The box beam is 1/8” thick which allows for tapping of a lot of holes that would otherwise require nuts.

These are the 3/16” thick aluminum face plates that be the front and rear of the amp. They were laid out with a cad program & then I drilled all the holes and cut the slots with a ½” end mill on a Bridgeport. The peice on the left is the rear of the panel, the side that will bolt to the chassis, & you can see on 2 of the holes where I had to countersink them to allow for the nuts & washers on the speaker jacks.

This is the pine box that will house the chassis and the face plates. The corners are finger jointed & in this picture the box has been primed with polyester primer.

The primer is sanded down to 400 & then re-primed to fill any imperfections that were not filled the first time, then before painting it is sanded down to 600.

After all the holes were drilled and I made sure everything was going to fit together correctly I primed all the metal parts with self etching – direct to metal primer – then over that I put the polyester primer & that was sanded smooth redone & sanded smooth again.  .  .   All the paint & primer being used on this amp is catalized 2 part material shot thru a small gravity gun that I bought at harbor freight for 15 dollars .  .  .   

In this picture the red  “base coat” has been applied, this coat is just enough to cover so you can’t see thru it and it does not get sanded. The color scheme I went with is similar to a paint job my friend put on a motorcycle of mine 25 years ago. The red has small metallics & a little pearl in it.

After the base coat dries for 30 minutes or so the clear coat is applied. To do a really nice job the clear needs to be sanded smooth after it dries & then Buffed & Polished so I needed to put enough clear on to accept a couple sandings without going thru to the base coat. Its time consuming but the end result is worth it.  .  . This picture is before sanding & polishing. 

I had to build a fixture to hold the plates so I could paint both sides at once & be able to rotate then so I could make sure I got coverage in all the little holes & corners. These went thru the same process of clear coating, sanding, buffing & polishing.

After the primer was sanded down to 600 I painted the inside of the box black & the outside edge was also painted black. Again the black paint is a base coat that is designed to have a clear coat put on over top of it.

Once the inside was painted black I painted the outside of the box red and then went back and fogged black along the edge of the openings towards the center of the box.

After all the base coats have been applied then the clear coats go on, you can see the clear is a little grainy and has some orange peel. This will all be gone in the end, after the clear has dried for 24 hours the wet sanding begins. First 1200 grit sand paper is used to sand everything smooth, keep sanding until all the shiny spots are removed. Then I used 1500, 2000 and finally 2500 grit sand paper.

After the final coat of clear & before any sanding or buffing.

After all the sanding is done I used a 5” buffing wheel on a drill with a fine compound to buff out all the 2500 scratches, next the same procedure with polish and finally a hand glaze.  ,   .  This is the chassis & the end plates after all the polishing is done.