Are your boat seats starting to show the ravages of time? With knowledge in reupholstery, you can get them to look exactly as new. Replacing the boat seat vinyl and foam will give additional options like changing cover colors. By recovering boat seats, cushions, and covers, you may additionally save yourself a whole lot of money in comparison to an expert doing it or shopping for new chairs altogether.
Changing a vinyl boat seat cover can be a simple assignment for a day. If you want to try doing the task yourself, your sample for the brand new seat cover can be the vintage seat cowl, and the technique requires few tools. You will replicate the pattern on the vinyl or update all the seating in a selected spot of the boat.
Look for a New Fabric
Purchase the vinyl color that you want to use in your boat. It’s not likely that you may find a marine-grade vinyl in a nearby cloth store due to the fact they best bring restrained stocks of thinner vinyl. Buying the proper quantity might be difficult. You’ll be putting off your boat’s seat covers one by one and using them as a sample to cut the new covers. However, you do not need to begin taking the chairs off the boat.
You may measure each of the seats, then measure the depth of the padding on the rear. Multiply the depth using 2.1 and that number to the length and width of each chair. Then you will have enough fabric to cover the seat, the sides, and a minor portion left to staple to the bottom of the chair for an expert-looking process.
Take Off the Old Seat Covers
Cast off the seats from the boat. If you switch them over, you can see how the material is stapled to the plywood that forms the seat framework. Paul Spivak encourages sailors to pay attention to how a great deal of cloth is fastened in the region beneath the seat.
With the use of a screwdriver, pry the staples out of the plywood. Try now not to rip the old vinyl too much. Pay attention to the manner of attachment. Some seat manufacturers make their vinyl corners look like clinic corners.
While others collect the lowest edges collectively and staple them at one or two factors, allowing the cushion to fit the corners into shape. As you do away with each vinyl seat cover, use a marking pen to perceive which seat the quilt got from by marking the seat location at the old seat cowl. Mark the seat backside with the place as properly.
Trace, Reduce, and Set up
Use the old seat cover to hint a pattern onto the new vinyl. The brand new vinyl should be laid as flat as feasible on your paintings table, probable with weights at the rims to maintain balance. Lay the brand new vinyl down with the “inner” going through up because you don’t want the traced sample markings to expose. Using the old seat cover for the first seat, you need to reupholster, lay it on top of the new vinyl material. Use something heavy to make the old vinyl lay flat on the latest. Hint across the outside of the old vinyl with a bit of chalk.
After you have traced the pattern on the brand new vinyl, unfold the old vinyl out one more time and check that the manner is transferred to the new cloth successfully. Do away with the old seat cover from the material and duplicate the seat onto the new fabric with chalk. Choose up your scissors. Cut out the brand new seat cover by using slicing along the chalk line on the new vinyl. Attach the brand new seat cover. Set the seat inside the middle of the brand new frame.
Ensure that the center is in the correct orientation to the form of the vinyl. Pull one facet of the vinyl up and over the wood seat base. It has to lap over the edge of the seat base about as long as the old cover did. Set at least four staples on that side, however, no longer in the corners.
Pull the alternative facet of the vinyl up and lap it over the seat base approximately as much as it’s contrary. Set at least four staples, however now not inside the corners. Repeat this procedure with the front and rear, identically managing the corners because the original–either tucked or accrued.
Buying new boat seats is costly. Having a professional upholstery agency do it for you could be another option if you do not see teaching yourself how to get better boat seats.
Given that the materials and equipment regularly wished are very cheap, it’s a DIY assignment that I experience you could get finished in a weekend. Hoping that the steps above can help – they do not cover and complex sewing or seams, but they will let you get your covers and cushions looking ultra-modern again in maximum cases.
