30/03/15

Hello!

This past saturday I made some decent progress.

Cut out fenders, billets and finally got up the nerve to proceed with the inlaid seat portion of this project.

Built my pattern by looking at saddles by Kent Frecker, Cary Schwarz & Steve Mason...I'm sure it isn't as nice as what they do but overall I'm happy.

Here's what I did:

Pulled the seat off the saddle. verified by measurement approximately where the pattern was going. Using the center line I had scratched into the back I ran an awl hole up through the seat 2" in from either end of the pattern. This let me center the pattern on the top side of the seat accurately. I then traced around it and cut the pattern out. This required very sharp knives and nerve...once mis-step and you can wreck a piece of prime Hermann Oak.

I used a piece of nice top grain chap leather for the inlaid portion - This sets in a 5/8" by 1/16" deep channel I cut into the bottom side of the seat around the inlaid portion - Used a french edger to create this channel.

The padding is the foam you get from Sheridan leather - It's 1/4" thick. My seat leather is close to 3/8" in the center so I needed to build it up. I used two layers of pretty heavy chap leather - The were probably in the 7oz. neighborhood and I glued these two layers to the underside of the foam. The top grain leather was glued to this. Prior to gluing the top grain leather on I skived the outside edge to a near feather. This whole set-up fits into the inlaid cut out very tightly.

I cut the foam piece 1/6" smaller on all sides than the cut out I took out of the seat. This gives the chap leather space to fold and wrap under.

Here are some cell phone pics.

R