Covering A Drummers Seat?

[Bigfoot]

Hello all,

I am thinking of covering my Dads drumming stool with carved leather but have not attempted any seats before so any advice would be appreciated ......

• The stool is round so not complicated but is approx 3" deep and very squishy so would i need to remove all the insides and start from scratch with a firmer padding??
• Can a "squishy" item be covered at all?
• I want to lace the edges but are there any tips to ensure that everything is cut to the right size so that once laced, it all pulls up nicely?? Do you leave the leather slightly short or could it then rip if the padding is soft?(one for all you bike seat makers that look so cool when properly laced!!!)
• What weight of leather would you recommend for this?

If you can think of any other tips that i should know about to help with this project then please share the knowledge!

Thanks in advance

Gary

[TomSwede]

Hello all,

I am thinking of covering my Dads drumming stool with carved leather but have not attempted any seats before so any advice would be appreciated ......

• The stool is round so not complicated but is approx 3" deep and very squishy so would i need to remove all the insides and start from scratch with a firmer padding??
• Can a "squishy" item be covered at all?
• I want to lace the edges but are there any tips to ensure that everything is cut to the right size so that once laced, it all pulls up nicely?? Do you leave the leather slightly short or could it then rip if the padding is soft?(one for all you bike seat makers that look so cool when properly laced!!!)
• What weight of leather would you recommend for this?

If you can think of any other tips that i should know about to help with this project then please share the knowledge!

Thanks in advance

Gary

You dont necessarily need to fit it with stiffer padding but you should compress the soft padding when covering it with veg.tan leather reason beeing that you will get very stiff sides that doesn't compress well when you sit down wich will cause the center of stool to "scallope" and also I suspect that the veg.tan sides will not look all that good after some years use. Another thing is that if you sit and drum for long periods of time the rigid sides might dig into the backside of your thighs especially for heavy metal drummers that doublestomp their bassdrums for long times.

That is my instinctive feeling anyways as an old drummer. Maybe others will disagree.

When I lace a round object I like to mark up all the lacing holes on the top piece with the stitching wheel, punch all holes and for the sides I just scribe a line where I want the row of lacing holes and then use the awl to mark up the lacing hole on sidepiece and make the holes about 4-10 at a time, lace/braid a few and continue wit 4-10 holes,lace...and so forth. Has given me great results and even spacing.

Good luk with it and hope you get it done!

Tom

[hivemind]

As a drummer as well, I don't think I'd make the sides from tooling leather. Maybe a 6oz latigo or even a 5-6oz garment leather. Then it would compress fine.

[Bigfoot]

Thanks Tom and hivemiind,

All good advice and I will bare it in mind.

I guess to make it out of one piece so the "scalloping" can't happen would not work either as it would end up too rounded and would have to be firm padding to shape it?? .....my old man has been drumming for years and I think has got used to a nice squishy seat!!