We just recieved these from our customer who built them over seas.
Customers info he had sent with the photos.
Here are some details on the APEX built process:
"I've used MDF (the newer kind that does not have the harmful chemicals), than i went to veneer supplier of rare and less rare veneers and discovered this beautiful veneer called Zebrano and purchased it. It comes in sort of long and narrow formats. Right there we cut the veneer in very large veneer cutter (approx. 8 feet long)
than with a veneer sewing machine we sewn all veneer pieces together, but since i am industrial designer i always experimenting, i decided to put wood grain
horizontally and that looked to me about 1000 times more interesting than the vertical orientation (usual).
than we used large press to adhere veneer to MDF properly with water based glue (it was very quick, it takes 17 minutes from the point of putting veneer on the mdf board to completely cured state)
and than we CNC'd parts and assembled the boxes. assembling took little more time than expected, about 6 days.
than i used (satin - semi matt) urethane based clear coat that gives very natural look of the veneer. I wanted to be able to enjoy the natural wood texture and grain, this finish my friend who helped me calls "10 percent" , we did 2 + 1/2 coats (1/2 meaning we fixed some minor imperfections).
for the front baffle, I've used high quality car paint, from the system called Akzo Nobel. It is a special formulation that I requested based on a very dark gray/black/blue pigment by having the black pigment being a driver and than adding some fine metalic flake additive to give it a little spark and depth but not too much, this is very tricky and you need to experiment to get it just right and also being careful not to create to artificial finish since you have the rest of the box done in natural wood.
No clear coat was added afterwards since the paint is very durable and resistant. I sprayed them from some distance with higher pressure and less paint coming from the spray gun, to achieve fine matt texture.
that was pretty much all in short. I hope that you will like the finished boxes. what about the speaker sound?
well... I have never owned such a quality speaker, lets put it that way. Thank you very much Al W. and thank you very much Dan W. for enabling interested ones to built and own such a high end musical instruments. it was a pleasure to work on this project and every moment is well worth. But be careful, it is not an easy speaker to do."
Best Regards,
branko
Thanks for the great pictures Branko you did a very nice job.
