Faux painting for speaker cabs

NeilGabriel

The link below is for faux painting mahogany...and you can find many sites where the technique can create almost any type of wood grain. A friend is incredible at this.

Any reason this could not be used when refinishing cabs?


http://www.faux-painting-techniques.com/mahogany_graining.html

strider

Doesn't resist chips as well as real wood, sometimes it's easier to apply the final coat to a real wood surface as well.

My wife fauxed my speakers in a rosewood type finish, I think they look pretty good. There are pictures around the forum, lemme find them for you.

Here's a link to the speakers I built:

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=74618

NeilGabriel

Very cool. are those the speakers your wife did? I would think that when not working with real wood, or thin veneer, this technique would work. I found a website a while back where they recreated the grain of nearly every kind of wood....some very exotic....

(I should know by now, what are the Polks in the background?)

strider

Yep, those are the ones my wife painted. She painted them to match the work she did on my equipment rack. I'm still very happy with how they turned out.

It was a lot more steps then I thought, a few coats of primer first, then the different layers of color to make up the wood grain. I tried to acheive a piano gloss finish on them with a brush, which was a real PITA. Several coats of lacquer, followed by sanding starting at 320 grit, then 600, and wet sanding with 1000 then 2000. Rubbing compound followed by polish then carnuba wax and a buff for the final step. There's a great thread on diyaudio.com on the process.

Despite the multiple layers of paint, I've found the finish to chip down to the white primer fairly easily.

The Polks in the background are a pair of SDA 2B.

NeilGabriel

You get tendonitis?