Display omitted •Superhydrophobic meshes covered with nanostructured FAS grafted electroless Ni-P plating coating were prepared.•The meshes can rapidly and continuously separate oil-water mixture without any extra driving force and chemical agent.•The superhydrophobic mesh is steady and reliable for the long-term separation of the water-oil mixture.•A separation model of water-oil mixture through the superhydrophobic or hydrophobic meshes was proposed. The development of the super-hydrophobic coating/film mesh for directly separating oil from water is greatly desired due to the high separation efficiency and the steady recyclability. Here we describe a facile and inexpensive method for fabricating the super-hydrophobic/super-oleophilic stainless steel meshes with the FAS modified electroless Ni-P composite coatings. The Ni-P particles on the mesh are spherical with a uniform size diameter and relatively concatenate each other to form a nanoscale rough surface. The static contact angles of the as-prepared meshes fall in between 124.4 ± 1.5° and 167.9 ± 2.1°. These meshes exhibit non-sticking of water, anti-fouling, and excellent penetrating through the oil properties. The prepared meshes can rapidly and continuously separate water-oil mixture without resorting to any extra driving force and the chemical agent. The best separation efficiency is 96.8%. The super-hydrophobic mesh is steady and reliable for a long-term separation of the water-oil mixtures. Finally, a separation mechanism of the super-hydrophobic meshes for the water-oil mixtures is proposed. We anticipate that the prepared meshes could provide a candidate application to effective waste oil cleanup and other rapid water-oil separation processes.