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Thread: Fostex horn - repair, refurb, repurpose!

  1. #1
    Member michaelg's Avatar
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    Fostex horn - repair, refurb, repurpose!

    hjames started this new thread on fixing up the Fostex horns she just won on eBay.


    The thread below starts from post 128 in the old "Mystery Large Format Monitor" -

    http://www.audioheritage.org/vbullet...ormat-Monitors

    Quote Originally Posted by hjames View Post
    Howards orange oil
    I have no idea what "Howards Orange Oil" is but the horns are TEAK and you should use TEAK OIL! Real teak oil, not the junk that dries like a paste or a varnish.

    The wood has to "breathe". I can provide you with some guidance in that area if you have problems locating the good stuff.

    Michael.
    Last edited by Mr. Widget; 02-10-2018 at 12:10 PM.
    Michael Gillespie.
    204.943.9000


  2. #2
    Moderator hjames's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by michaelg View Post
    I have no idea what "Howards Orange Oil" is but the horns are TEAK and you should use TEAK OIL! Real teak oil, not the junk that dries like a paste or a varnish.

    The wood has to "breathe". I can provide you with some guidance in that area if you have problems locating the good stuff.

    Michael.
    No, no, I understand.
    The orange oil is safe for walnut and other woods and does not contain wax or clog the pores like that sticky Tung oil or the Watco Danish oil ...
    I had JohnW make a beautiful pair of walnut horns for me a few years back -
    they were gogeous smith horns in walnut, and seeing how these teak horns were treated is very sad.
    I am basically going to wait before I do anything to restore the horns and fix the crack.

    I have an early morning - I'll talk to you later!
    And thank you for making contact!
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  3. #3
    Senior Member gdmoore28's Avatar
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    Heather, you are into projects constantly, aren't you? I love watching them.

    I know there's an urge to clean them up and make them look nice, but I would not do any more to them until you have them repaired. Any residue of cleaning or restorative chemicals that happen to seep down into those cracks is going to make it unlikely that the resins that will be used to repair them will stick. That would be bad ju-ju.

    GeeDeeEmm

  4. #4
    Senior Member Lee in Montreal's Avatar
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    35 years later, I still love everything about these speakers. ;-)

    Thanks Michael for your work.


  5. #5
    Moderator hjames's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by gdmoore28 View Post
    Heather, you are into projects constantly, aren't you? I love watching them.

    I know there's an urge to clean them up and make them look nice, but I would not do any more to them until you have them repaired. Any residue of cleaning or restorative chemicals that happen to seep down into those cracks is going to make it unlikely that the resins that will be used to repair them will stick. That would be bad ju-ju.

    GeeDeeEmm
    Understood, thanks.
    I'm only heavy-oiling the one without the cracks.
    The split lip will def need to be dry for glue to work.
    I'll clean off the tape reside but not much else on that one.
    You can see after work today I got a lot of the tape residue cleaned off of the uncracked one on the left -

    And yes, its a pretty wooden piece - its TEAK - how could I resist?

    The metal adapters have a 4 bolt pattern, and what seems like a 3 bolt pattern for 1 inch JBL drivers.

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    I did not even notice until now - note the Delos CD in the black box just above the right horn.
    Won it in a contest here on the Lansing Hermitage Forum, back in 2007! Thanks again, King James & TiDome.
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  6. #6
    Moderator hjames's Avatar
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    BTW - kind of thinking of chasing down a pair of 2420 horn drivers for these - so they would be JBL based.

    Had a chance today to gently take out the screws and examine the broken horn better. I believe they were originally machined and glued together -
    then someone dropped one of them and slapped it into place with duct tape and sheet-rock screws!!!
    Anyway, I have not oiled it, just taken it apart to look. The clamp is just holding 3 pieces together to see how they fit.
    Its teak, so its a pretty dense wood.

    I'm thinking very minimal use of Gorilla Glue might be the best way to glue the broken pieces back together.
    In stages. Glue the plank pieces together for the 2 back sides of the horn.
    Glue the 2 parts of the top lip back together.
    Clamp well to prevent expansion/distortion of the original shape.
    Then after all that has had a day to set up and dry,
    Glue the top lip back onto the lower assembly.

    Some of you folks are much better with wood than I am -
    does that sound like a reasonable approach?

