[Peter J]

Can't say enough about the "sleep on it" approach. By and large, we hurry too much, methinks, but I guess that's the luxury of being jobless. Seems we have some common ground, fishboat.  I once took a class from David Marks on gilding and chemical patination. I wondered about him when the fires were all around Santa Rosa. Was that last year?

In another thread, you mentioned that you were a polymer chemist. I bet we could have some laughs about "all that glitters is not gold" jargon that adorns things in the woodworking and furniture world, especially finishes. One that I remember to this day was a tag on a piece of furniture that read; "authentic simulated hand-rubbed finish". Yep, you guessed it... old school wood grained vinyl wrap.

I'm enjoying your thread. Been thinking about your edgebanding on the curved surfaces and how I might approach it. Perhaps a big dowel or small roller to follow the hot iron, but you'll get it done, I'm sure.

[fishboat]

Glad you're enjoying things so far Peter. A few hiccups along the way, but I'm managing to mostly land on my feet.

Being jobless is undoubtedly the best job I've ever had. I put in 4-6 hours in the shop if I want to or do something else if I prefer.  Today I'm riding bikes with my significant other and her son. We usually put in a solid 30+ miles. For an older fart..it's enough these days.

About a month ago I finished watching all the 20-21 seasons of the New Yankee Workshop(youtube). It took me about a year, but it was good to see Norm again.  David Marks started putting his shows up on youtube also.  I've been digging into those too.  "Well, let's get started, but first we'll make a jig..."  (it appears the fires never reached Santa Rosa, or thankfully, the Gamble House in Pasadena)

A lot of modern furniture, and even furniture 50 years back, does look pretty, but often when you look under the hood.."Oy!"  One trend that has me scratching my head is the zeal that young woodworkers seem to have as they produce items in the MCM(mid-century-modern) style.   Not a fan here. I understand the design and where it came from, but, still, it's a total yawn for me. Maybe it's due to having grown up on the tail end of the years when that stuff was new.  I really like distressed-looking furniture and make some pieces now and then. When my Mom was still around I'd point out a nice piece we'd see..she didn't care for it, at all. She said she grew up(during the Depression) with pieces that looked like that, as that's all they had.   I digress..

Back to speakers..

Edgebanding..I think I did mention way up on the top of this thread about using wood veneer on the SV's.  That plan has changed over the years.  I agree, edgebanding these curved surfaces would be a trip.  I think where I was at back then was a veneered outer (and inner) face on the sides and black, painted edges.  Where I'm at now is possibly textured black inner parts(baffles & sub boxes) probably Duratex and a Target Coatings satin black lacquer on the inside of the side faces and edges.  On the outside of the sides I'm thinking, don't ask me why but it seems to be sticking, an authentic simulated hand rubbed..laminate.  It is authentic in a sense as laminates (and vinyl wood floors) are actually photographs of the real thing printed on laminate surface.  I've considered many options and I keep coming back to "Sahara Noir".  I think it might look pretty good. It's not locked in yet, but, as I'm quickly running out of parts to build, I'm going to have to really start thinking about finishes and what to do, when.

This is "Sahara Noir"...



...and speaking of gilding and chemical patination(that must have been a great course), I've considered using a patinated copper leaf to accent the edges of just the side panels.  The patination would be subtle, like a copper penny, to match the copper streaks in the Noir.  The edges would accent the black grills rather than having a completely black pillar when viewing from the front. Something like this



I've seen there are some materials that darken copper without going various colors. Maybe you have some thoughts on that. Marks did a lot of great patinations.

[fishboat]

..oh, and new power is in da house!

[Tyson]

Super V is pretty much a perfect match for those 2.  Nice!

[Peter J]

Here's a sample board I saved from that class. IIRC, sodium sulfide is what I used on baffles of X-Otica. That would be top row second from left. Bare copper far right. Purchased from artchemicals.com. Other gilding is Dutch Metal and Silver.

[fishboat]

Cool..very nice, thanks.  Any idea what was done on the very top left corner?

I remember the copper work you did on your speakers.  Looked beautiful.

I've watched a number of videos from Pedulla Studio on u-tube lately and he uses copper leaf in some of his work.  Looks nice. I ordered some and have been looking for some application.  Not sure I'll use it the the SVs..I have to do some trial runs to see how it looks. It'll be after final painting so I really don't want to mess anything up.

