Speaking of new home made dewshields...

Has anyone here other than myself wanted to add baffling to the inside's of theirs?

I really wanted to do this and was going to use a thin hobby foam cut into circles of the correct diameter. I gave it up when I couldn't decide if it would be harder to lay felt over the baffle rings, or lay the felt and then try to get an accurate diameter for the rings and just paint them flat black.

Doing it the second way, even if you get the diameter correct with the felt installed, how do you glue them in without an overwhelming mess?

I thought about Elmer's around the circumference where I wanted the ring to stop, but I still couldn't get past the inaccuracy of not having the circumference come out correctly because of the compresability of the felt. I felt that I just couldn't get any consistancy with that factor thrown in.

Thoughts from you guys?

Well I've been thinking about this for several days now and decided to give it a try.

I was trying to think of what to use for the baffle material and after digging around on the internet, decided to use foamboard. This comes in several thicknesses and is used for making signage, architectural models, etc. It's made of a polystyrene foam sandwiched between coated posterboard and is 3/16" thick.

I found a 20"x30" piece in black and cut 6 10"x10" squares from it. Then I determined how big the opening in the baffles should be. I didn't use any formula, I just kind of eyeballed it at 7-1/8". After trasfering the outer and inner dimensions via a compass, I first cut out the opening and then cut out the ring. There is much less chance for error and the ring is still a part of the board by cutting the center first and giving you something to hold onto while cutting the ring.

The first baffle was off by a few 64th's so I put the ring back into the square and the center back into the ring and shaved a bit off. After that it fit just fine. This first one I'm using as the template for the others. The second ring turned out perfect. Only four more to go.

I don't have an inside caliper, so I had to use a ruler and take my best guess as to the exact inside diameter of the dewshield with the felt already in place.

The fact that this stuff comes in black eliminates painting and makes for faster completion. I haven't thought about what sort of adhesive or glue to use to permanantely fix these rings in the dewshield but I'll come up with something.

Make sure you change you Exacto blade often depending on what you are using to cut on. It makes for smoother cutting and is less likely to slip or stall in the kerf.