    (Its got to be better than duct tape and sheet rock screws, right?)

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  7. #7
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    Nice pics Heather ( they certainly offer a nice over-view on this horn type ),

    My inclination ( after seeing how many broken pieces you have ) would be to completely replace the "slab-like" side-walls with new, solid walnut pieces ( while saving & repairing the teak horn bells ).
    - Of course this is easy for me to say from a long-distance perspective.

    You might want to reach out to some of our talented wood-workers here at LHF for some more repair opinions ( maybe even start a new thread ?? ).


  8. #8
    Senior Member Lee in Montreal's Avatar
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    Thanks for sharing the pictures. If it were me, I would look for a fresh slab of teak and replace the broken parts instead of just glueing them back. I understand that teak might be expensive on this side of the Pacific, but in Asia, it is extremely common and cheap. Back in the early 1970s, my parents were importing stuff from Vietnam and it was crated in teak 4'x4' boxes which were disgarded once the content was unpacked. Teak is dense, hard and doesn't rot as easy as common wood. Great fro making crates. And horns. ;-)

  9. #9
    Moderator hjames's Avatar
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    Fostex horn - repair, refurb, repurpose!

    Yep - it DOES make sense to make a new thread for this and not squat on the older "Mystery Large Format Monitors" thread.
    (http://www.audioheritage.org/vbullet...ormat-Monitors)

    Anyway, I found a pair of wooden horns on the auction site. They reminded me of the gorgeous walnut horns JohnW made for me a few years back for my L200 project.
    But the auction horns looked abused. faded like they'd been let out in the weather. One had an obvious crack and someone had run Sheet rock screws in to hold it together.
    Duct tape residue across the lips of both of them. Butcher work!
    But the price wasn't too bad, I thought I could improve them, and after the sale the seller offered the original metal adapters with them - for 1 inch drivers.

    Anyway - they arrived mid week and I wiped down the horns with "Oops" to get rid of the tape residue, and wiped down the intact horn with Howards Orange oil to see if that would refresh the wood ...

    Update - Michael Gillespie from Fostex wrote in the other thread and said the horns are made of TEAK! I'll get some Teak oil today
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  10. #10
    Moderator hjames's Avatar
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    Done - it DOES make sense to do a new thread on these Fostex horns I'm fixing rather than "squat" on the older discussion here.

    http://www.audioheritage.org/vbullet...furb-repurpose!


    Quote Originally Posted by Lee in Montreal View Post
    Thanks for sharing the pictures. If it were me, I would look for a fresh slab of teak and replace the broken parts instead of just glueing them back. I understand that teak might be expensive on this side of the Pacific, but in Asia, it is extremely common and cheap. Back in the early 1970s, my parents were importing stuff from Vietnam and it was crated in teak 4'x4' boxes which were disgarded once the content was unpacked. Teak is dense, hard and doesn't rot as easy as common wood. Great fro making crates. And horns. ;-)
    2ch: WiiM Pro; Topping E30 II DAC; Oppo, Acurus RL-11, Acurus A200, JBL Dynamics Project - Offline: L212-TwinStack, VonSchweikert VR-4
    7: TIVO, Oppo BDP103D, B&K, 2pr UREI 809A, TF600, JBL B460

  11. #11
    Senior Member macaroonie's Avatar
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    [QUOTE=hjames;412696]BTW - kind of thinking of chasing down a pair of 2420 horn drivers for these - so they would be JBL based.

    Had a chance today to gently take out the screws and examine the broken horn better. I believe they were originally machined and glued together -
    then someone dropped one of them and slapped it into place with duct tape and sheet-rock screws!!!
    Anyway, I have not oiled it, just taken it apart to look. The clamp is just holding 3 pieces together to see how they fit.
    Its teak, so its a pretty dense wood.

    I'm thinking very minimal use of Gorilla Glue might be the best way to glue the broken pieces back together.
    In stages. Glue the plank pieces together for the 2 back sides of the horn.
    Glue the 2 parts of the top lip back together.
    Clamp well to prevent expansion/distortion of the original shape.
    Then after all that has had a day to set up and dry,
    Glue the top lip back onto the lower assembly.

    Some of you folks are much better with wood than I am -
    does that sound like a reasonable approach?

