seat for a friend

[JohnD]

Sorry about the bad pics, But I only have my cell phone camera.

I haven't posted anything in a while so I thought I would. A friend of mine asked me if I would make a seat for him, a tribute to his grandfather.

He said all he wanted was his grandad's inititals, The years and the words strength and honor. This is what I came up with. He hasn't seen the design as he's refused to see it til it's done. I know there are quite a few flaws and imperfections, the most obvious being the backgrounding at the bottom of the "C" of the initials. if anyone has any tips on how I should fix this one in particular, please let me know. I'm doing it for free and he has said he doesn't care if it's not perfect, but...you know.

It's still cased and taking the tooling, so I'm going over it to try to clean up some of the tooling.

Edited April 2, 2008 by JohnD

[David]

Sorry about the bad pics, But I only have my cell phone camera.

I haven't posted anything in a while so I thought I would. A friend of mine asked me if I would make a seat for him, a tribute to his grandfather.

He said all he wanted was his grandad's inititals, The years and the words strength and honor. This is what I came up with. He hasn't seen the design as he's refused to see it til it's done. I know there are quite a few flaws and imperfections, the most obvious being the backgrounding at the bottom of the "C" of the initials. if anyone has any tips on how I should fix this one in particular, please let me know. I'm doing it for free and he has said he doesn't care if it's not perfect, but...you know.

It's still cased and taking the tooling, so I'm going over it to try to clean up some of the tooling.

Really can't see much wrong with it John, It looks nice and clean.

David Theobald

http://theobaldleather.com

[JohnD]

Thanks David,

If you look at the bottom of the "c" of the initials you can see where, around 11:30pm last night I obliviously tooled my way out of the lines of the oval background. My first reaction was and remains to just leave it, cause my wife says no one will notice anyway.

John

[ChaChi]

Looks great to me. We are our own worst critics. Remember that. I love tribute pieces. I think if you really want to fix the spot around the "C", just enlarge your oval backgroud so the letters are all inside it. Should be easy enough to do and you have space outside the letters to pull it off. Truthfully. I wouldn't have even noticed it if you hadn't pointed it out. Still had to look pretty hard to see what you're talking about. If it were me, I'd background all the way outside the letters in that oval shape you got. Keep us posted.

[Jordan]

I think it will blend together nicely with dye and finish, You will most likely be the only one to notice the flaws, an unfortunate byproduct of the creative mind.

[Spider]

I think the only thing wrong is that you haven't finished that Lego truck....Cause this looks bangin.

[Sawyer]

good work on tooling, cool ass design, where did you get it?

[sodapop]

i gotta say the tooling that all of you guys do on these seats is very impressive...it on the

lines of design/tooling style wise that i can see myself doing down the road...

nice

[rdb]

God looked down at the world, and said "See, right there in Witchita, next to the railroad tracks, I didn't put enough dandelions".

As a prominent self-critic, once you finish that seat off, the customer will ride with pride and memories. His friends will ask where he got it from, and say wow!.

[SCOUTER]

John, Great Job! (The pic are good too) I really would have never noticed the background "walk" if you didn't mention it. Plus the whole reason curse words were invented were for moments just like that!

John @ 11:31 pm last night- We've been there many times.

[JohnD]

Thanks for the comments everyone.

I used to have a girlfriend who was going to beauty school and asked if she could cut my hair. Like an idiot, I let her. She did ok, but felt the back was crooked. She trimmed it a little, still crooked. a little more, still crooked and so on. We went to party, where my friends, in no subtle way, let me know my hairline in the back was closer to the top of my head than to my neck. I shaved my head soon after and waited for the peewee herman and bowtie killer comments to die down.

ChaChi, I stared at it for a little while and decided to leave it be.

Spider, I've finished the truck more times than I care to remember, with my 5 year old son, I work more with Lego than leather.

Sawyer, I bought some books from Borders full of uncopyrighted "ornamental borders, scrolls and cartouches" to get an idea of how do draw what I wanted and then arranged the different elements to fit the seat. If you check the art section at borders, they have a ton of books of uncopyrighted designs, floral motifs, japanese prints, heraldic designs, just bunches of stuff for ideas.

Thanks again for all the responses and nice comments. rdb, I just amy add that quote to my sig.

