Changing exterior of loudspeakers that have wood venneer on - possible or not?

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I would agree with the earlier suggestion, that if the existing ash veneer is still strongly adhered to the substrate, just veneer over it. You ought to sand off the lacquer, or enamel, or whatever they used to despoil the ash, and after you have a nice clean surface iron new veneer using Heat Lock veneer glue (don’t use contact cement it almost always fails eventually-ask me how I know ��). You can find Heat Lock at

The iron on technique creates a rock solid bond, nearly as good as what I get from vacuum veneering. I do suggest , however, that you first check to make sure that the iron’s heat doesn’t loosen the ash.
 
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If you have to change veneer, there is a trick of the trade to use as I used when I worked as a furniture maker. You can use ordinary wood glue that is distributed on both surfaces to be veneerd in this case speaker box and veneer let the glue dry.When the glue is dry place the glue side of the veneer against the other glue surface using an iron of the highest heat and swipe the iron over the surface to make the glue melt together.

You can use a protective material between the iron and veneer. You can try different varieties of glue they behave differently and this only works on wooden veneer if someone else has another thought.

Anders

oohps allmost the same as ilardi but I leave it in the thread.
 
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Emphasis added. This is why I've gone for thicker stuff.

Applying veneer to an existing surface is not really all that difficult, except that real veneer is rather fragile. I had a box to cover recently, and purchased "door skins" for the project. In the US, "door skins" are about 1mm thick and three ply, with good veneer on top. Contact cement and trim the edges. Worked very well.

'laser ply' is a similar option, in 1-3mm thickness.

The Advantages of Plyco's Laser Plywood (Laserply) Range | Plyco

I've tried using 5mm thick single bamboo (single layer, not a ply) as 'veneer'. Very easy to use, quite pretty, extremely hard wearing. It can be sanded (a lot) without any worry that you'll mess up the job by going through the surface layer.

The image is a commercial speaker that's similar in size. Dunno if that'd be considered suitable WAF.

These options are thick enough to hide any hack job or mistake with surface preparation :)
 

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