Polishing wood with Boiled linseed oil

Hi!
I just finished to polish my new speakers, since I havn't found a convincing guide I decided to post my experience.

The wood is Afromosia, from Paraguay, glued with PVA glue (Vinavil). First prepare the surface wih sand paper till 320 grit (all the steps from 80 grit), then apply a mix of 50% boiled linseed oil - turpentine. The first two hands plenty, I found pretty useful a jeans small rag, it doesn't shed hairs and helps polishing. The following coats with less oil and more rub, 30 min after each hand it's good to clean the surfaces from residue. With less oil applied the drying time is shorter. After the VII coat (half day rest) a light clean with jeans rag with turp.
To reach a nice high surface apply a mix of Carnauba and Beeswax by hand and remove with wool cloth. I found pretty convenient to use the polisher tool, not very traditional but effective.

I found this method accurate and good for the result. I tried in the past another method with no satisfaction: it used pure oil in the last coats, a messy work.

Details of the sanding and first fresh coat.

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Intermediate steps.

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Final polishing with power tool.

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Nice job! Feel free to add data for the element, cabinet and eventual speaker design considerations!

ATB
Johan

Thank you!
I will create soon a pdf with project plan, filter and considerations. You can find some of my design is the file section of FB groups: "Extreme DIY loudspeaker building" and "Lii Audio Hifi Drivers & Speakers Team"
I will post here too!

I decided for a second coat of wax, polished the brass screws and installed cables, a quick action having prepared all the parts.
I will play in the next days with eq-dsp to check the needs of the driver. It's early to talk about final performances, first the break-in period, than the filter and the listening.
At first sight, it's a very interesting fullrange! The bass, out of the box, seems deep and strong like a good woofer, above all with speakers 1,5m far from walls. A bit lighter in extension than C10 but good. As usual, FRs need 50-100h to sound properly. The mid-highs is pronunced and raise as the freq increases, the idea is to build a dedicated adjustable filter. Other considerations and aspects related to listening will be evaluated later.

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Material about acoustic-electronics way outside my realm of understanding. But followed along the linseed finish word for word; the process somewhat labor intensive but hasn't really changed in hundreds of years. No one should slight the use of buffer, flat surfaces, why the heck not?
If oil finishes are good enough for the best of London, Liege, Brescia, Gardone Val Trompia, and Ferlach, puts your speakers in distinguished company!

Thank you!
You're right about acoustic-electronics, in the audio field the madness in on the agenda. I wanted to try some good real wood, not the usual plywood or mdf, I found at good price this Afromosia. I decided to accept the challenge knowing that it would not be an easy job with the tools I have, using many small strips it's a real pain, with regard to flatness and mounting tolerances.
I've always been attracted to traditional finishes, unluckily not easy to find in standard quality weapons, most use PU lacquer. I remember that years ago a friend built wonderful stocks for air-rifles, Ginb (Antonio Gentilini) with sono kembamb and teak doreng wood. He usually used Tru-oil because good looking and fast to apply but on request he made also oil and shellac finishing. I've always liked his stocks but I've never had the right air rifle.

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Had to look again at your living room layout; Persian rugs, artwork, modern media. You should stage a contest, 'How Many Speaker Types In This Room?'

No disrespect intended, you obviously know what you're doing, but the cabinets look thin for speaker enclosures. Are they thicker than is apparent?

Good point!
The wood looks thin but the enclosures hide many bracing(2-3 times thickness) in crucial points. Not going into the specifics of the propagation in a particular type of wood, this Afromosia is a very hard and compact wood, perfectly dried and stable. I usually take into consideration many others parameters like standing waves of cab and port, ratio, shape and geometry of enclosure, eventual deflectors, tuning with specific driver (with-without filter), and, not least, the final purpose of the project (use, power, freq range).

According to my experience, the more "granitic" and inert enclosure is not always the best choice for sound. I remember in the past many tried to build very thick and heavy enclosure (bass section), a friend with 50mm walls of MDF, another one tried also a composite sandwich wall (25mm+sand-lead cavity+25mm) with a 15" woofer 300L, the bass was quite dry and not very incisive, the same woofers in a normal 19mm box well built, same specs and tuning sounded better.

I use a different approach for particular units, above all heavy subs able to go below 20hz. Here the energy is a dfifferent game and need a different approach. But it's only my point of view.
Here a couple of video , bad recorded with phone, of the speaker in action. The fullrange is new, out of the box with no break-in. I would expect to complete the period in probably 100h.

https://youtu.be/s5LyxYwDQ4s

https://youtu.be/lY_ZZvg59SE

https://youtu.be/T9-OHDL5zW8

Via phone or not, good demonstration. It would add serious audio excitement for various recordings that come to mind.
There's a meme that shows up "When I listen to __________, so do the neighbors!"

There was a visual bit as well; your reflection in the flat screen.

Re: Wood density. Have you ever considered any of the sealing epoxies? Cutlers use various kinds to stabilise handle scales.

Nice Bike in avatar!
I know that some cutlers use the epoxy with a sort of pressurized vessel to create handles with burl, micarta or other materials. Talking about wood it could help probably to preserve the surface from use, or fill burl imperfections. It would be curious to know if the epoxy could penetrate a lot in the wood to add stability, but I think it's not an easy thing to do at home, above all with such size. I have few experience with epoxy and pe resin, basically glue use or fairing repair, I was thinking to try it as external finishing due to high polish effect, but I think it's not easy to have a smooth and bubblefree surface. Here, another trouble is to find "fresh" products, in local shop it's very easy to find old and expired resin and paints.

About speaker box, I've never had troubles of leakings, I usually like Pva glue for wood, if the assembly is correct and the parts are well cut there is no trouble. I found also an interesting glue, the "no more nails" type is pretty good in case of emergency repair, I used to seal a damaged friend's speaker with good results.

Seems I recall being labeled 'impregnation'. Wonder now is; are those methods pressurized or evacuated?

I've often wondered, since more density for enclosure material is generally recommended, what speakers would sound like in concrete or granite enclosures but it probably wouldn't sound good at all. You refer to the friend who used a dense "sandwich" material and the bass sounded quite dry. I suppose the cabinet material does have to respond and improve the sound. I have an older pair of KLH tower speakers along with a pair of Dayton Audio 6 1/2" AIR bookshelf speakers with AMT tweeters and a Yamaha 100 watt per channel receiver and it sounds awesome to me. One of your drivers probably costs more than my whole setup. KLH went out of business but now they're back and They are a little pricey. Mine were inexpensive but I've been very pleased with them.

I answered your reply to me but it showed up on another thread for some reason. That's the second time that has happened to me. If you didn't get it let me know and I'll get it to you.

I give up.

I see the last three posts, it should be fine! :D It could be that they moved the post in another section probably.
I'm still having a problem with the picture uploader, probably some trouble with the forum.

I'm glad you like Hifi and speakers, it's not common here! These little fullranges are quite expensive, like other models of the same brand I tried, but interesting compared to what offers the fullrange market but not all roses and flowers. The real game is the tuning of filters and eq the room. I Like the Amt!, I would like to have one in the future. I think it's good to be satisfied with a speaker, usually audiophiles are always searching and trying something else, out of curiosity or like a game.
I found very important the tuning of crossover and filters, even with low price or normal speakers, I found many commercial products without compensation for baffle step for example, or wrong freq cuts, with the right tuning it's possible to achive remarkable result, in many cases a completely different speaker than the stock one.

About plaster and concrete, I tried in the past building "compact" front horns for compression drivers, not bad material at all for this purpose