Help with doing nice grill (or regrill) job

[Charlie Wilson]

Hello all, I have been repairing amps for awhile and occasionally I have to replace the grill cloth on an amplifier. I usually can fumble through and make it look decent but sometimes they are not quite as straight or tight as I would like. So I would like at this point to learn some techniques or a systematic way of doing the grills so they look pro and I can do it consistently. If there are some guys out there that are good at doing grills and are willing to share some techniques or direct me to some information it would be great.
CW

[Ron Worley]

There's a guy out there named Rick Johnson selling a video of how he does both tolex and grille cloth, it's very informative and worth the cost.

http://rickjohnsoncabinets.com/?page_id=2

[Charlie Wilson]

Thanks Ron. I looked on his site and he seems to know what he is doing. I think his video looks like a good investment.
CW

[Ron Worley]

The tolex stuff is fairly straight forward, but it was the techniques on grill cloth that really taught me something.

[Geeze]

I built a jig to hold / clamp the baffle . I attach the first corner and then stretch to align the opposite corner on the same edge. I clamp a couple of planks to the free end of the grill cloth then tie a strap long enough to step on to maintain tension. Then it is just a matter of checking alignment as you staple. Most jobs I pull at least 50% of the staples out to fix the 'line's of the cloth. If you aren't happy with the way it looks - it will only look worse with the edges trimmed and installed on the cab. Redoing the job at that point is a cast iron bitch - don't ask me how I know this.

Be sure to hammer the staples flat when you are satisfied.

I tried to post some pics but my pirated wifi ain't playin' nice.

Russ

[hitchcaster]

+1 on Russ.... I just did a nice one all by hand... only tricks to add are wet the grill before install.... I've done the hairdryer trick on saggy grills that are already installed... works pretty good