It's been over a year since I started this, but the paint is finally dry on my DIY subwoofer project.
It's a dipole subwoofer design with a Linkwitz alignment (spooning, not mirrored).
As you can see my finishing booth setup is not ideal
Material is MDF, first part of the finishing was to spray and sand liberal amounts of Zinsser BIN primer (shellac) on the MDF to seal it.
Spray setup is a Wagner HVLP conversion gun. I like the spray setup because the fine mist dries very fast and you can get multiple coats in the same afternoon. Spraying inside the labyrinth was a bit tricky with such a large spray gun.
Next step was to spray flat black acrylic latex paint. I bought the expansion projection set that had the wider nozzle. The latex sprayed fine without any thinning. I was going for a slight orange peel effect, so it was okay. If you are looking for glass smooth, then a viscosity agent or in some cases just plain water is required to thin it out.
I put on about 5 or 6 coats of paint. It dried completely in about an hour, so I just kept recoating until the finish looked very smooth.
The final coat was water based poly. It's nicer than standard poly in that it won't react funny with the latex paint and it's a lot thinner, which makes it better for spraying. Plus it cleans up with just soap and water. I put on three light coats of it, sanded with 220, and put three more on top.
The result:
and
I had the only visible T nut stripped out (after being painted over), so there was some cursing last night. But I got another one to fit in just right and you can't tell anything went wrong.
I've been listening to it unfinished for months now and it sounds great. I have a line level passive EQ circuit that takes it pretty flat all the way to 20 Hz and it's plenty loud to keep up with my Magnepans in our small townhouse theater.
:jiggy: Nice to have another project completed.
It's a dipole subwoofer design with a Linkwitz alignment (spooning, not mirrored).
As you can see my finishing booth setup is not ideal
Material is MDF, first part of the finishing was to spray and sand liberal amounts of Zinsser BIN primer (shellac) on the MDF to seal it.
Spray setup is a Wagner HVLP conversion gun. I like the spray setup because the fine mist dries very fast and you can get multiple coats in the same afternoon. Spraying inside the labyrinth was a bit tricky with such a large spray gun.
Next step was to spray flat black acrylic latex paint. I bought the expansion projection set that had the wider nozzle. The latex sprayed fine without any thinning. I was going for a slight orange peel effect, so it was okay. If you are looking for glass smooth, then a viscosity agent or in some cases just plain water is required to thin it out.
I put on about 5 or 6 coats of paint. It dried completely in about an hour, so I just kept recoating until the finish looked very smooth.
The final coat was water based poly. It's nicer than standard poly in that it won't react funny with the latex paint and it's a lot thinner, which makes it better for spraying. Plus it cleans up with just soap and water. I put on three light coats of it, sanded with 220, and put three more on top.
The result:
and
I had the only visible T nut stripped out (after being painted over), so there was some cursing last night. But I got another one to fit in just right and you can't tell anything went wrong.
I've been listening to it unfinished for months now and it sounds great. I have a line level passive EQ circuit that takes it pretty flat all the way to 20 Hz and it's plenty loud to keep up with my Magnepans in our small townhouse theater.
:jiggy: Nice to have another project completed.