Composite Curved Statement II build in TamoAsh

[Philzeemon]

This build has been in the works for maybe six years...The tower cabinets are closer to the Anthology design, The center channel is a modified Frodaddy design.The curved panels are a sandwich of 5plys of HDF(masonite), and 4plys of 8.9oz 8harness satin weave fiberglass, glued up with epoxy resin. They are HEAVY..and trimming the panels was a challenge for carbide bits and power tools. The veneer was from Joe Woodworker and is Tamo-Ash. This is my first attempt at posting photos..Lets say I am techno-challenged!!...we will see how this goes

[Philzeemon]

Anyone to help here on posting photos..Initially they were screen width, then I corrected a typo and they came up as thumbnails...Do I need to store them on a web hosting service? I had a few images saved as an album on my profile page, and posted them from there. Any help would be appreciated..Thanks, Phil H aka Philzeemon

[CADman_ks]

They appear full screen width on my browser, so I'd say that you have it!

As for the speakers, those are gorgeous!! Great work! Great work on the stuff that no one sees like the crossovers as well! Those look very very nice!

It also appears that you book matched your speakers. That's something that I've done as well, it's a fair amount of pre-planning to get that to all come out correctly!

[Mikerodrig27]

Wow! Those speakers look great! Thank you for posting this. Was the 4 layers of fiberglass on the outside of the enclosures?

[Philzeemon]

Thank you for your thoughts... As for the laminating I built a press out of 2x6's-(which warped severely). The first was so bad I discarded it and started over..The press in the photos also warped but not as bad, I remedied it with lots of bondo, using a 6' level as a screed, and a belt sander as a planer, Then glassed the top and bottom of the form to hold the warping in check



The clamping process was time consuming, I could only set up half the layers at one time. (The epoxy sets up quicker than I could do the layups)...(and the clamps were being pushed to their limits and beyond). I started with 5 layers...(HDF + Glass + HDF + Glass + HDF). Once in the press they would stay clamped for three days....
After removing the clamps I continued the layup with 4 layers on top of the originals (Glass + HDF + Glass + HDF) and re-clamped for another three days, adding up to 9ply total. The exterior of the curves is the smooth side, the interior the textured side.



Here is an end view of the sandwiched layers, It is best to trim the flax of the oversized glass before the epoxy fully cures-(in its "green state") about 2 hours after the layup...Once cured the glass acts as a reinforcing layer for the HDF...It is RIGID-(ain't goin' nowhere)



This image shows a micrometer measuring the thickness of the full layup...Can't get closer to a 3/4 inch than this...



This image shows dry-fitting an end panel to the center channel before glue up..To attach the curved panels to the skeletons, I used PL Premium polyurethane adhesive



I will show trimming the panels in a future post..don't know about everyone else, but I regularly build jigs to build jigs, often finding better ways along the way....