has anyone ever painted thier box. i mean sand it; primer; paint; clear coat, just like u would your car. i ask bcuz i hate the dam carpet and putting it on. looking for something different.

 

I havent seen it but it might come out cool, give it a try

 

I build my own boxes..and I was thinking about doing the same thing. Im going to try it. I mean, it cost me like $25 to make a nice box..so why not?

 

ya i'm sure i'm gona go for it. i figure 3 coats primer 3 coats paint and 3 coats clear. i really don't know what it would be if u were to paint your spoiler or somethin. i was thinking 5, 3, 5 but thought it might be a bit much.

 

Make sure you use something like plastic filler on the ends of the wood or when you paint it it will soak up the paint and leave the texture different from the rest of the box.

 

Or put a layer of glass over the whole thing and paint it just like a car.

 

Painting a box is one of the hardest things you can do. If you think putting carpet on sucks, you have no idea what you're in for.

To get it to look good, you've got to make the surface 100% perfect. That means bondo over all the screws, perfectly smooth edges, and tons and tons of primer and sanding. I've painted some MDF home speakers that I built, and it is an absolute TON of work.

 

Yeah I agree with Jim, you're basically going to need some plastic filler to get all the dips out then you'll need some spot putty that covers up all the small pin holes after you use the plastic filler.

In the mean time when you do these steps you'll probably have to do them several times. It's pretty hard to get the plastic filler to lay right when there's a decent amount of room so that means putting on a layer then going back and sanding then putting more plastic filler on then sanding then another layer of plastic filler. It could take you 3 to 4 times applying the plastic filler before you get it where you like it then you sand it down and spot putty. Then you might beable to think about painting it.

Main thing to remember is that any small dips or imperfections will be really brought out by your final coat of paint. Primer usually doesn't reveal the dips or waves that much since it's not made to go on really smooth, so that usually means you have to sand on your primer coats also or they will show on your paint. Also means you need to have all your tapers off the filler really smooth so they will blend in with the box and make sure there are no high or low spots in it.

As for putting a layer of fiberglass over it and painting it like a car that doesn't work either cause when you put the resin on the glass you get bumps from that even if you work out all your air bubbles inside just from the excess resin drying. So that means you have to plastic fill and spot putty it too.

You'll get 5 to 10 hours of labor in it pretty quickly.

 

My buddy's done custom work with fiberglass boxes like that; it's basically like doing bodywork to your sub box. His setups were high $$ so the customer always had a bodyshop shoot the prepped box with paint. I'll ask him if he ever did any MDF boxes in paint, but I'm betting he probably didn't.

 

I painted my box, however its not done, initially white, many imperfections, now blue, have to get another quart of body filler.

cheers

blake

 

Better to use vinyl or marine grade carpet from lowes...and match it to your interior IMO. Painting looks great on fiberglass boxes but like Jim and others previously pointed out, the paint might cause the mdf or other wood to sweel in some areas. In general its a pain in the ***.

 

You might want to try using a sheet of dark plexiglass for all of the surfaces that are exposed on top its a very clean look.

 

ok one main thing i would hate about painting the box like a car would be not having my system for awhile. i was also thinking about staining the box.

here's a pic of a test piece i did, plain box in the backround, left side of the wood is just stain, the right side is stain with a few coats of polyurethane (it was a hack job, RUSHED big time) but it does look good. (cell camera ) and i'll try to get a little better pic

 

I got to thinking... (yeah I know watch out). A box done in truck bedliner might look pretty cool. I went ahead and bought an extra sheet of MDF so I can make a box for a 15" solobaric I have laying around my room and I'm gonna fill the screw holes, shoot a quick layer of primer at it with the air gun, then coat the box with truck bed coating. That way it'll have a really neat texture, so no worrying about imperfections and the black should match the subwoofer pretty well.