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

There are more then a few leather suppliers on line. Many sell on ebay. For the quantities that you need, that is where I would look.

You should be able to get top leather skins for $150 to $200 each. Shop around. Ask for samples.

Each skin will be different. No two will be exactly alike.

Well you don't start easy now do you?

Of the two dashes available, the single pod is easier to do. You do not need the pleat in the cover, which is what you have.

You will have to sew two "ends" into it to wrap it around the corners at the doors. Those "joints" will wander since you have to approximate the location of them, then stretch the leather. If you cut the leather 1/2" shorter to stretch it, it might wind up needing to be stretched 3/4" of an inch. My joints there are off center because of that, but I'm ok with that. A customer might not be.

Look at your dash cover. See how the joints in the corners are off center? That's what I am talking about. They are next to impossible to center where aesthetically they should be. I've redone those several times. I can never get the leather stretched to have them fall perfectly in the center of those interior corners. Maybe Johnny has a trick for that? I don't.

You can stretch and wrap the leather around the nosing down to the flat surface of the dash, gluing it in place on the dash. That intersection is a little tricky and if you use the burlwood inlay with the leather, it makes it easier because you remove the burlwood, then trim the leather to the 90 degree intersection, then glue the burlwood back on.

I didn't go that way. I leathered the front too. The leather new is quite soft and tough to cut perfectly clean at that joint, so I made a molding for it out of leather.

Well not really a molding but what is called piping. That is string with leather wrapped around it (glued to it). If you do it right it will actually wind up looking like a black rubber vacuum hose mad out of leather. Then you just glue it into the crevasse.

The console you need to cut patterns for because you need to make a seam along the edges. Most of the upholstery shops will make a pleat like you have on your existing dash, since it is tough to make a simple hem, fold them over and have the transparency of the leather show a uniform fold underneath it. I like to go that way, but it's tough to do.

The engine cover is complex. You have the bubble, you have the rolled edges, you have the big flat spots behind the seats. Those all need to be done seperately and attached with a combination of blind screws, glue, and staples. It's easier to show you then explain and it isn't easy to show you. Smiler

The door panels, if you follow the original design are really just slip covers and you need to understand how to hold the witness lines in place. Maybe Johnny has some pictures of how they get done. They are a lot like the seat covers in that you need to insert wire, provide attachment points in the fold of the leather for staples, hog rings or clamps of some kind.

You can do all of this, and actually have excellent results but this is at least a 3 credit course, maybe 4 or 5 with the labs?

Oh. find yourself a nice well lit area where you can set up an assembly table to lay out and cut the patterns and another next to it to set the machine on. Don't throw away the little pieces of leather that you trim off. You can use those to practice sewing on.

The hardest thing for me sewing initially was pulling a perfectly strait line. It's harder then it looks, and when you come to an intersection with three layers of leather folded over you will discover what the walking foot is for.

The leather is very soft new and unlike upholstery fabric which has a stiffness and makes it easy to feed into the machine, thus pulling a straight line easier.

You know you can buy a leather "kit" from Hall with this already done and all you need to do is install everything?

It isn't cheap but neither are all of your materials and your time, and your "do overs"?

You need to use the coverings you have as patterns. That is the simplest way for you to do this, otherwise you start to reinvent the wheel. No one has re patented that design yet either.

I upholstered the headliner too. In all I used four skins, with some left over, and I bought the seats from Hall already done in the "new style".

I had one of the seats appart and looking at how they were done, it isn't really difficult. The hog rings solved a lot of the issues for them and in the future when I need to redo them, I won't be afraid. "Into the valley of death marched...". Eeker

Anyway. Good luck.
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