5E3 Lunchbox Head Continued

I’ve been dragging my feet to get started with my 5E3 head build. I finally put in a few orders with Valvestorm and Mouser to get the last few jacks and tube sockets needed for my 5E3 lunchbox amp. I had about an hour to get as much of the tedious drilling done.

Preparing the chassis with my layout.

I committed to my layout and started drilling into the Hammond aluminum chassis. I immediately drilled the board mounting holes to make sure that I did not blow my measurements of the turret board. The board appeared to be laid out in metric units, while my layout was drafted in imperial units. My previous mounting hole layout was off by 1/32” for one of the turret board holes. I was fortunate to have a good fit when I committed to drilling.

Checking the turret board’s fit.

I moved onto punching the octal tube sockets with my Greenlee 1-3/16” hole punch, which went smoothly. By the end of the hour, I had drilled the pilot holes to punch the preamp tube sockets.

Punching the rectifier and power tube sockets.

I plan on finishing the preamp tube socket work next time. The top of the chassis has roughly the same amount of work as the front and rear panels combined. I am not looking forward to the Powercon drilling, since my punch (1-3/16”) is slightly bigger than the recommended connector hole diameter (1-1/8”). The holes for the mounting screws can get a bit too close to the connector hole, as it did on my Plexi build.

Edit - 10/22/21 - I haven't had access to an environment conducive to drilling for a while. I finished drilling the top and the rear sides of the chassis today. I was rushing through the process and made one of the output transformer mounting holes too large, which will have to be remedied with some additional washers. Drilling by hand went smoothly for the most part. The PowerCon chassis hole didn't turn out as well as I had hoped, but will be usable.

Top of drilled chassis,

Drilled hole for PowerCon connector.

I will need about half an hour to drill the front panel. Then the fun part comes with component mounting, and later the anxiety-inducing step of soldering.

To be continued.