Hi. New member here. I am getting ready to veneer a pair of JBL speakers. Looking at using a black walnut. I plan on coating the existing cabinet with a waterbased contact cement and then going over with a PSA veneer. I have seen awesome results. A few questions for the seasoned vets..
1. Quartered is the most affordable of the veneers. Will this be boring or offer up enough interest in grain? Flat cut is another option and affordable. Figured and others continues to drive the cost up.
2. Is is advisable to wrap continuously or do it side by side? I've only seen examples of side by side.
Thanks in advance.
1. Quartered is the most affordable of the veneers. Will this be boring or offer up enough interest in grain? Flat cut is another option and affordable. Figured and others continues to drive the cost up.
2. Is is advisable to wrap continuously or do it side by side? I've only seen examples of side by side.
Thanks in advance.
If it’s not too late, I’d recommend you reconsider your method. Unless you’re very experienced, or extremely lucky, it‘s difficult to get decent, much less perfect results with contact adhesives of any formulation ( solvent or latex based) with semi rigid high pressure plastic laminates, and most certainly so with flexible paper backed veneers. There is no margin for error of alignment, and no recovery if sheet is not laid perfectly flat.
If you take a quick look at my previous posts in this thread, I’ve outlined the iron on process that was very successful over a series of literally hundreds of builds and refurbish projects, and included some photos of one of the trickier projects in terms of book-matching and grain alignment of continuously wrapped faces on a total of 4 enclosures in a small trapezoidal shaped tower system. As this particular shape has several very obtuse angles on the vertical faces, it would be possible to wrap most of them in a single piece, but then you lose the option to continue the grain pattern/figuring around the enclosure’ perimeter, which is an aesthetic choice that I generally favoured.
As to which type of flitch matching / grain slice direction would be “most desirable”, I think that could depend to a certain degree on the size of the enclosures, and whether there’ll be grilles. Engineered products like Brookside and others can be found with essentially tight rift or vertical cut grain patterns that significantly simplify some of those aesthetic issues, and certainly reduce waste over materials like book-matched, flat sliced walnut, cherry, burls, etc.
If you take a quick look at my previous posts in this thread, I’ve outlined the iron on process that was very successful over a series of literally hundreds of builds and refurbish projects, and included some photos of one of the trickier projects in terms of book-matching and grain alignment of continuously wrapped faces on a total of 4 enclosures in a small trapezoidal shaped tower system. As this particular shape has several very obtuse angles on the vertical faces, it would be possible to wrap most of them in a single piece, but then you lose the option to continue the grain pattern/figuring around the enclosure’ perimeter, which is an aesthetic choice that I generally favoured.
As to which type of flitch matching / grain slice direction would be “most desirable”, I think that could depend to a certain degree on the size of the enclosures, and whether there’ll be grilles. Engineered products like Brookside and others can be found with essentially tight rift or vertical cut grain patterns that significantly simplify some of those aesthetic issues, and certainly reduce waste over materials like book-matched, flat sliced walnut, cherry, burls, etc.
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Thanks. I'm not sure if I can use the iron method as I am going over existing veneer. Won't that lift the old veneer? I'm kind of past the point of removing old veneer as I have used 3M bondo fixing the corners.
Hmm, that could be a problem, but it wouldn’t hurt to test on a bottom face. I only did a few complete reveneering jobs, and aside from a couple that definitely had delamimating veneer that didn’t even need heat to peel off, I honestly can’t remember having to strip them all down to substrate prior to repair and refacing.
If the project involved retaining the original grilles, did they use recessed cups or male pegs on the front baffle? I actually found the latter to be a bit easier to carefully remove and work around when veneering that panel than the former.
If the project involved retaining the original grilles, did they use recessed cups or male pegs on the front baffle? I actually found the latter to be a bit easier to carefully remove and work around when veneering that panel than the former.
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