A few months back, Frank VanAlstine, who already had a pair of our HT3's, needed another pair of speakers for his living room. He ordered a very special pair of V3's to be done in macassar ebony with solid walnut, full-length front baffles.
He also wanted the front baffles rubbed out to high gloss.
Since it didn't really make sense to rub out part of a cabinet, I decided to rub out both cabinets in total.
A friend of mine purchased speakers at about the same time. He is a high-end finisher and was going to do his own finishing. He was going to shoot his cabinets in polyester and rub them out. He offered to shoot a pair for me at the same time. I thought this would be a good opportunity to try out polyester and Frank's pair would be the next I would rub out. So I took him up on it.
For those unfamiliar with finishes, polyester is the hardest, clearest, most scratch-resistant and durable finish available today. But it is very hard to work with.
First, it is quite dangerous. You must mix 2% catalyst and 2% accelerator with the polyester resin. But you must do so in the correct order or you will have an explosion that releases toxic fumes. Second, you only have a short time to shoot the material before it hardens in the gun (ruining the gun). Third, because it is so hard, it takes A LOT of work to rub it out.
But if you put up with these challenges, you are amply rewarded. It is an absolutely crystal clear finish that is like a window into the wood, it will never yellow and is the hardest, most scratch resistant finish there is.
It is always hard to shoot pictures of speakers with hand-rubbed finishes, but here are some pictures of the resulting V3's...
And a close-up...
Frank was going to pick up these speakers when he came to Detroit for AKFest. But when he got there and saw my Pal Dao HT3's, he just had to have them instead.
So now these V3's sit in my home and will eventually be sold (unless I decide I just can't part with the polyester finish).
- Jim