    (Its got to be better than duct tape and sheet rock screws, right?)

    You called ? Always happy to help a Lady in distress . See next post. M

  12. #12
    Moderator hjames's Avatar
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    Anyway - they arrived mid week and I wiped down the horns with "Oops" to get rid of the tape residue, and wiped down the intact horn with Howards Orange oil to see if that would refresh the wood ...
    BTW - kind of thinking of chasing down a pair of 2420 horn drivers for these - so they would be JBL based.

    So - its the weekend. Today, Saturday, I had a chance to gently take out the screws and examine the broken horn better.
    I believe they were originally machined and glued together -
    then someone dropped one of them and slapped it into place with duct tape and sheet-rock screws!!!
    Anyway, I have not oiled it, just taken it apart to look. The clamp is just holding 3 pieces together to see how they fit.
    Its teak, so its a pretty dense wood.

    I'm thinking very minimal use of Gorilla Glue might be the best way to glue the broken pieces back together.
    In stages. Glue the plank pieces together for the 2 back sides of the horn.
    Glue the 2 parts of the top lip back together.
    Clamp well to prevent expansion/distortion of the original shape.
    Then after all that has had a day to set up and dry,
    Glue the top lip back onto the lower assembly.

    Some of you folks are much better with wood than I am -
    does that sound like a reasonable approach?

    (Its got to be better than duct tape and sheet rock screws, right?)
    Picture of the Fostex adapter next to a JBL 2327 adapter -
    - the 3-hole pattern is the same as the 1 inch JBL drivers!
    - and the 4 hole pattern lines up with the Altec 2 hole pattern!

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  13. #13
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    Westlake Audio has used a somewhat similarly ( inspired ) horn in some of their monitors .

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    Although, there are some significant differences when comparing the throat entry areas.



  14. #14
    Senior Member macaroonie's Avatar
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    Hi Heather < I thought I'd drop in and lend a hand.

    Gorilla is not really suited to this task as it tends to expand slightly. My go to here would be Titebond Original. It has great bonding properties with open wood , is easy to clean up excess and is not unpleasant to work with.

    Joining Teak , as it is an oily wood it is a good idea to get any latent oil off the surfaces you are trying to join. Q Tip and acetone or MEK dab all over and discard as needed. Allow time for that to flash off before using Titebond.

    Next you have the problem lf creating secure tight joints. In the first instance I would do a dry fit by hand to see if the surfaces mate properly. You may find the odd splinter will stop a good tight fit so these need to be located and removed. If you can post pics of the mating faces I'll have a looky.

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    I would have a go at pieces 1 and 2 ( above ) test for a dry fit using the flat surface face down on a piece of MDF or ply. Next prob you have is clamping. Because you have curves and angles everywhere it will be tricky to get a good grab on anything, I would look at securing the mouth (1) by using a couple of bits of ply about 12" x 3" reaching towards the driver exit. Outside the periphery of the horn mouth fashion a block support such that the ply plates are sitting nicely on the inside surface. Put a couple of screws in between the block and the lip. This will create a down force hopefully holding the part steady, You could use double stick tape but then you have a battle to release it.

    For the throat part (2 ) you will need to affix blocks in such a way that with the part in place you will be able to insert little wedges to create the pressure on (1)

    I'll see if I can sketch up a diagram. Better still if you can post a pic of parts 1 and 2 on their flat surfaces with the mating faces about 10mm apart , I'll edit the pic to show you whats needed.

  15. #15
    Moderator hjames's Avatar
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    Okay - I used a small chisel to clean up dried glue from the original assembly process.
    I dry fitted the pieces to see how everything fit - it went together brilliantly - no apparent problems
    (Other than the slightly spread places where some dummy used sheetrock screws and slightly split the back panels).

    So - here are pictures from the 3 gluing processes I did ...


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    I clamped across the back to pull the pieces tightly together, then used small clamps to clamp downward
    to hold the small parts against the inside of the curved lower lip.

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    The front edge of the top lip had been knocked off, which gave me a flat edge to set the clamp against.
    It appears these 2 pieces were assembled this way at the factory - the 2 pieces of wood have a different color and grain.
    It may not look flat from this photo, but I had a straight edge and it is.

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    The top is glued down to the top of the back planks and there is a thin glue bead on the back of the upper curved lip.
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