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Project 08Furniture

Mini Hi-Fi Rack

My hi-fi setup is a Marantz PM6006 amplifier and KEF Q150 speakers. To bring this relatively old system into the modern era and give it a little upgrade I did two things. First, I added a Topping D10s, which gives a slightly better result. Second, a Raspberry Pi running Volumio, and that one is a game changer: it streams lossless from Spotify Connect and every other service you might need, and it plays local files in lossless format too.

Add to those two components a retro gaming machine, a Raspberry Pi 4 with RetroPie installed, and my TV stand ended up a bit messy. So I decided to build a small hi-fi rack for my small gadgets.

Enquire about this piece↗ Made to order · Greece only
Mini Hi-Fi Rack, ready in the sun
Materials
WalnutGalvanized bolts and nuts
Dimensions
28 × 16 × 15 cm
Time spent
2 days
Finish
Two coats of clear varnish

The Process

A planed walnut board on the workbench next to offcuts and a length of maple
01 · The slab for our mini hi-fi rack.
Four walnut shelves cut to size with a hole drilled at each corner, laid out on the bench
02 · All the wooden pieces cut and drilled.
Small black door knobs screwed to the underside of the bottom shelf to act as feet
03 · Door knobs as legs, patent pending.
A blowtorch flame burning the zinc coating off a length of threaded rod
04 · Removing the galvanised coating, not the best thing to do.
A wire brush scrubbing the burnt coating off the threaded rod
05 · Second step of degalvanisation.
A row of nuts threaded onto a rod held in a vice, heated with a blowtorch
06 · Removing the galvanised coating from the nuts.
The assembled rack on the workbench with the DAC, the streamer and the Raspberry Pi in place
07 · Assembly and test setup.

Tips &
Tricks

Not much here, this is one of the easiest projects we have made so far. Two things are still worth knowing before you start.

  1. 01

    Burning off a galvanized coating is toxic

    You can strip the zinc from galvanized hardware with a torch, heating the metal until the coating burns or melts off. It works, but it releases zinc oxide fumes. Wear a mask and leave the room afterwards. Keep it to small parts like bolts and nuts, and do not try it on larger pieces of metal.

  2. 02

    Measure against the actual gear

    Bring the real components to the bench and fit them before settling on any dimension. Then add extra room on top, because cable management takes more space than the boxes do.

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