all came together and the fabrication side was complete.
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