Recover your own grills

[Steve Gonzales]

Hi LHS Members,

First off, A heartfelt THANK YOU to every Man or Woman that has EVER served in the Military for Our Freedom !

This is my technique to recover your worn-out grills. It is quite involved, but once you calm down and use common sense and some ordinary tools, it is alot quicker than clamping and waiting. I discovered this method on my own. I asked questions that seemed to have the same answer, "Contact cement and clamps, wait, wait ,wait!" So after some experimenting, I developed an alternative to this. It works for me and I hope you find it useful to you. I will say that although I am showing pictures, it is up to you to find out and put your own "twist" on the method. The most difficult part is the corners, you must do a bit of material manipulation to achieve a good result. This involves doing a "test stretch" a few times to get the proper 45 degree mitre cut. The trick is to get the material to meet at the 45 AND get the resulting "dogear" waste to "begin" ABOVE the vertical thickness of the frame. In otherwords, the material that wraps around from the front to back must have coverage on the corner, yet, after you clip the waste "dogear", it must leave the corner covered. Here is a shot of the tools.

[Steve Gonzales]

Lay your grill face down and orient your cloth accordingly

[Steve Gonzales]

Cut your cloth about 2-3 inches bigger than your grillframe. this amount will vary with different grills like L300-"3-D" types.

[Steve Gonzales]

This is how I begin: I have my hotglue gun ready to go and also a small length of wood to "press" the material down after I lay a 6" bead of glue at a time. I use a relatively narrow bead and I lay it down about 3/8" from the edge to prevent "roll-over" bulge when the bead is squashed with the block of wood in a pressing action. Hold the block on the material for about 10 seconds and move to the next 6" section. I also don't start at the exact 45 degree point, but about 3/8" from that point, the reason will become evident later

[Steve Gonzales]

Here is what I mean about the block of wood being used as a press

[Steve Gonzales]

Once you get a section done, continue in kind, the glue is pretty strong after a few seconds so don't worry too much about it coming loose, just be careful.