Polk M10 Refinish

[athos56]

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/45669304/
http://athos56.deviantart.com/gallery/scraps/

I needed a project for my winter break so I refinished and revived my Monitor 10's. I replaced the crossover, made the speaker bi-wireable, added some felt around the tweeter dome and reveneered in a maple with a colonial maple stain. I'm going to put an Ivory grill cloth on when the fabric comes in, I'll post more pic's after I'm done. Finished one speaker, now I need to start the other speaker. My arm is about to fall off from all of the sanding. :D

[F1nut]

Looks nice!

What and why are you sanding?

[Refefer]

That is one gorgeous speaker. Love what you did with it. How long did then entire process take? Are you the original owner? What was wrong with the original veneer that told you to take on this project?

My mother always told me I should of been a lawyer.

[athos56]

I picked these up a while ago, I think I'm the 3rd owner. I stripped the old veneer and filled the imperfections with putty, then sanded it down. The new veneer was then put on one panel at a time with about a 1/4th of an inch overhang on all sides which was trimmed and sanded down flat. They didn't "need" new veneer but they just look great. Tomorrow I'm finishing it with a satin polyurethane. Total time about 3 days. Stripped both speakers in an afternoon with a heat gun, ~2 hours watching TV. Crossover and wiring took the rest of the day. Measuring/Cutting/Gluing/Ironing/Trimming/Sanding/Staining ~ 2 days with many breaks to let stuff dry, go shopping, watch TV. This was my first time so I went slow. Oh add in time to figure out that the white positive wire going into the stock polk crossover from the terminal comes out of the crossover as a black wire to the speakers and the black negitive wire turns into a white negitive wire. Talk about a headache
Thanks for the comments!

[F1nut]

So, you're sore from sanding the cabinets before applying the veneer? Two words, power sander. :)

Any shops around you that would spray a nice lacquer finish on them? It will look nicer and be much easier to repair down the road.

[athos56]

I'll have to check on that. :)

[schwarcw]

Very nice! Good luck with the second speaker! You may want to consider building some stands to match. Look Here (http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24335&highlight=stands)

[nadams]

They look great!

[BaggedLancer]

Wow, amazing, makes me wanna do my M10 M5 M5JR over. I really wish there was a way I could do them in a gloss piano black finish

[schwarcw]

The easiest way to get a gloss piano black finish is to use plastic. Go to a cabinent or home improvement store. You can buy the stuff in sheet and use it like veneer.

[BaggedLancer]

The easiest way to get a gloss piano black finish is to use plastic. Go to a cabinent or home improvement store. You can buy the stuff in sheet and use it like veneer.


So just peel the old veneer off and apply that? Any idea what the actual name is so I know what I'm looking for?

[athos56]

A heat gun made removing the stock veneer a snap. I did some listening this morning, now that both of my recapped speakers are operational. Vs the stock caps the clarity caps are more forward, but not much, maybe due to less resistance in the cap's themselves. The xylophone on one of my Mile Davis CD's went from being veiled, or maybe warm?? to being crisp and exact without being harsh. I'm thinking they will mellow out a bit when they break in but in my amature opinion they sound way better. Due to 3 tweeks being done at once Recapp/Bi-wire/tweeter felt I can't really say how affective each was at changing the sound of the speaker. If I do anything else to these it might be replacing the 6500 drivers due to some age related warping in the cone.