Matt the wood came from oakwood veneer in the USA. 2 sheets of premium cherry with their special backer for contact cement was 350.00 landed in the Yukon.
Peeling off the vinyl is not a fun job. If you watch the Axioms video on how their speakers are built you will see that the vinyl is applied and then the wood is cut and the speaker is folded together. The vinyl holds the speaker together until the glue drives. Once the vinyl is lifted the corners are an irregular shape and need to be squared up with a table saw and then some filling is required and I add more glue from the back side. I was going to get unfinished cabinets from Axiom a few years back but it is quite expensive since all pieces have to be cut and individually then glued ,which is much more labor intensive for them. I am still debating whether to carry on with the M80's since that would mean I would want to do the QS4's and M2's. Its not a one day job and then they are out of the system while I am working on them.
As for the trimming ,that is the hardest part. The weird shape of the speaker doesn't allow the use of the router so I try to get the edges as close as possible so there is very little trimming but this has its caveats because its hard to position the veneer when the contact cement is trying to grab it and once it sticks that's where it stays. I have found the good sharp round bastard file and my DA palm sander work best for the 45 deg edges. I did the VP 100 first since its not very visible in my room so I could get a sense of all the mistakes I would make, like putting the grain the wrong way
and most importantly which piece to put first to limit exposed edges.
