Reply to "Has anyone done their own leather installation?"

When you go to an automotive leather supplier, mostly it is going to be "Mercedes" leather they offer.
Really what you want, is a European automobile leather. You do not want North American leather, or furniture leather.
The difference is going to be the quality of the skin and the treatment they use on the leather.
Mercedes leather is superior to Rolls Royce leather which was a standard for many years.

The Mercedes leather is known to last 40 or 50 years with correct feeding of it while the others can be dried out in 7 or 8.

The North American leather is also full of barb wire scrapes in the skins. The Europeans take care of the cattle. They have few slashes.

Our cattle are basically for beef. The leather is secondary to the ranchers. They get paid by the pound of the animal, not the quality of the skins.

You can do whatever stitches the machine is capable of. Something on the order of 10 or 12 stitches per inch.

You do not want to go finer then that because it tends to weaken the leather and makes it tear much like a perforated postage stamp will.

You can get "heavy-duty" thread from a fabric shop. It's stronger and is what is used most often on furniture upholstery.

3m Super Headliner spray adhesive is what I used. Read the instructions. It works a lot like paper cement does.

You need a hand roller, a Formica (or plastic laminent) roller from Home Depot will do.

You need a high quality stapler. I use Porter Cable pneumatic tools and of course you need a compressor for it.

You need a heavy duty set shears like you can get in the Singer store. A nice heavy duty utility knife with changeable blades. We call them sheet rock knives but the correct term is utility knife.

You need white chalk to mark your cuts with but in a pinch you can use pieces of sheet rock. Don't use crayon or magic markers. They don't wash off easily. The chalk or sheet rock does.

Don't be too surprised if you have to pay $300 a skin either. The price goes up and down with the commodities market. There are some good suppliers in North Carolina that post of Ebay. Shop around. Sometimes there are deals.

Black is the easiest to match. Colors can be a problem. Red is the toughest to match since it fades the fastest.

Personally I wouldn't mess around with the "artificial leathers". In every case they are more per square foot (or yard) then real leathers are. One company that is near me here in Armonk NY, gets $50 per square foot.

I have it on my shift boot and it is already torn. Use leather if you can. The only material you can not kill is the vinyl from the cars of the 60s like what is in my Shelby. However even if you wanted to go that way, that material is very thick and difficult to work.