The Speaker Grill

While I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of the laminate I ordered I thought I'd try to get a few smaller things out of the way. I cannot make the back panel or finish the shell without the laminate! The first thing up on the list was figuring out how to cover the speaker opening. I didn't take any specific set of speakers into consideration when I designed this thing - I just thought I'd figure it out when I got that far.... well, now it's time to figure it out.

I decided to use some speaker cloth (available at partsexpress) and some perforated aluminum (available at mcmastercarr) to hide the speaker. The aluminum should tie in nicely to the volume knob and the chrome t-molding I will be wrapping the edges of the case with.

The first thing I did was buy some 1/4" square dowels from Home Depot - I wanted 1/8" but this was the smallest they had. I used the dowels to make a frame slightly smaller than the area routed out behind the speaker opening.

I clamped the cut pieces for about an hour until the glue felt like it would hold.

Once that was finished I sprayed it black just to make sure it wouldn't show at all through the speaker cloth and perforated metal.

Next, I cut out a piece of perforated aluminum to cover the frame.

Finally, I cut out a piece of speaker cloth a bit oversized to wrap the frame. This was a bit tough to figure out but maybe I'm slow. I got some white Elmer's Glue and put a bead around the frame. Then I laid the frame on top of the cloth on a flat surface with a piece of saran wrap underneath so the glue wouldn't stick to the table.

After the glue dried I used a razor to remove the excess material around the edges and I ended up with something like this:

The final step is going to be securing everything behind the Plexiglas in the cabinet. I have a bit more to do before I'm ready to permanently install it but here are a few pictures of what it is going to look like:

I am pretty happy with how everything came out. This was kind of a pain to do - I was expecting it to be an hour tops but I had trouble cutting the perforated metal accurately (third time was a charm).

More later.