Thanks,

John

[TomSwede]

Looking very good John! I like the shape of this seat and the design looks really good to me aswell.

Alltough being kinda a nocturnal being I have given up more elaborate work at night. The mind just is working really well for me at night.

Good job on that one, don't think no one gonna notice that blemish.

Tom

[Beaverslayer]

That's going to be a sweet seat when your done, great job so far.

Ken

[JohnD]

Just thought I'd update the progress.

The seat is going on a '91 FXLR (lowrider, anyway) that is black and red. I didn't want to do the whole thing black, so I mixed some red in with some buckskin for the lightest area and some red with light brown for the next darkest and then red and chocolate broen to finally black. I applied it with a rag (t-shirt) from light to dark, applying and kind of rubbing it in. I use the same rag for every color.

Then I used a clean rag with some lexol leather conditioner on it and rub it in from the center out. This seems to blend the different colors a bit. It also tends to lighten the the lighter parts, which adds to the "sunburst" effect, I think.

I then put a coat of sheen on it and tried to use hi-liter to bring out the tooling.

I don't know if this is the right way to do it, But it seems to work for me. Although, it's not the most consistant method, kind of a "see how it turns out" thing. Every time I touch the rag to the leather, the feeling is "OOPS" or "oh no", but I just keep going, til I get where I wanted to go. Kind of like snowmobiling if you've ever been.

After the dye dries I go over the thing with either lambswool or a piece of denim to try to get the excess off so that when in use it wont ruin anyones pants.

I usually also use o couple of coats of super shene, but this time I'm going to try mink oil paste to see how that turns out.

The reddish parts didn't end up like I had planned, but it'll do. In the pictures, it looks like I missed a few spots in the tooling recesses, but in real life it doesn't.

[David]

Just thought I'd update the progress.

The seat is going on a '91 FXLR (lowrider, anyway) that is black and red. I didn't want to do the whole thing black, so I mixed some red in with some buckskin for the lightest area and some red with light brown for the next darkest and then red and chocolate broen to finally black. I applied it with a rag (t-shirt) from light to dark, applying and kind of rubbing it in. I use the same rag for every color.

Then I used a clean rag with some lexol leather conditioner on it and rub it in from the center out. This seems to blend the different colors a bit. It also tends to lighten the the lighter parts, which adds to the "sunburst" effect, I think.

I then put a coat of sheen on it and tried to use hi-liter to bring out the tooling.

I don't know if this is the right way to do it, But it seems to work for me. Although, it's not the most consistant method, kind of a "see how it turns out" thing. Every time I touch the rag to the leather, the feeling is "OOPS" or "oh no", but I just keep going, til I get where I wanted to go. Kind of like snowmobiling if you've ever been.

After the dye dries I go over the thing with either lambswool or a piece of denim to try to get the excess off so that when in use it wont ruin anyones pants.

I usually also use o couple of coats of super shene, but this time I'm going to try mink oil paste to see how that turns out.

The reddish parts didn't end up like I had planned, but it'll do. In the pictures, it looks like I missed a few spots in the tooling recesses, but in real life it doesn't.

It'll do? It looks very good John, Now the hard part....stop working on it. Sometimes I work so much on trying to get it just right that I wish I'd stopped sooner. Good job.

David Theobald

[TomSwede]

I think it looks really good! I agree with David, watch out for the overdoin effect.

As for snowmobiling, I've done a few oops and oh in there and some expensive repairs but glad to have come out uninjured from everyone of them. Gave up on sledding a few years ago 'cuz there's just to darn crappy winters here nowadays. I sure miss it, the ultimate ride I think.

Tom

[JohnD]

Thanks Guys,

I put the mink oil on this morning and just buffed it out a few minutes ago. The lambswool came up black (from the sides). I applied another coat and once that dries I'll buff it again. Hopefully that will take care of it.

I still need to make the matching tank bib. I saved some of the mixed colors, so it should work out.

Tom, I gave it up too, not cause of crappy winters, but because of the expensive repairs. It's only so many times you can limp home with boot laces and duct tape holding your sled together til it wears on you. It seemed everytime I went out, I broke something. I agree that its a great ride, but nothing beats NH roads on two wheels. Between that and the leather there's, no money left for snowmobiling. Unless.....Maybe I start charging for my leather work?!? Someday.