Custom Home Theaters

Custom Built Turntable and Audio and Command CenterProgress Report – Part II

A couple of months ago, I reported on a custom AV furniture project that will house my new turntable and other audio gear.

Actually, this will be two racks and will be “acceptable” to live in our living room. The racks are designed to hold my new turntable and all of the other related audio gear. I am very excited to see the progress of the Turntable and Audio Rack from FLOWbkk. Michael and Valentino are keeping me updated with photos and progress reports.

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A couple of weeks ago, I received an update! The FLOW team had finished cutting all of the shelves for both the Turntable and the CD racks. Each shelf was drawn to size in pencil and sent to me to see. Valentino describes that “when we cut pieces of this size we always cut larger than the necessary size. Then we plane the surface of each piece to the correct thickness before we cut each piece to the exact size.” Before the planning can begin, these very thick slabs need to be air dried for 3-4 days.

The planing process is done on a routing table to level each side as well as remove the excess thickness. The top shelves for the Turntable and CD racks will have a thickness of around 2.5” and the remaining shelves will be 2” thick.

So now all of the shelves have been planed on both surfaces, top and bottom. And the shelves have been sanded and cut to rough size. Rosewood has been acquired for the legs, which will make a beautiful contrast to the Acacia wood of the shelves.

The next steps will be to plane the Rosewood legs and cut the shelves and legs to size. The team is going to make a mock up to show me how the shelves will look based on our dimensions. This will show the correct size and space of each shelf along with the Rosewood legs. I’ll be talking to Michael and Valentino in the next week to discuss the positioning of the legs.

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More to come in Part III.

FLOWbkk is a design based manufacturer of custom made Live Edge furniture located in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

John E. Johnson, Jr.

Editor-in-Chief Emeritus. John E. Johnson, Jr. founded Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity in 1994, shortly after publishing a hardcopy book of the same title. He served as Editor-in-Chief of Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity until 2022. John has been involved in audio and video for more than 50 years, having built radio transmitters, amplifiers, turntables, and speakers from scratch. He was also one of the founders of the Northern California Audio Video Association, now The Bay Area Audio Society. John holds four university degrees, including a Ph.D. in Neuroscience, and has published numerous scientific books, along with dozens of scientific articles on biomedical research topics as well as imaging technology. He was the founder and Editor-in-Chief of two medical/scientific journals for 20 years. John holds several patents, including one on high resolution image analysis and one on a surgical instrument. He has been affiliated with NASA, The National Institutes of Health, The Johns Hopkins University, Stanford Research Institute, and The University of California at Berkeley. He is President of the consulting firm Scientific Design and Information, Inc., which is based in Redwood City, California. John resides in the San Francisco Bay area with his wife and multiple kitties! His daughter, Cynthia, who was an integral part of SECRETS for many years, resides in San Francisco.