The room I’m going to use to record my voiceovers has a bit of an echo to it. After all, it’s a basement room with no ceiling panels. So I hopped on YouTube and watched a bunch of videos and really felt this one from DIY Perks was the best. https://youtu.be/pABvTWSxOes
Time to get cracking. I asked my wife for some old bath towels which she hesitated to provide until I added that she should get some new ones to replace the old ones. That did the trick. I had six good thick bath towels at my disposal in quick fashion.
I selected 2 that would be the “show face” of the piece and then proceeded to measure them all to come up with the appropriate inside dimensions of my panel frames. I decided I’d just use a nice fairly straight and not too knotty 2 x 4 to make my frames from. If I rip them in half that should make for a nice sturdy frame that I could easily drive staples into to hold my towels in place. I end up with 1.5″ x 1.5″ square frame pieces.
The only concern was how strong do the corner joints need to be? Well, I had made a spline jig a few years back for creating splines in a very large spice rack. Since I had the jig that seemed like the good solution.
The jig is a very simple thing I threw together, but it does the trick nicely so long as I get the piece securely clamped to the jig. It rides along the fence. I just push it through like I would any rip cut I might do.
As you can see in the following image, it can be a bit daunting to cut splines into a large box-like frame. The one shown is actually smaller than the one I made this jig for. It required assistance from my wife when I was cutting the splines in that spice rack. Just to help steady the awkward balance of it when in the jig and on the table saw.
Because these splines I’m adding are only for structure and not to try and look like fancy joinery I was not really careful when making sure the frame corners were always in the jig really well. The result as you’ll see is that some of the splines are not centered on the corner.
I slapped a round-over bit into the router and ran the top outer edger through it then took some sandpaper to it to smooth it all up. Really not spending a lot of time on this project as it is more utilitarian than it is fine furniture.
I then brushed on some water-based poly satin I have and have never liked because it is really hard to work with. It runs like nobody’s business.
After that dried, I got the old staple gun out and stapled 3 bath towels in layers to the inside of the frame. Done and done. Found some old lamp chain and hung it in the room. On to the next one.
And based on my experience making this one I’m going to change to a half-lap joint on the corners for the next one.
I’d be happy to provide dimentions and such, but it really depends on the size of the towels you are working with. Three or more towels per panel is what I think works best. All three need to be a similar size. They can be slightly different and still work but only slightly or you’ll have to trim to match if you have an odd size towel that is bigger than the others.
You will take your measurements from the smallest of the three. That will give you the dimentions you need in order to make up your frame.
I started attaching the towels to the back of the frame first, then the middle towel stapled to about the middle of the frame inside walls. And the last towel shown in the previous image was also stapled to the inside of the frame so that the frame itself will still be visible.
I used clear on this one and the second one I stained first. I actually turned out better. Practice makes perfect?