Well now these have taken quite a while for the oil to fully dry on this Ziricote veneer. I think it may be the resonous nature of the wood. I do seem to recall having similar issues with the Santos Rosewood veneer on my Edales.
Still they have now had a couple coats - after leaving for a couple of days between coats - and a I light wax polish to buff them up so not to be over glossy.
I must say they have come out a lot darker in colour than I imagined. But having tried several other finishes both the missus and me agreed the oil was by far the nicer finish. I tried:
1) Acrylic matt varnish; - Looked wishy washy and dried with a slight milky sheen though not as dark as polyurethane varnish. Horrid!
2) Acrylic Satin varnish; - Again dried with a slightly milky sheen. A little better look to the grain structure in the finish. Similar colouring to matt varnish above but still horrid!
3) Gloss polyurethane varnish; This dried a similar darkness and sheen as the oil but on this type veneer really needs to be sprayed on to achieve anywhere near a decent finish. Better than the above two but still not asgood as the oil.
4) Liberon Finishing Oil; - This by far gave the best results and though finishing darker than I had hoped does bring out the best qualities of the grain structure.
5) Straight wax finish; - This went on as dark as the oil and poly varnish, but dried as though nothing had been added to the bare veneer. When buffed up only gave a slight sheen to the bare wood. Did nothing for the lustre of the veneer.
Anyway I do hope Ali likes the look, but I do wonder whether he expected them to turn out quite so dark?
The photos don't do justice (now where have I heard that before?) and they do look rather classy in the flesh. You'll all be able to judge for yourselves when I hand them over to Ali at the Owston meet.
By-the-way the photos are of the speakers on the stands from my Edales ontp with cardboard boxes to bring the tweeters up to listening height. As to now I have not had a serious listen just enough to make sure they work and are in phase! They are playing through a SS amp with CD on continous play. I'll leave them like this till this evening when I sit down and report back how they sound. Initial impressions though are good.
So much so I had to crank up the volume some. 
. The imaging was really superb and the bass rythems better than I had anticipated. The song simply just had my feet tapping along with the music. 
