[DanTwoLakes]

These seats are out of a 1955 Ford Town Sedan. They are the front and rear bottom seats. The padding process was done differently than the first thread I posted on this subject, so I thought I would explain how these seats were done.

On the first seats I used a heavy duty deck pad called a laminated deck skin. This was used because it is tough as nails, and also because the seat foam was applied in one piece.

On these two seats the padding needed to be in two pieces because the seat covers had a listing that needed to be attached to the springs and then the seat cover listing had to be attached to the listing attached to the springs.

I used a product called Flex Pad as the seat deck. It does not have the heavy duty coating one one side like the laminated deck skin. I used it because I needed to sew a listing on both sides of the pad and the Flex Pad is far easier to sew to. The listing on the bottom of the deck pad was hog ringed to the seat springs at the proper distance back from the front edge, and then was hog ringed around the edge of the seat spring assembly. After this was done, the next step is to glue on the two pieces of seat foam as close to the listing on the seat deck as possible. I generally like to use 1" thick 65 to 80 compression firm foam on a bench seat, but these seats had thicker original padding. For these seats I used 1 1/2" thick 45 compression foam, which is softer than the 65 compression foam. Once the foam was glued down, I let it dry and then began attaching the seat cover. The listing sewed to the seat cover was first hog ringed to the listing on the top of the deck pad being careful to center the seat cover on the seat frame. After that, the seat cover could be folded over the foam and hog ringed to the bottom of the seat frame to finish the process. I wasn't quite sure if the 1 1/2" foam was going to be thick enough for the front of the front seat because the original padding was quite thick, and after attaching a few hog rings it was obvious the foam wouldn't be as thick as it needed to be to fill out the seat cover. I took out the hog rings and cut an extra 1" thick piece of foam and glued it to the 1 1/2" foam in front of the listing only. I beveled the edge of the foam next to the listing to make a smooth transition. This worked fine, so I was then able to finish attaching the seat cover to the frame. The rear seat did not need any extra padding, and I attached this seat cover to the frame with just the 1 1/2" foam as padding.

[DanTwoLakes]

Here are some more pictures of the process. The picture of the spring is there because I took these seats apart a long time ago, and forgot where the rear of the seat cover was attached to the springs. When that happens I look for some tell-tale sign of the original hog rings. Sometimes there are scratches on the springs, but these springs didn't have any. What you can see in the picture is a rusty spot where the hog ring was attached, which told me where to attach the seat cover.

[DanTwoLakes]

Here are the finished seats. The fabric came from SMS Fabrics out in Oregon, and is the original seat fabric for this car. The original seats were just done with a single layer of fabric, but I glued and sewed the top sections to 1/4" sew foam, and the perimeter pieces to 1/8" sew foam.

[joe_padavano]

Dan,

You're amazing - not just your workmanship, but also in taking the time to photograph and write these how-to articles. Thanks again.