Dan,
A lot of us are watching and taking notes. Thanks for all the time and effort you are putting into this.

Dan,

Your doing a great job with the tutorial. The section of foam that you repaired will be useful to everyone but your Bosch foam saw is a pretty expensive item. An inexpensive alternative is available from Wal-Mart in the sporting goods department. It's an electric fillet knife used to fillet fish. Bass Pro Shop also has them.

Jim: That depends on whether you think $275 is expensive! I was going to bring up that very point later on in the tutorial when it became necessary to cut foam. Those electric fillet knives are only about $35, and will work well as long as you don't overuse them. Another option is the old Hamilton Beach electric carving knives. You can find them at garage sales and thrift stores.

My sew foam is scheduled to come in today, so we're going to start going on the tutorial again tomorrow morning.

I am making this a sticky so the thread stays at the top of the forum..you will still be able to post to the thread..

Sam

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I would rather make it work than make it popular..And if it does not work it will not be popular..

As promised, we are continuing on with the bottom seat for our old Ford pickup.The first pic shows this handsome thing and the line I drew across it, and the vertical line I drew marking where the outside insert will be. We need to make sure that the width of the inserts (the middle 3) are exactly the same on the seat as they are on the back so that they match up vertically. We are going to divide the seat here like the seat back was done. There are a few reasons for this: 1) I like the look of it with the seat matching the back 2) It will make the next step on Dusty's 50's look seat easier 3) I didn't have enough of the insert tweed fabric to go all the way from front to back! The 2nd pic shows that God-awful seam down the center of the front banding. We are going to get rid of that seam completely and make the whole front/side banding in one piece. Yes, we could save some fabric by cutting the banding in 2 or 3 pieces, but the less seams there are to come apart, the better. The third pic shows 1/2 of the front banding. I cut 20" off of the straight end and will just make a pattern of the curved end and add 40" to the middle when I lay it out on the vinyl. The 4th pic shows what I cut off to make my patterns from, and the last pic shows the notes I made as I was taking this apart. Once again, it was sewn with a chain stitch and came right apart. It came off the frame just like the seat back.....a few hog rings on each side and plastic "J" channel front side and back side.

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The first pic shows my finished patterns. That's all we need, along with some measurements, to cut the seat. This was all taken apart, disassembled, and patterns made just like we did the seat back. The second pic shows something we need to address after we cut the front/side band. The hole that goes over the stud that sticks out of the side of the seat needs to be reinforced, or we'll rip the finished seat putting it back on the frame. The last two pics are of the rust on the bottom of the mounts attached to the frame that Dusty was worried about. We are going to treat the rust with Loctite Extend, which will stop the rust, encapsulate it, and act like primer if we want to paint over it. That's all for today. Next comes the blanks, then the finished inserts, and finally sewing the seat bottom together and putting it back on the frame.

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I cut out my sew foam blanks and all the fabric for the bottom seat yesterday morning. The bottom seat is put together just like the seat back, so really the only thing we need to be sure of is that the inserts line up between the seat back and the seat bottom. All the assembly instructions are in the first part of this tutorial, so just follow that. Here are some more tips and observations to help you along the way. The first pic shows me gluing the fabric to the sew foam. The reason I took this picture is that the sew foam is gray, and not white. I know somebody is going to ask if the difference in color is of any significance, and the answer is no. At one time, the foam manufacturers tried to come up with a color coding system, but it never caught on. The color of foam means absolutely nothing. I have seen white, pink, blue, green, yellow, black, and gray colored foam, but the only thing that means anything is the number designation for the foam. This sew foam is 1835. The first two numbers are the quality of the foam, I.E. the amount of urethane in the formulation. The more urethane the better the quality and the longer it will last, which is more important on living room furniture than it is for sew foam. The second two numbers indicate how firm the foam is, measured in I.L.D., indent load deflection. Without going into detail, the higher the second set of two numbers are, the firmer the foam. 35 is on the lower end of medium density. The next pic is the chalk I use to mark to draw the lines on the tweed fabric. This is tailor's chalk, not to be confused with tailor's crayon. Crayon makes a better mark, but is next to impossible to get off the fabric. The next pictures show where I violated one of my cardinal rules of sewing, which is always check your bobbin thread before you start sewing lines on inserts. It was not a big deal on cloth, but could be a disaster on vinyl, ultraleather, or leather. The next three pictures show what to do if this happens to you. Oversew the place where the thread ran out about 3 to 4 stitches. Go to the back of the sew foam and pull the other side of the of the thread through to the back. Tie the thread off with a square knot, and cut off the thread leaving about 3/4 of an inch. (You leave the ends long so the flame doesn't go near the foam or fabric) Take a Bic lighter and set the thread on fire. Let it burn like a fuse up to the sew foam. When the flame reaches the foam backing it should extinguish itself, but I just tap it with my finger to make sure it stops.