[Peter J]

Fortunately, I have a grid on the back identifying what did what to what. Far left top is Copper with Sulfated Potash. A couple of things I might mention with patination and gilding. Patination results are often uneven and somewhat unpredictable, so factor that into design. Also, if the size is too wet when you apply gilding, it will saturate through it and thus seal the top surface and interfere with the patination process. It's not exact science. If one were just clearing over it that wouldn't pose much of a problem, but the chemicals used must contact the actual metal to have an effect.

There are some really pretty laminates out there but unfortunately, in the residential building world at least, they play second fiddle to almost all other countertop materials which means manufacturers don't develop a lot of new stuff for a shrinking market. They still have all the virtues, just not the public appeal. I've used it some for speakers and would again.

[fishboat]

Thanks for your thoughts Peter.  It'll all come down to some experimentation to see what effects I can create and whether it can be repeated(acceptably).   I'll be applying (if I do) the copper leaf to a finished surface.  The last thing I want to do is mess that up as it'll be some work to get it back.

 

[fishboat]

Short day today.

I completed all the threaded insert installs into (wet)epoxied bore holes for both the 2 coax drivers and the 4 subs.  Wiring holes have been laid out and drilled in the sub baffle and sub boxes as needed. A 1/2 inch radius was routered on the rear side of 4 sub mounting holes.  A 3/4 inch radius was routered on the rear side of the coax mounting holes and sanded smooth.

Not too exciting to see.





I'm drafting and planning the fabrication of the footer on the front-bottom of the speakers.  It'll mount into the tapered speaker base with wood dowels or steel or aluminum rods. It won't be weight bearing normally, but it probably should be able to support the speaker in an upright position if needed.  I'll fabricate it now so it can be finished/painted/gilded along with everything else.

This is a rough drawing.  The real thing will be smaller than this, I just want to make a blank big enough that I can pare it down to a final size.

[fishboat]

Still at it.  I've reached the sanding stage..not terribly exciting, but necessary.  I'm sanding, sealing, filling with epoxy, and sanding again to a silky-smooth feel everything that is visible when the speakers are fully assembled. 

I'm coating MDF edges where there are joints with epoxy to seal them up and make them all one, smooth surface.









I'm using the JB Weld Liquid Hardener to seal MDF edges where there is no joint. Apply a liberal coat, sand down, and apply a second, thinner coat, then sand smooth seems to work pretty well.  The MDF is mostly glass smooth after this.  This hardener is a styrene/acrylic emulsion polymer(waterbased) very similar to products I worked with in years past.  It's high solids..I'd guess 55% polymer with the rest being water, mostly.  I'm using Medex(water resistant) MDF.  It'll still absorb water like a sponge if you soak it, but this hardener forms a film  quickly and the MDF doesn't seem to swell when I apply it. The Minwax epoxy filler offers a better seal to the edges I think, but, once mixed, the pot life is brief. The JB Weld hardener is easier to work with and still dries very quickly.  I sand it about 15 minutes after application. I'll still be applying an auto glazing putty on top of this hardener later on, but one step at a time.





Lots of parts, lots of sanding.



And today I started the assembly of all the parts..Sub boxes are attached to the sub baffles by glue and screws.



I'm also starting to dabble with the copper leaf I may be using.  I have a fair amount of experimentation to do to work out a patina that'll look right. I think I'll be using shellac as the leaf-binder.  Everything sticks to shellac so using it will eliminate any issues with the lacquer topcoat I'll be using.  Shellac also can speed up the leaf application process as you lay on a thin coat of shellac and apply the leaf within a minute or two.

I did a little home-chemistry by making up a sodium version of "Liver of Sulfur" (potassium sulfide). Liver of Sulfur is a common material that produces a patina on metals(most often used in the artist-jewelry trade). I made sodium sulfide by mixing 100g water, 25g of lye(sodium hydroxide), and 10g of garden sulfur(used to lower the pH of garden soil).  I had the ingredients around the house, so finally I didn't have to make yet anther run for supplies. 



I'm hoping to mist onto the copper leaf a dilute solution of the sodium sulfide and give it a patina before I apply the leaf to the speaker side edges.  That way I won't be applying a potentially high(er) pH water solution to fresh clear lacquer.  We'll see if it's possible.

