Scratchbuilt Bucket Seats

[robjos32]

Wow what an eye for detail you have. Can't wait to see how you made them

[Don Garrett]

Nice work Jeff. Love the V-8 detail.

[hot ford coupe]

Thanks guys. It'll look a lot better installed in the interior of the deuce where all of the defects will be hidden. Once the seats are done, then I'll start working the Carson top.

[whodaky]

Looking good, Jeff.
Geoff aka whodaky

[Deuces-wild]

.... I ran out of thumbs. DOH! Great work Jeff.

[hot ford coupe]

Thanks again. The only thing I wasn't crazy about was the green pointy pieces I put there. They're superglued on so I'd have to rip the seat up to get the pieces off. I'll correct that on the next model.

[Johnw]

Excellent job! What did you use for the buttons on that sucker? You've inspired me to do something similar to the seats in my deuce, hopefully I can get motivated enough to start on the thing.

[hot ford coupe]

Hey John. The buttons are really simpler than they look. I'll go over the technique in a bit more detail in the new tutorial but here's the boiled down version. The green seat cushion is a piece of sheet plastic with a piece of stiff foam cemented to it and then covered in green vinyl. I took a piece of .025 styrene rod, heated the bowl of a small spoon and then pushed the rod gently agains the hot metal until I had a nice round "nailhead" about the right size. I then took some of my scrap green vinyl, glued it to the nailhead and trimmed it round. The whole piece looks like a little white engine valve stem about 7 mm long. I then took a pin vise with a drill just a slight bit larger than the styrene rod diameter and drilled a hole from the vinyl all the way through the plastic. I put a little bit of CA under the nailhead to prevent it from popping through the vinyl cover. Now I pushed the nailhead down into the foam compressing it with my thumb, creating the tuft. While holding the button down, I took a hot instrument and I flattened the little piece of rod sticking out of the hole I just drilled. It's sort of like creating a rivet. When the plastic cooled, I let go and the button stayed down into the cushion. I did that until the whole seat cushion was tufted. I'll be putting some diagrams into the tutorial so you'll be able to see how it's done very clearly. It's really not that difficult, just a bit time consuming.

[modelmaker]

Damn Jeff thats a wicked effort there well done mate and I can't wait for the tutorial on how you made them !!

Sean

[hot ford coupe]

Thanks Sean for the great compliment. That design took me over 7 months to perfect. I have a bunch of torn up vinyl to prove it. It just goes to show you that perseverence is a key factor in this business.

[sydeem]

Oh - I gotta see the tutorial even if I can't do the detail.

[harrypri]

Now that's TOO COOL!!!

[hot ford coupe]

Oh no Syd. This one anyone can do. I've got to take a few more pictures for the tutorial to clear a few things up. The technique is really a lot simpler than you think. It's just really time consuming, that's all.

[BrassBuilder]

I'm looking forward to the tutorial too. I need to scratchbuild a couple of seats for the semi truck that I am building.
These look really good.
Mike