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I took these pictures to give you one of my best tips, which is to always leave yourself a way to adjust as you go along with the assembly process. Here's the deal: I know that my finished seat top has to be 61" from side to side. I also know that to match up with the seat back, my center insert has to be 10" after sewing, and my cloth inserts need to be 19 1/4" each after sewing. Therefore, I sewed the center insert and the two cloth inserts together, but didn't sew the left or right end inserts yet. I took that assembly and put the cardboard pattern on the cloth insert to see if I needed to make an adjustment. You can see on the one pic the black mark where I marked the 1" overlap to compensate for the seam allowances. The distance to the center needs to be 30 1/2", so I measured to see if I was on target, and I was. If I was off, and it should not have been by much if I was, I could adjust the two end inserts to compensate and still get the 61" I needed. As it turned out, after I sewed the end inserts and sewed them to the rest of the assembly, I checked my measurement again, and found that they were 1/4" long. I trimmed them both down, the assembly was 61", and then I could sew on the horizontal welt and the front section of the seat. The point is this: By constantly checking my measurements, I can avoid some of the disasters that you can get into with simple adjustments instead of having to tear things all apart, or worse, have to start over. I threw in the last two pictures because I wanted you to know how much I love the new servo motors I got for both my sewing machines. They are the Reliable Sew-Quiet 3000. The best part of these motors is that I can slow the top speed down by turning the selector switch and adjusting the speed knob to the point that, if I want, I can literally sew one stitch at a time. This is extremely useful when sewing curves like you see on the picture of the top of the motorcycle seat, or when sewing sun visors. When you can adjust the top end speed like that,you can sew without thinking about anything except feeding the work through the machine. Not all servo motors have this feature, so check the specs before you upgrade your machine. Tomorrow I'll finish sewing the seat, and then we'll be ready to assemble it.

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Now we're ready to finish sewing the bottom seat, after which we'll attach it to the frame, and then put the back on to complete the first section of the seat tutorial.
The next step is to sew on the extension at the back of the seat that the "J" channel gets sewed to. Here is another tip for you...in the first picture you see the extension almost completely sewn on, and it is obviously too long. I did not make a mistake in measuring, I intentionally left it too long. Any time you have a part that is just a straight cut like this is, leave it an inch or two long, trim the excess when you get to the end, and you'll always have enough. The next picture shows where I need to cut out for the plastic guard that the seat belt goes through. In the last picture you can see that I cut out part of the extension to use as a template for marking this hole. The 4th pic shows the reinforcement that I glued in to keep the side seat band from ripping when we put the seat back together over the studs that hold the seat back in it's upright position. This piece I glued in with high temp contact adhesive to make sure it never comes loose. The third pic shows the right single upturned foot I used to sew on the "J" channel on both the extension and the side/front banding. Once the extension is sewn on and topstitched, I sew on the perimeter welt, then the side/front banding, and the seat is completely sewed.

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The next step is to re-attach the seat cover to the frame. This is a simple job, but first I want to pad the back of the metal seat frame so the seat cover does not get cut. I use a material called polyfelt which comes 3/16" thick and 54" wide and is tough but soft and glues on very easily. When we do the final version of this seat, I will pad the entire frame around the bottom. I first attach the rear "J" channel to the frame, then pull the front band down and attach the front "J" channel to the front of the frame. The rest of the attachment is done with a few hog rings to the left and right sides. There you have it, the finished seat bottom without that awful seam in the front.

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Just to refresh your memories, here is what we started with.

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And here is the finished seat. You can see why I made such a point of making the inserts for the seat back and the seat bottom exactly the same, they line up perfectly all the way across.

I'm going to take a break until after the 4th of July. All of my spare time right now goes into organizing our local Lions Club 4th of July parade. I wish all of you a safe and happy 4th. When we start up again, we will do Dusty's 50's retro seat.



As always, if you have questions or would like other pictures taken, please just ask.

Anyone who would like these seat covers, send me a private message and for a small donation to Leader Dogs, they're yours. They will fit a 1979 Ford truck seat frame.

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I've been out of the loop for about a week, so this is the first chance I've had to see the finished result.

You are definitely the man, Dan! I'm glad you put a sticky on this to keep it up at the top of the page, because this entire tutorial certainly deserves a place of honor!

I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that I hope your 4th of July Celebration is a major success, and that whoever buys these seat covers does them justice.

Yep - you're one of a kind Dan. Thanks again!

Ditto that - THANKS, Dan!

PS - I think *all* the tutorials should be made stickies and readily available for us like that.

Sorry, guys (and gals) I got a really big job to do that will take all my spare time and then some. I will have to get back to this tutorial in September. I think everyone is busy for the summer anyway. The picture is of c-boy (Dewey) in his 32 truck. Dewey only lives about 20 miles from me, and he graciously agreed to be in our parade (although I almost made him late for the Sayner parade!) He was one of the hits of the Lake Tomahawk Fourth of July parade.

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No one lives forever, the trick is creating something that will.
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