Shelf Material

I don't know much about youngs nautilus or caterham's, but i do know kevin from muse is pretty smart and his post reminds me of what we joiner's, (that's cabinetmakers to you) call the torsion box. To create a dead flat work surface, you take 2 layers ofsheet goods, mdf, ply, osb, etc and join them with accurately cut strips of the material. Pin and glue the strips to both layers so you wind up with a "shelf that's as thick as the two layers plus the width of the joining material. I'm thinking of 2 pieces of mdf, 3/4 X 30 X18 with 3/4 mdf cut very accurately to 18 X 2. 6 pieces spaced 6" apart would be good and the voids between them could be filled with sand or marmalade or whatever damping material you like prior to glue-up. The resulting box would be 30 X 18 X 3 1/2, incredibly stiff, and dead flat. You could trim it out with your sitka spruce, kevin. Remember coming to my place in florida, giving up on grounding and sheilding away the hum in my muse one pre-amp and sending me another with a whole new internal grounding system? You are the man!

Give that man a cigar! :^) Neuance has been described as a "Box filled with custard". This, of course, is not perfectly accurate as I prefer firm meringues instead. ;^) Best, Ken

At the risk of asking a really dumb question........I am not familiar with Corian. How does it compare to Formica (over MDF) as used here in the USA for counter tops etc? Thanks. Craig

Corian is available, mainly by catalogue and online in what dupont calls "hobbyist sizes". Dupont actually licenses fabricators, going to their shops and determining if they have the expertise to fabricate and install. It is sold through home centers only on an installed basis. Check the back of Fine woodworking, etc. for ads. As it is an acrylic based material in 1/2" thick sheets, there is no way it would span 24" with a load of 30lbs or more and not sag or even break. As a countertop it is bonded to 3/4 particle board. When the combination of corian and particle board is extended more than 10" beyond a cabinet side, for example as a breakfast bar, the fabricator is required to furnish supports at a minimum of 24" spacing. You may be able to purchase suitable sized pieces from a fabricator, just as you would buy small pieces of granite or marble, but keep in mind the necessity for the use of a substrate, the particle board. Working corian requires carbide tipped tooling for the router of at least 2 1/2 h.p. and the tablesaw, at least 5 h.p. The material safety data sheets stress the use of dust masks and dust control in confined (indoors) spaces; it makes a hell of a mess, extremely fine dust. At one time a dealer friend of mine was using corian as a replacement deck for the vpi hw-19 table with the encouragement of harry weisfeld, i.e., harry was selling him parts. The sound was awesome.

My understanding is that Corian is made of very dense acrylic polymer. It is a good deal heavier, harder and more rigid than perspex, and comes standard in 12mm thick sheets. I am spanning about 19 inches supporting a 40 lb CD Transport and there is NO sign of any bend in it whatsover - and this includes when I support the front of the Transport with a centrally located footer. I have played some more and tried damping the Corian. This means using cones is now best for footers. But I am not sure the sound is significantly better, just different. I do not want to hype Corian, but I probably have. It is certainly not ideal, I am just having fun exploring its capabilities and I am getting some good results. I am beginning to feel it has some of the characteristics of sand boxes - terrific firmness, extension and articulation in the bass, but a slight deadness creeps into the mids and highs - a slight absence of presence - hence whay I am feeling the need to play around with ways to remove the mid-band resonance with damping, either direct or by way of footer. Corian is used as a CD puck in CEC belt-drive turntables, and also as part of the cabinets in some very expensive speaker systems (eg. Pipedreams). I would only rate it 7 out of 10 for a shelf material, but better than anything I have yet tried. I would rate the suspension idea as more like 9 out of 10 so far.