Two-Way Version 2 build thread

[dkalsi]

Absolutely stunning! One of the best builds I've seen on this site (or anywhere). I envy not only your skills, but your patience to take things step- by-step - and give each stage the right amount of time. Thanks for sharing.

[DeZZar]

Thank you. That is really nice feedback!!

[Geoff Millar]

Your speakers look incredibly stylish and unique: they look far more interesting than almost anything you could get retail, ditto the build/finish quality.
If they sound half as good as they look, you're in for a treat.

Cheers

Geoff

[DeZZar]

Well....just to show not everything goes according to plan....here's the epoxy on the rear little insert panels.

It worked perfectly well in terms of a nice smooth level surface, BUT....with this stuff its supposed to drip over the sides and unfortunately it didn't matter what I did (pre-wetting the edges, brushing it smooth, brushing the excess drips away etc etc..) it refused to drip over evenly leaving a rippled edge instead of one nice smooth one. I suspect its because its a thin edge and it just drips up under the recess instead of down a taped off vertical side. Of well....lesson learned - cut the rabbit after the epoxy next time...?

Not sure if these will just go in the bin or if I will be able to salvage the edges with some sanding. I could always rough sand and put another coat on and THEN cut it back (just making sure there is enough material there to sand back that much).



I'll wait and see - back to the timber side panels for now!

[DeZZar]

OK.....lets do this!!



Before: When brushing on varnish you just have to know up front that you will get bubbles and brush strokes no matter what you do. You could be in a positive pressure clean room, have put your varnish under vacuum and be using the worlds best brush and it will still happen. The most important thing is just to make sure you flatten out this bubbles and brush strokes between coats.

I actually lost count of the coats at this point - if your wanting to replicate this look though I would say its a minimum of 5 with sanding between.

[DeZZar]

Kicking off with a 400 grit dry sand using an orbital. This get the bulk of the blemishes and brush strokes out of the final coat. Be super careful with this - a nice light pressure (weight of the machine) methodically run side to side the full length, overlapping each pass, and then slightly faster runs end to end to finish.



Then begins the wet sanding. Starting with 400 again wet sand, but this time with a cork black by hand, passing back and forth the whole length end to end. Little bit of soap in a spray bottle, keeping the paper and surface well soaked. Run one full pass over the surface, wipe clean, re-wet and run two more passes - no more.

After 400, 800, 1000 and 2000:


And finally after 500 and 7000. Its definitely worth the extra grits from a polishing perspective!


Now ready for polishing. I have to go grab a new polishing pad as I just discovered mine has gone little crunchy :P

I'll update once the polish is done and a coat of wax is on!

[Billet]

Looks great! The reflection of the windows on the finish really shows the progress...

[DeZZar]

Quick little update on this project.

After sanding down one of the side panels per the post above I noticed when polishing there were little imperfections caused by some of the bubbles that brushing on varnish inevitably leaves behind. I obviously didn't sand down far enough but instead of cutting back further I decided I would instead spray on a couple of final coats before going ahead and sanding down the rest. (I'll respray the panel I already polished to fix it up) - the spray will obviously avoid the brush marks/bubbles problems of brushing.

Problem is we've just had generally bad winter weather here for the last two weeks so I haven't been able to lay down the final spray coats. Hopefully there will be an opportunity later this week so I can finally wrap this part of the build up.

In any case, I couldn't help squeezing the polished panel into place to see what it will finally look like. Here's a preview:
​​​​​​​

[Geoff Millar]

Marvellous work!

Geoff

[fatmarley]

Stunning!

[Steve Lee]

That looks fabulous.

[ADwhat]

The good news is those speakers are amazing in design and execution. The better news is thst since Dezzar doesn't work for some defence contractor we are still alive. The bad news is since he doesn't do medical research the average human lifespan is not 150 years.

[DeZZar]

hahaha you are too kind sir!!

[Chris Roemer]

Yeah. This DeZZar guy seems kind of brilliant, to me ...

[DeZZar]

Thanks Chris. Not brilliant - just a guy enjoying his hobby! If only I had your experience to compliment!

[Drummer]

This build is just flat out awesome. The leather work against the wood reminds me of a Rolls or Bentley interior, and the inner workings of the box is almost sad to be hidden. Glenn.

[DeZZar]

Thank you. The Sonus Faber Heritage collection provided some of the inspiration! Now just to get them sounding as good!

[DeZZar]

Quick update on this build.

Got a couple of weeks off work so I'll be finishing up the polishing of the timber side panels next week and finally gluing them in place. In the meantime I've also started to prototype up the outriggers/feet for the speaker for machining later. Another handy use of a 3D printer.





Because these speakers were designed with a sort of nod to art-deco I'm not 100% sold on the shape of the spikes at the moment. They seem a little out of place I'm thinking about coming up with something a little more rounded to tie them into the rest of the speaker.

And there is a raging debate between the Mrs. and I as to whether I go polished stainless or brass for the feet. Brass would mean the base plate needs to be painted black. Polished stainless means the base plat and feet both get highly polished. I'm sort of sold either way - I'd like to see both but that's not really an option so have to make a decision soon!

[PWR RYD]

Do you plan to be sitting on the floor when listening to these? It appears from your pictures that the tweeters won't be more than 0.5 meter above the floor.

[DeZZar]

Do you plan to be sitting on the floor when listening to these? It appears from your pictures that the tweeters won't be more than 0.5 meter above the floor.

Yeah that's definitely a consideration. Was never targeting direct ear height on axis for the tweeter and if its just placed on the floor like this at the listening position the tweeter will be 5 degrees off axis vertically - woofer 2 degrees. Both well and truly within the off-axis range of the speaker.

However, I haven't ruled out the possibility of the outriggers also being a sort of mini stand either if a little more height is needed in the end product. Will simply experiment and see. The base plate and spikes would remain the same at least - just a question of what might sit between them. Another 100mm would put both tweeter and woofer inside 1.5 degrees - we'll see if that's necessary in the end.

[Wolf]

You can just design for an upward-tilt as your design axis. It's not that hard to do.

Wolf