How to cut a perfect radius in a speaker baffle using a jigsaw

[Enzo]

Indeed. I was really good at covering pool tables with fresh felt, and getting the weave straight, but grille cloth makes every mistake obvious, and I fear I had a lot less talent there.

Good job.

[Leo_Gnardo]

Here's how the Airline cabinet job came out. How's that for speaker diameter clearance

Couldn't be a tighter fit. Nice speaker too! I'm also a Texas Heat fan. Great speaker at a bargain price. Get 'em while you can. Terrific square-up on the grill too.

[SoulFetish]

Thank you both for your encouraging words. A good friend of mine, who's an old amp tech gave me some good instruction when I picked up the grill cloth from him.
I told him I was not very good at it and my first attempt was total shit (on my own amp). He told me get one side perfectly aligned to start with, use heavy duty staples, and use a lot of them (I used 1/2" T50s). That if I get that right, the rest of the job is much easier to finish right. He also told me to do something with the corners (I forget the term), which I didn't do because of the lip on the top of the baffle and I was worried about clearance with this being a thicker piece of birch than the original. But those few points of instruction were super helpful and probably the difference on this try.

[g1]

Bet you're glad you didn't have to shave that speaker down with the angle grinder.
Nice job!

[SoulFetish]

Bet you're glad you didn't have to shave that speaker down with the angle grinder.
Nice job!

dude(lower case "d"), I took on the job before making sure it would actually fit, which was dumb. Only after I took it home did I realized that the original baffle fit into a 1/4 channel in the top, which already pitched downward towards the back. I had lost some clearance and it was going to be REALLY close, but I wouldn't know for sure if it would work till after I cut the rabbet on the baffle. This time, I got lucky. But hey, with inexperience, luck is probably a good portion of any success.

[Chuck H]

The first grill cloth I ever did was pretty crappy. I'm usually pretty good at that sort of thing, but I guess my mojo wasn't working that day And the worst piece of advice on that project really bit me on the @$$. I read that you could tighten up the work with a hair dryer. Well, since most modern grill cloth material is cheap crap, even if it's not sold as such, it contains a lot of large nylon filaments. Read "fishing line" or something damn near like it. Well my hair dryer is a HAIR DRYER and had seen some use. A small piece of inflamed lint hit the grill I was toasting and burned an irregular eighth inch hole in it!!! I had to present the amp the following day and I didn't have the material for a second attempt.

Shared here so that my loss might benefit others.

[Bill Moore]

I too like the great job on the grill cloth!
I've never used the hair drier, been too worried it would come out tight/saggy, depending on how I moved the drier!
I too found that aligning the top or bottom edge before stretching works well. I use short 3/8" staples on the edge of the baffle, and use a 1" strip of wood to apply tension to the cloth, from the opposite side. After tensioning, I fold the cloth, and staple to the back of the baffle.
(Chuck H, I had several crappy installations before I was able to do a job with the first piece of cloth!)