New BassChat 8"Cab design

[Rosie C]

On 18/12/2025 at 10:40, nekomatic said:

Can’t remember exactly but I’m pretty sure I just squeezed mine flat between a couple of pieces of wood and a couple of clamps. 

 

I was thinking along those lines, specifically, sandwich it between two pieces of 18mm ply, then drive my van onto it   

[tauzero]

Do you have to remove the rim from the grill first? It's going to somewhat constrain the flattening if you don't, isn't it?

[rwillett]

9 hours ago, Phil Starr said:

Not very helpfully it took around 15mins, so I'm not sure what is going wrong. I've bashed a lot of metal in the past when I welded my own car bodywork amnd I've dressed a lot of lead when working on the roof so I'm probably fairly efficient. You kind of settle into a nice steady rhythm keeping the work moving. 

 

I'm trying hard to picture what you might be doing. I look not for the high spots but the bits where the metal is most bent. Are you perhaps going for the middle.  The bent bit is around the cicumference around 2-3cm in from the edge (roughly, I dont have it in front of me). Knock these flat and the centre will start to lay flat. Push the middle down without taking out the edges will just mean it springs back.

That's exactly what I am doing. I'm working 2-3cm from outside edge, carefully going round, trying to keep the rubber mallet full face onto the metal. Every so often, I turn the grille over so it's being bashed from both sides.  I've done over an hour on it and it is slightly better, but if I look at it edge on, I can see where the bends were put in 2-3cm from the edge, its not as bad as it started with. 

 

I'm bashing against softwood and I wonder if that's the problem. I'm going to try and find something different to hit against, possible a paving slab or something, cover the slab with material.

 

I can't use plywood and drive the car over it, as I've cut it up for speakers  

 

Rob

[Phil Starr]

1 hour ago, rwillett said:

That's exactly what I am doing. I'm working 2-3cm from outside edge, carefully going round, trying to keep the rubber mallet full face onto the metal. Every so often, I turn the grille over so it's being bashed from both sides.  I've done over an hour on it and it is slightly better, but if I look at it edge on, I can see where the bends were put in 2-3cm from the edge, its not as bad as it started with. 

 

I'm bashing against softwood and I wonder if that's the problem. I'm going to try and find something different to hit against, possible a paving slab or something, cover the slab with material.

 

I can't use plywood and drive the car over it, as I've cut it up for speakers  

 

Rob

You cut up the car! 🤣

 

Try using a bit of timber or hard plastic to concentrate the forces. You can then concentrate on the actually bent bits. 

Edited 1 hour ago by Phil Starr

[rwillett]

I found a broken paving slab in the back garden and used that. Lo and behold, 15 mins later, it looks a lot better. Lesson here is don't use a softwood base (cut bad puns) to hammer against.

 

Masked the area off and cut it with a Dremel and new cutting discs and the cutting is almost done. I forgot to take into account the rubber edges which hide the raw metal so it's possibly one row of holes too large in each direction. The blue tape is just to hold things together as the rubber edge really wants to curl off

 

 

I'm still thinking about how to fix it to the speaker cab OR to the red corner pieces. Magnets might be the answer here. I have a lot of the strong ones and a simple addition to the red corner pieces might work well. A little bit of velcro through a few holes would allow it to be pulled off easily. With a black baffle board, it might look quite good for me.

Rob