Just Dashes covered my GTS pod when I did not know any better and it is crap. None of the switch holes were done properly and I had to modify the switches to make them work. Do not use them as a model is what I am trying to say.

Dan the pod man does a good job on a basic black pod for not a lot of money.

Than again Rob Budd and Paul Champagne have also been down this road as well. Rob already sells a pod kit IIRC.

Interested to see the results of your class of 2012. Looks like a great project for the DIY owner.

 

Thanks Roger. I too have heard some bad things about Just Dashes, but I think their basic process of basically vacu-forming vinyl over dashes has a lot of merit. I just couldn't quite get my mind around the depth of the project, although I still have in the que an idea to build a larger vacuum table so I can do dashes myself.

I am sure all these guys are fully aware of the great resources we have on this fourm for doing pods in various ways and at various costs, but I think those who have kind of signed up are going to have a lot of fun being creative with this project.

Alwayts nice to hear from you, Roger.

Jerry Feather

 

Online learning at its finest...well done Jerry!

 

I had some extra Nylon carpet for my '62 Jag XKE Roadster.

Just rough cut a piece to cover the 928 pod. used contact cement on the front corners and trimmed.

Looks great compared to some of the other 30+ year old interior.

Next time I pull the pod cover (after mods just need to pull the light switch and pry what remains of the bottom over the ignition switch) will trim the sides and the front better.

This car has been a daily driver for over 7 years since I got it, it is not a garage queen.

__________________________
'79 Porsche 928 5spd

 

Thanks also Jerry! Just got my copy in the mail also. Cheers to you!

 

I have been looking off and on all weekend for a little bundle of tan leather that I knew I had and I finally found it during half time of this afternoon's game.

I have layed out the three front pieces of the pod which I am going to cover in tan and I have taken three pictures of the layout. This is important because this is the stage that we are going to make the adjustment in the pattern that I have been talking about.

If you look closely in the pictures you will see a double line on parts of each pattern tracing. I have added about a quarter of an inch to the areas of these three pieces that will be sewn to the top piece. If you look at your instructions you will see that these quarter inch additions are all on what I have identified in the instructions and on the patterns as line or seam "B."

We will not be adding or taking away from the other side of this seam, however, so no further adjustment is going to be needed.

Remember to cut on the inside of the chalk lines; and in the case of the double lines, since I did these simply by eye, you should be sure to cut about a quarter inch outside of the inside of the original pattern line. Does that make sense?

If this adjustment does what I intend I will be explaining that later in the project.

Jerry Feather

 

After I got my three pieces cut out I put the two smaller front pieces up against the face of the pod, but with reverse side out and made my chalk marks around each of the six switch/**** openings. These are the areas that I will skive, maybe tomorrow.

I also marked the upper corners of these two pieces because it occurs to me that since I am going to have these glued down for skiving I might as will skive these corners. I do the same to the correxponding corners of the central front piece. The reason is so that the french seams in these areas, when these three pieces are sewn together, will lay a little flatter. I'll skive off about half of the thickness in these areas.

I have put a chalk mark around the nose or crown of the edge of the pod between the front and the top. Also I have marked the center of the top of this edge.

Too, I don't show it, but I cut the little dart in the center of the larger of the front pieces. That dart is in the middle of the "B" edge that we have now extended.

 

Loving the photos as you go Jerry...Lots of good stuff and looking forward to more.

 

While I'm getting ready to do my skiving I thought I would lay these front pieces out for you to be sure you have them in the right proximity, and give you a few pointers about the initial sewing. Here they are in their relative position and then again in their first sewing position.

Remember we are usiung a 3/8 inch seam, no more and no less. You will find that in sewing some of these tight curves in the front that you will need to snip the leather in order for it to bend around the corners. Do not snip more that about a quarter of an inch toward the sew line. The rest of the bend or stretch will be made up in give of the leather. Also you will need to sew both of these front side pieces to the center by starting from the top.

I have also put a chalk mark on the front side pieces where the sewing is supposed to end. You can take one of these pieces and put it on the front of the pod and see just about where the sewing should end and that is where the seam around the top front and sides is going to be pulled under the front bottom corner of the pod.

 

Here's the pictures for the previous post. I couldn't get them to upload with the text. JF

 

Good morning Class. Today we are going to try to make some significant progress on our leather Pod Cover. The attached pictures show the little hardboard that I made for this skiving project.

In the first picture you can see that I have drawn a rough outline of the two front side pieces of the cover, but I also have a scrap of leather there that I have sprayed some glue on together with the board. However, what I found was that this spray, repositionable glue shown will not rub off of either the leather or the board, so it is not going to work. Too bad, but rubber cement is not that much more work.

The second and third pictures show that I have now covered both the board and the front of the leather piece with rubber cement; I have let it cure; and then I have glued the leather to the board. One of the pictures also shows my little disc sander with the 36 grit disc in it. That is what I am going to use to do the skiving with in the areas where you can see my chalk circles.

The fourth picture shows my first failure on the phase of the project, and that is that since I haven't done this skiving for quite a while, I found myself grinding right through the leather. What I should have done was glue a piece of scrap down first and practice doing the skiving; and that is just what I suggest you each try before you do any grinding on your nicely cut-out leather pieces.

The object in this skiving in the areas of the switch openings is to reduce the thickness of the leather by about half or maybe a little less than half. To figure out how much that is I suggest that you take a dial or digital caliper and measure the thickness of your leather. You will likely find that it is about .045 inch. You can double the thickness and see thjat the total is just twice that. Duh.

