Bottlehead Forum: Slick Speaker Grills by Jim Griffin

If you are content with rectangular grills, then I have a slick solution. I have been making some lightweight grills from the 5/16" thick x 0.75" wide scrren door aluminum tubing from Lowe's and most any other home centers. The tubing is hollow but has a groove for rolling in spline on what would become the back side of the frame. My original application was long grills for some of my line arrays so the aluminum tubing was ideal. Recently, I built some small grills using the same technique and they are very trick.

I cut the metal with straight cuts and then use the plastic corner specifically designed for this material. Next I insert and glue 0.5" dia magnets (with a metal spacer underneath to move the magnet closer to the surface) in the cutouts of corner pieces on what will be the back side of the grill. Magnets or flat steel washers can be inserted into the baffle face (aligned with the magnets in the grill and verify the polarity) and if done during construction, you can use veneer or laminate to conceal them.

I stretch the grill cloth over the frame and use 0.125" spline to capture the grill cloth on the backside of the frame. Trim the excess cloth and you are done.

These grills with magnetic fastening are slick--self aligning. You can not put them on crooked.

Jim