Repainting My New LSIs

[KauaiBass]

Aloha All,

Well as some of you might have read from my earlier posting, I nabbed a nice set of 70s vintage LSIs at my son's school rummage sale last week. I scanned this forum and decided to repair the corner damage using the Bondo trick and repaint the speakers black as per original. Since I read several threads about the Bondo trick but didn't see any photos (I might've just missed em) I thought I'd post some pics of my experience.

Now I was not trying to anything too fancy - just get these looking not-so-beat-up again. I also wanted to patch up the corner damage so as to keep the woodwork intact as possible. This set of speakers have been all over the planet, but now they will live a more sedate life; so I wanted to get them sorted now and they should be good to go for the next 30 years or so. Also I wanted to get this all done in one day if possible - to maintain momentum and get the speakers back in service asap. A careful person might want to spend more time and do things more thoughtfully - so by no means is this how to do this the "best"way possible. However as I think you'll see, even with my quick and dirty techniques, I was able to improve the appearance of the La Scalas 500% in just a few hours.

Here's a b/w photo showing how they looked originally...you can see the black paint is all scratched up..

Not a great photo but you get the idea. Pretty bad looking.

Here's what the HF section looked like:

Eesh.

So I'd never Bondo'ed speaker cabinets before, but it sounded easy enough..I've Bondo'ed a few cars before.

Here's the hardware I used.."regular" Bondo/hardener, a plane, sanding block and sandpaper (this is 120 but I used 200).

Here's a couple shots of the damaged corners to get an idea of what I was fixing...

Here's the top.

Here's the bottom...

As you can see the plywood is split and delaminating in these areas. In all I spotted 11 areas to be Bondo'ed.

I bust out the Bondo, mixed it as per instuctions. If you've never used it before, Bondo will be freely speadable (like cake frosting or toothpaste) for about 5 minutes before it starts to get "grainy" and set up. So I found mixing small batches for 2 corners at a time worked best. I used some chopsticks to mix and spread the Bondo.

Here's how the top looked after I patched a couple of the corners..

As you can see, I tried to make sure I built it up enough to allow me to plane/sand it down to something approximating the original corner.

The Bondo set up enough in 25 minutes to work with the plane and sanding block.

No photo, but all I did was plane away the big chunks and then gently sand the corners down to match the basic look of the original corner.

After all 11 corners were done, I took a break and allowed the Bondo to set up for an hour or so, then started masking off the horns and jack plate/handles. Before masking the logos, I used a bit of TSP wall cleaning solution to
brighten them up. Be careful though because the TSP did remove a bit of
the white logo paint, but the results were worth it - no longer "bar
smoke yellow", the logos looked fresh and white now (except for a few
scratches). Micheal was (rightly) worried that my masking tape might pull up the logos, so I checked it and it seemed OK...I had blue 3M masking tape like used for painting rooms and it's less sticky.

Here's the top masked off...

For the bottom bins I carefully stuff rolled up paper into the back of the horn to keep paint out...

Using Satin Rustoleum Black paint (3 cans were required for this project) I used my best spray paint technique to paint these puppies.

Here's a shot comparing the tops before and after...

And here's the bottoms..

Which one you like more? [H]

Of course I had to paint the bottoms of the bottoms and when I did I discovered another chipped corner..of course!

(can't see it here though..)

So I patched it up as well..you can see the Bondo clearly in this pic.

More sanding, a bit more paint and...

Looks pretty good yeah?

couple more shots of the results...

You can see the logos still look all right and the flash makes the Bondo really jump out way more than they look in person..your eye really doesn't even see the patches.

So I'm very happy with the results! Now they look almost as good as they sound.

[dollar bill]

Nice job!

I still have to figure out what I am doing with my split LSI's and have the further chalenge of them being a natural finish.

Still trying to decide if just a reveneer job is going to happen or if I will add a 1/4 inch to everything first.

[colterphoto1]

very nice work KB, I've been doing some bondo work myself. practiced on a beat set of EV TL bins then moving to patching the heck out of my fibreglass KP600 stacks. That's a nice set of LSI's you have there, love the trap HF bins, aluminum jack cups and that you kept the logs per original. Did you repaint the logos and if so, what technique did you use to make stencil?

M

[Bill H.]

Beautiful Work................

[KauaiBass]

Aloha,

Thanks for the nice words Coutler & Bills. Really appreciate all the help I got off of this forum!!

No I didn't repaint the logos. Just some TSP and masked them off. Your eye doesn't really see the 'old' black paint down in betwixt the lettering on the logos.

Not really sure if that's the right way to use 'betwixt' but I like the way it sounds. [H]