2" door - good speaker box material?

[mizedog]

Hey all.
I'm getting close to building some speakers for my dedicated HT, have been lurking, and learning. I will be replacing my 20 year old hand me down Fishers (suck) and my ten year old Klipsch (don't snicker - the bill for two Klipsch ss-1s, and an sc-1and one KSW-12, a new Denon AVR2800 and a Sony DVD player in 2000 was $2,600 back then!).

Anyway, I was able to get three highly compressed particle board doors discarded from my work. They are meant to be sound "proof" conference room doors, are 9 feet tall, probably 38" wide and are 2" thick. All verticle sides are covered in really nice, real cherry veneer. Each door probably weighs 130 pounds.

So, do you think they would make good speaker cabinet material for the mains, center and sub? My surrounds will be built-ins similar to the Inkahn neatos and probably hidden inside columns in my dedicated theater (so not visible, no need for the cherry). I know I would have to chamfer the edges at 45* to keep the particle board core material from showing. But, since these are dense material used for sound proofing doors, I wonder it this would work and eliminate the need for internal bracing in the cabinets?

Thoughts?

These will go into my dedicated, yet budget oriented theater room. The room is approximately 12.5x17.5x7.5 with 1/2" drywall over 1/2" Celotec sound board.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1223611

Thanks for any ideas, or thoughts. If the opinions are that particle board is still the devil (even at 2" thick), then I'll use one door for a shop table and the others for shelving and go with MDF for the speaker cabs.

Here's how the chamfer would get the veneer showing:

[Txgrizzly]

a lot of doors are not solid all the way thru so i would cut into one of them before making your decisions on whether to use them for your cabinet material. if they are solid all the way thru and you use them then you are going to have some heavy solid speakers. ^_^

[AdelaaR]

Heavy solid speakers .... mmmmmm

[mizedog]

I could resaw it to just under 1" thickness, thus making it possible for twice as much outward facing veneer. But, I'd be losing the strength and would end up gluing it to MDF for support anyway.

[Winter]

You may consider using the 2" door material just for the front baffle. I would not recommend resawing to 1" thickness. To much dust and the denser material is usually closer to the outer edges.

[petewill]

Don't underestimate how hard it will be to cut that miter joint. It's really hard to cut a door at 90 degrees without tearing the face veneer - 45 degrees will be even more difficult. And the veneer is so thin that you have virtually no material to sand off to even up a joint.