(As an aside..a hundred+ years back roofers that installed copper flashing or copper roofs on houses sped up the green copper patina(verdigris) by wiping the copper down with horse or mule urine.  The urine has a high ammonia/nitrogen content and this yields the green patina within a couple hours.  Now days, liquid fertilizer works well and smells better.  I built a cupola years ago and put a copper sheet roof on it..copper sheet is nice material to work with.)

 

[fishboat]

It's summer and lots to do, but making progress.

I've been doing lots of edge-sealing and sanding and yet there's a lot more to do.

With respect to edges, I needed to get the front face of the speaker-base wedges back to 90 degrees.  If you'll remember a while back, the wedges were shaved down to final dimension and 3* angle on the planer.



Now that the wedge-angle is correct, I need the front face to be back to 90* so I can mount the footer that will surround the front of the base.  With standard thickness materials, typically 3/4 inch, this would be easy with a panel-cutting jig.  Unfortunately, my panel cutting jig has a 3/4 inch base and adding that to the thickness of the wedge face, the table saw blade can't be raised high enough to make the cut in one pass.  Soo..make another panel cutting jig. This is a Norm Abram's zero-clearance style jig.  It's a simple thing, but extremely useful for cutting square edges on panels, safely.









I have the coax baffle and crossover base plate mounted on the sub-baffle assembly.



I mounted the coax baffle with the crossover baseplate being a little proud of the face of the baffle. It's much easier to mount the edge proud and trim it flush with a router flush-trim bit than to try to get the two edges aligned perfectly and then attach the baffle, while they stay perfectly aligned.  Another way to attach the edges in perfect alignment is to use loose tenon-mortises and good technique to make them.  The path I used is faster.  Once I hit it with a flush trim bit, it's ready for sanding, sealing with epoxy filler, and a little more sanding.



When mounting the x-over baseplate & coax baffle assembly on top of the top sub-box, I made sure the front edge-face of the coax baffle was in the same plane as the lower sub-box edges. This is part of the plan and necessary if a one-piece grill is attached to the speaker later on.

All the MDF components that make up the internal assembly of each speaker, that have a speaker-width dimension, were cut on the table saw at the same time with the same saw setup.  This is standard-practice in cabinet building (in the era prior to pre-CNC cut flatpacks).  While this may seem trivial and common sense, if one reads woodworking forums, common sense is sometimes not so common.  In this case, the widths of all internal components are exactly 13 inches. The payoff is everything fits perfectly later on during assembly.  It's paying off well at the moment. The drawing below shows all the components having the 13 inch width.



..and with the x-over baseplate & coax baffle mounted to the subwoofer-baffle assembly, it was time to get an idea of how the whole speaker will come together.  This is the first dry-fit of all the pieces.



Gotta love it when a plan comes together..whew, it fits..correctly(yay).



Nearly 13 years have passed between making the speaker-sides drawing, and subsequent 1:1 template file, and now matching the actual speaker sides to the internal case of the speakers.  In this time I lost the ability to make changes to the 1:1 template file(it only existed as a PDF file in my computer)..meanwhile, a number of changes were being made to the internal case components in Sketchup.  There were quite a few opportunities for the internal case assembly and the speaker sides-fit to diverge without me being aware of it.  To be honest, I'm (perhaps more than) moderately surprised things are fitting together as they should. 

Now that I have an accurate dry-fit assembly, I can take some measurements and notes on where to do some routering on edges. It also allows me to figure out how/where to attach the sides to the inner assembly. I plan to do a healthy chamfer on the inside edge of the speaker-side humps on each side of the coax driver.  It's hard to explain, but I'd like to do a non-linear chamfer(chamfer grows in width as the hump becomes greater).  I haven't figured out how I'm going to do that yet(haven't really thought about it), but I couldn't figure out where to start and stop the chamfer until I had this dry-fit together.   As it turns out, I could have figured out the start-stop points  from the Sketchup model, as the real fit seems to match the model well.  Who knew?  ..but there ain't nuthin' like the real thing.  Undoubtedly, I'll be making another jig to do this.





