Making Custom Grills

I recently had an urge to build a custom grill for my 72 maverick out of flattened mesh, Im using 1/2" 16 steel mesh, and welding in a 1/2" border from 1/8" flat stock. I was gonna try and sell them if I could perfect the building process so the finished product looked a little more professional. Ill try and post some pictures tonight but I haven't finished making my brackets for mounting it. I was also planning on painting them gloss black, flat black, or dull aluminum. Any opinions?

 

Oh and all of the proceeds go towards making my drag mav go faster.

 

lol Don't make me have to get back on it. I am soo close to finishing.
Getting the angles is tricky. Let's see some pics.
http://mmb.maverick.to/showthread.php?t=56953&highlight=grill

 

I'll subscribe to this thread instead of adding to the older one if that's ok.
I am thinking a spot welder is a good investment when using mesh. I tried tacking and it LOOKS tacky lol.

 

Gene, a finished grille in the hand is worth two in the bush. Or something like that.

 

lol.. You saying I'm slow? .
I'm kinda stumped. There are no Mavericks around here. The one I can use to test fit it with is 2 hrs away and I have not needed to go there. I really wanted to test it at the Gathering but with so much going on, I was hesitant to pry anyone from what they were doing. Besides, you don't like my designs. If and when I get this thing fitted, I can then see what I can create to your likeing. Let's see what ryanb comes up with. Maybe IT will be a hit.

 

Theres also a guy out here in Cali that makes custom billet style ones already. Theyre really good looking and pretty inexpensive. A mesh one would be pretty sweet too.

 

Yeah ive seen the billet ones. They're pretty sweet, but I didn't have the money to buy one. and I get the satisfaction of making my own. Im going out to my garage to snap a few pics right now.

 

Here are the pics,

I painted it to match my headlight bezels, I do still have a couple kinks i'm working out; let me know what you think, thanks.

 

It's a little blurry, sorry for that.

 

It's a grill.. Did you notice how the angles are difficult to duplicate? Looks like you bent it straight down the center with no rake.. I'm thinking black would look better, just my opinion.

 

I actually ended up doing a 1/2inch pie cut at the bottom and welding it and then bending it along the weld for that compound bend. It was time consuming but I like the way it looks.

 

I see it now. Yea, it takes time working the angles.

 

Suprisingly, it only took me a couple tries to get the angle right, but it was tricky. My first idea was to bend it straight and then cut the angle into the steel, but that would look weird.