Bamboo Speedsters

[guitarguru102]

Wow, I haven't been back on here in a while and it's great to see many new Speedster builds! Here's my rendition, designed along with my brother as a gift for his 30th birthday. He's a freelance graphic designer, so I presented him with a clean, minimalist design using the satin white with radiused edges that would look great in his home office. He introduced the concept of the wood accents which gives them a really nice contrast and interest, while still being understated, so we bounced various iterations around until we arrived at the "wrap-around" bamboo you see here. The construction is 1/2" MDF with satin white paint, with 1/4" bamboo finished in pure tung oil. I began this project in January 2015 and completed in December 2015 with many long breaks along the way, but I couldn't be more pleased with the result and how much my brother enjoys them! Paul Carmody has designed an incredible little speaker, and I can't wait to build more of these or another of his designs. Thanks for helping me get my brother hooked on quality audio

[guitarguru102]

In their final home - my brother's office. I hated to see them go!

[philthien]

Those really look great. What kind of paint, and how did you apply it? And how did you achieve the bamboo wrap?

[Oxbox]

WOW! Nice job!

[KenI]

Very nicely done!

[Wolf]

You nailed the artistic angle!
Nicely done,
Wolf

[Kevin K.]

Man, all of these speedster builds are coming out of the woodworks, pun intended. Beautiful work! I bet your brother is a happy camper. The bamboo wrap is a very interesting and unique touch.

[thekorvers]

Wow! Very nice design. Well done!

[tomzarbo]

I like the looks of those a lot. Good, unique, clean look, just like you were going for. Nice!
Did you find the bamboo difficult to work with? I've never used it before, but heard that it can be a bit "Splintery."
TomZ

[Navy Guy]

Very unique look. Well done! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[badman]

Bologna. Those are clearly renderings. Nothing comes out that clean!! Impressive!

[Paul Carmody]

Bologna. Those are clearly renderings. Nothing comes out that clean!! Impressive!

Lol. You have a point. That bamboo is immaculate. Phenomenal execution! Fantastic job.

[dcibel]

Now that's a nice looking speaker! Sent from my SM-G930W8 using Tapatalk

[careyink]

Nice job! That maybe one of the best looking speedster builds..I think the speedsters are going be on the build list for next year...

[guitarguru102]

Thank you all for the kind comments! They sure were a lot of work, but well worth it! If I did it again it would still be labor intensive but much, much faster, since a lot of the effort was in building new jigs and deliberating on methods to proceed (read: procrastinating out of fear).

Truthfully it is my first real speaker build, so I learned a lot on the way and am so thankful for this great bunch of fellow DIYers here whose build threads were invaluable. I'm a long-time lurker but I'll try to be more active! Most of you are far more experienced than I, but to the first-time builders here: don't underestimate yourself, your tools, or let any other excuses stop you from diving it. I have generally cheap tools and improvised most of the way, but those limitation can be overcome with a bit of extra effort (and lots of patience lol). And yes this hobby is addicting!

To touch on a couple questions, I used Rustoleum gray primer and satin white - sanding the primer smooth but no sanding on the color coats, and no clear. Prior to painting, I masked off the area where the bamboo would cover, save for a rough 1/2" overlap. The bamboo seemed to work just like wood, though I used painters tape on cuts as a precaution to reduce tear-out, and I ran my routing operations in many shallow passes. The bamboo was sourced from Woodcraft as 3/4"x8"x30"(?) lumber (the only real option I could find), and I used the carmelized vertically laminated style. I had to re-saw the bamboo to 1/4" thickness, then mitered for the corners - being careful to keep the grain aligned to preserve the wrap-around look, and I made small filler pieces to occupy the gap in the enclosure radius at front and back. Finally, after gluing to the finished painted enclosure, I radiused the bamboo edges with a 1/2" roundover, carefully hand sanded the bamboo to smooth the radius and corner fillers, before applying Hope's 100% pure tung oil to the bamboo in a few coats, being sure to wiping any excess off the white paint (in my tests, it did not stain even after 10-20 minutes).

Sorry to be long-winded, but hopefully the explanation and attached photos help clarify the bamboo technique since it may not have been apparent from the pics. Thankfully in person the wraparound look is rather effective, with the corners blending well enough and the laminated lines of the bamboo tricking the eye into the illusion of a bend. If there's interested in a retrospective build thread I'll gladly do one to shed some light on the unique aspects of this build - I took countless photos along the way.

Thanks again guys - it was a pleasure building them, and the sound is simply astounding!