I also need to make the grill frames. This dry fit helps considerably with that effort as I can make them to fit the space rather than make them to a drawing dimension(making pieces with a critical fit to a planned dimension as opposed to making them to fit can cause surprises. Making to fit is safer).  I'll also need to chamfer the inside edges of the grill frame around the coax area. The frame could get very frail in that area as there just isn't much room to work with.  I may have to reinforce this area with fiberglass cloth and boat epxoy.

Grill frame model



The frame width is either 3/4 or 1/2 inch.  Thickness is 1/2 inch.  The pieces will be assembled with half-lap joints.  The grills themselves will be attached with magnets.  Please, if anyone has a better suggestion on the dimension or plan..feel free to speak up. 

This is a chunk of clear white oak I've been sitting on for..I don't know..a decade+.  The grill frames are in there.



While I'm familiar with cutting wood, I've not made a set of speakers previously, nor done this much work with MDF.  I find myself sitting down and staring at the drawings, or now the dry fit assembly, and wondering.."OK..now what?"  Of course, being a somewhat old fart, sitting down in the shop, starring into space, and listening to music isn't bad either.

[fishboat]

Also, on a separate note, I've been tinkering with the copper leaf and Liver of Sulfur solution I made up.  I continue to be concerned about gilding the edges of the speaker sides, that, at that point, will have the finish coats of black lacquer and one or two coats of clear lacquer on them.  To limit the risk of damaging the final finish work that was so hard-won, by applying shellac as the foil-binder and then the copper patination steps that would follow,  I was considering a technique of misting the sulfur solution on to the copper foil before binding the foil to the speaker edge. If that worked, then applying the foil to the edges and sealing the patinated foil with another coat or two of clear lacquer would be a short(er) putt(?).

Well, no surprise I guess, but trying to properly patinate the foil before binding it to a surface..isn't going to work.  The misting part is easy with the right sprayer(there's many on amazon), but the foil itself is already very fragile.  The sulfur solution weakens the foil further and makes application to a surface pretty tough...to do well.  With more effort it may be possible, but I'm beginning to think the patinated copper is a great option, but in this particular application it isn't worth the risk to a continuous, final finished edge.  If the edge was a separate component, like a separate speaker baffle, as seen here in the past(that Peter J does so well),  it would be completely different.  If I messed up the completed, final finish on the face (or edge, and there's a lot of edges to do) of the speaker sides by trying to to the copper leaf, it would be a long and not fun path to fix the damage.  I'm only wanting a old-penny type patination-color to accent the edges, extra color in the patination, in this case, wouldn't look right. 

I guess, by sitting down and thinking about this more, I'm talking myself out of the copper foil.

BUT..there may be another option.  I've ordered some "Spanish copper" gilding wax that should be easier to work with in this application and more controllable. This path may, or may not, work.  If not, I'll figure something else out.

[fishboat]

Spent some time figuring out how to cut the chamfer on the inside edges of the coax area side panels.

After trying a couple power tool approaches and not liking either the cut accuracy, or control, or both, I remembered a smaller jig I made a few months back to do a somewhat similar cut on a small box (dog urn actually) using a spokeshave.  After looking at it a bit I figured if I scaled it up to a larger version it might work.  So, I did just that and it did work quite well in terms of the quality of the cut and it offered very good control. I can even round the chamfer if I choose to.  If you hold the plane at about 45 degrees to the cut path, the base of the plane rides on the upper and lower 45* cut 2x4s and you only cut the MDF. 

This is the jig



and a finished trial cut, though it's a little hard to see.





I spent the rest of the day starting the dry fit assembly of the left speaker and sharpening a couple block planes.  Glad I figured out a good way to do this chamfer. The chamfer was a must do cut..in my mind at least.

[fishboat]

Got the left side speaker dry fit and the sides aligned.  Everything is fitting as it should.  So happy about that.



I spent a fair amount of time getting EVERY mating surface and edge as flush-aligned as possible on both speakers.  Where all the pieces are now is where they'll be in the final assembly.  I then drilled 5/16 inch holes in the four sides (mated with the speaker sides) of the sub boxes and inserted dowels in all the holes.  I'll glue the dowels into the insides of the sub boxes and leave about 1/4-3/8ths inch of the plugs sticking out the (outer) faces.  This should ensure the alignment I have now when I reassemble things after painting.

I also completed the footers, for the moment at least. I still may tweak them a bit, we'll see. I started with 3x3x22 inch blocks of glued together MDF and pared them down into their final size/shape.