DIY Upholstery tip

[Mike Kelly]

Learning new stuff.. I'm attempting shaping high density foam for making Land Rover seats ( the foam is sold by Clarke rubber here , cut to size , but not shaped ) .. CMP seats are a squarish block, easy, but some seats require a radius here and there . The professionals apparently use a kitchen electric carving knife - as used for carving the XMAS turkey .

Has anyone done this ? Jim .. F8 man ?

tips here http://www.taunton.com/finewoodworking/pages/w00147.asp

Mike

[Jim Price]

Mike,
I've seen an electric carving knife used to cut and shape upholstery foam. It's also possible that a band saw might be used for high density foam to form the outline for a seat. As for the seat backs, I used a pair of leather shears to "fine tune" the pieces of foam for them.

Regards,
Jim

[Philliphastings]

Hi Mike,

My latest tool catalogue to arrive in the mail has a commercial foam cutter pictured. It's a hand held electric thingy.

Will get back to you with the price and details if you wish

Cheers

Phill

[Bob McNeill]

an ordinary old bread knife [ serrated ] does the trick, much cheaper than fancy electric one, just stick it back in the drawer when finished so the cook don,t find out.

[Mike Kelly]

Foam is the way to go, although not original for the WW2 era, it's so much easier to do , rather than coil springs and horse hair stuffing and so on .

I will try the bread knife and see what goes.

[Grant Bowker]

The reason for a bread knife is the wavy or saw shaped teeth, so some of the "miracle" knives with similar edge profile might work too.

When selecting the foam, start with a quite firm texture and then go at least one level firmer. A soft foam might seem like the comfortable choice....until you hit a bump or go off road and your butt crushes the soft foam and impacts the metal pan below. Do that once and you'll be back at the upholstery bench remedying your "good" idea very quickly.

[Harry Moon]

If you intend to spend hours in the seat go with something like the originals. Important if you are the driver because the passenger can always stand up and look around through the roof.

[gjamo]

I have a blade for my jigsaw. Its just a straight very sharp knife works brilliantly on high density foam, not as good on the softer material. Very controllable if not a little dangerous. Most big hardware stores have them.
Graeme

[Mike Kelly]

Interesting suggestions . Apparently there is another way of doing it . With wide seats , its difficult to achieve a nice level cut by hand with a knife ...

You make up two templates , the shape you want . Find a old electric radiator and strip out the nichrome wire from the element .

You fix the wire to a suitable frame or holder ,it must take the heat so metal or ceramic posts are ideal .

You situate the foam between the two templates , run a current through the wire ( 12 or 24 volt will suffice , but may require some experimentation to get the correct heat range ) until its nice and hot, then drag the wire over the templates and it will follow the shape .. and cut the foam.

I think Rc model aircraft people do this method when making foam wings from styrofoam.