Lots going on this week. First, I fabricated my first custom part, which I’m dubbing Photon Torpedo Tube #1.

The wake board “bullet can” housing is made by Rockville out of polished aluminum. The speaker is a Sony 6.5″ Marine 2-Way. The problem is, they didn’t fit. It turns out all 6.5″ speakers are not created equal. Some are considered undersized, like the stylish ones I insist on using.

So, I wound up having that red adapter ring made at TAP Plastics in Tigard. What a godsend they are. They’ll be doing more work for me. 

The ring is 1/4″ thick acrylic, with an outer diameter of 7″ and an inner cutout at a 5″ diameter. The outer edges are polished smooth.

The trick here was to carefully mark and drill two sets of four holes. The first set has to be countersunk so that the machine screw heads don’t protrude into the speaker mount. Once the ring was attached to the can, I repeated the process for the speaker using the screws that came with it.

The hardest part was working delicately with hand tools, with drill bits that tend to wander. I do have a Dremel tool but wound up just using my drill/driver because I did had to punch through the aluminum lip at just the right diameter and depth, with some force. This would have been much easier with a drill press.

The result is fantastic. I basically turned $135 worth of parts into custom piece of retro art. Now I’ll just repeat this process three more times to cover every corner of the Scenario Mobile.

The speaker cans came with fancy round bracket clamps, which I plan to secure on 2″ stainless steel rods.

Next up, I received my “glove box” today. It’s actually a gun safe with a biometric fingerprint reader, made by Verifi.

It seems to work great and after a bunch of research, it was the best fit for the space next to my engine cowl.

I’ll be returning to TAP Plastics tomorrow to cut four pieces of marine King Starboard. This is the same stuff boats and yachts are outfitted with, so you know it’s durable. You can use common woodworking tools on it, but it doesn’t warp or splinter like wood.

Here’s my design for the combination “front desk” and secure storage:

I’ll screw the enclosure together and then bolt the safe into place so it can’t be stolen. The whole assembly will be heavy, but I should be able to unsecure it and lift it off the support brackets to open the engine cowl.