Then, after you have done sone grinding on the leather you can fold it over in the area skived and measure the thickness. Your target should be about .050 to .060 inch for the double lthickness. When you get very close to the front of the leather (with your practice piece) you will see that it is changing color. I think you do not want to get close enough to the front for the color to change even if you don't grind through.

If you grind through your leather piece, just do what I did and cut another piece and try again.

The last picture shows that after I have successfully ground one piece of leather I am rubbing the rubber cement off of the hard board. I have also rubbed all of it off of the leather. You have to do this with each piece of leather that you skive because you don't want to leave any lumps on the smooth surface for the next piece to be skived. If you do you will grind a hole through the next piece right where the lump is.

You cannot really tell just how much leather you are removing when you are grinding so you will just have to guess at it. If you find that you have not taken off much you will have to go to the trouble of doing that piece over again. However, close enough is close enough.

Too, this is really a messy process because you are going to have leather fuzz all over yourself and all over everything around you. Don't do it in the kitchen or living room or even in the house. That leather fuzz stickes to everything and doesn't even blow off very well.

Be very careful with your grinder. You will find that you need to grind on the side of the disc that is turning away from you. Even grinding with the front of the disc with the disc going cross ways to you is dangerous. I know that becasue when I did it a little the disc grabbed the leather and jumped sideways and ground a nice groove in the end of my other thumb. Ouch. If you do that you will need to stop and cover the wound with something so that you don't get blood all over your workpieces. That was my second mistake in this procedure.

This phase of the skiving procedure is pretty important for those doing this procedure with leather. The first pod that Doug and I did, the tan one in my earlier post in this thread, was not skived in the area of the openings and all of the swithes are too tight in their openings.

 

First, I want to make a correction. You want to be skiving with your disc grinder using the side of the disc that is coming toward you rather than the other side because the grinder is easier to hande if it is pulling away from you rather that pushing against you.

After I ground the switch opening areas of each front piece, and while each was still glued down I skived the upper corners off to about an inch in from the edge. Those can actually be ground down to where the color is changing , but only at the very edge, because they are going to be folded over in the sewing process and the object is to have the resulting seam be not much thicker that the original thickness of the leather.

I ground the corresponding corners of the other front piece, but I didn't take a picture of that to show here. You can do that fairly easily be cleaning off the board the laying down a strip of glue about 2 inches wide, putting glue on the corners the be ground and then gluing them to the board together. Then you can grind both corners in the same glue-up rather that one at a time.

The first picture in this post shows the piece that I gound through, but I'm showing it again to show how the rubber cement rubs off of the leather very easily.

While I was having so much fun with this skiving (except for my left thumb) I decided that I would skive the edges of the front piece that are going to be sewn together at the bottom center where this piece will come over the nose of the pod toward the steering wheel. I thought it might be nicer for this seam to lay flatter than it will otherwise, so I have set that seam up much as I described with the upper corners, as above, and I skived these edges tapering to near nothing at the very edge. This is the "C" seam shown on your patterns.

When you skive the edges like this you want your disc to be going in the direction of off the edge of the leather. That means that you want your disc pulling the grinder away from you but crossing the edge of the leather from on to off the leather.

Next we are going to get this pod cover sewn up. Stand-by.

Jerry Feather

 

Jerry...can you email me the instructions so I can follow more closely. I did not ask for a set of patterns only because you have already done sooo much but I want to understand the process.

This "skiving"...at the switches. Do you reduce the leather mass ONLY within the caulk marks or some beyond...say 1/4" ? And the corners again only the minimal area?

This is the most in depth discussion on the recovered pod I have seen yet...THANKS again for sharing.

MODERATORS...This thread , when complete, will need to be archived some how in the "how too'. PLEASE.

 

I first dug out a hide of Black leather so I could cut out the last piece for this cover, the largest piece that goes over the top. I decided on black because that was requested and because I think that the lighter tan color is going to reflect adversely in the windshield. Then I contacted my trim guy, Doug Corson, who I rely on pretty heavily to help me with this kind of work. Doug is an artist when it comes to sewing and especially sewing french seams. He is in his 40's and has been doing upholstery work since he was about 15. He told me once that in his spare time he taught himself to do french seams by sewing together scraps of leather left over from other jobs and then making things like vests out of the resulting patchwork of scraps which were all french seamed together. He doesn't do the kind of skiving that we are doing because it is too much work for projects and it is a real mess for his shop. Nevertheless he is thrilled to work with skived seams because of the way they lay so much flatter.

In this first picture Doug has folded the black top piece of leather over to exactly half and is cutting the tiny dart at the mid point of the front edge. That will later be used to line up with the similar dart I cut in the front center/tunnel piece I made.

The next four pictures show Doug sewing the front pieces together starting at the top where the corresponding corners have been skived. This is perhaps the most difficult of all the sewing; and you can see that Doug is working his way down the seam with little snips at tough corners in order to get the leather to fit the seam correctly. Doug is using the 3/8 inch seam allowance that the patterns have allowed for.

Even though these two corresdponding "A" edges are very irregular and actually look nothing like each other while the leather is laying flat, You can see by the last picture that they sew together very nicely (with difficulty) and come out almost exactly even.

 

Hi Dean. The areas to be skived for the Switch openings can be less thatn carefully done in terms of the area covered by the skive. I think mine ended up about twice the area of the switch circles I drew with chalk and should be kind of tapered from the chalk circles outward to the full thickness. The full thickness can be a reached or the skive can go outwart for up to perhaps an inch away from the actual circles. You will have to guess at that because as soon as you start grinding, the circles go away.

I'll send you the patterns and instructions tomorrow, Dean. Thanks for your interest.

Jerry Feather