Pocher Alfa

[Antiny]

After about 35 years off from the hobby, I just picked up a Pocher Alfa kit.  Partially built (not so well) and left on a dusty shelf for 40 years or so....  As a novice builder and a novice to these kits, can anyone give any advice on tackling the leather interior...What type of glue was used etc....  any advice is appreciated.

[Harry P.]

Generally the Pocher kit-supplied leather is way too stiff to work well. I use a material I found at Hobby Lobby... pretty sure it's some sort of vinyl, but it looks exactly like 1/8 scale leather. It's soft, stretchy, and can be pulled around curves. It has a thick sponge-like backing on it, which I just tear off, leaving me with the thin, soft "skin." I have no idea what this stuff is called, but it's sold by the yard. It's on a huge roll  where they have several aisles of large rolls of all sorts of material. I just found it one day while I was looking for something that would look like 1/8 scale leather.

I have built two Pocher Alfas, the Touring and the Monza. On the Touring, I remember that the seat was molded in one piece with the body! That would have made upholstering it impossible, so I cut it away and upholstered it as a separate piece. In that case I did use the kit-supplied "leather" because it had nice stitching detail. Usually I use super glue to glue the upholstery, but it will stain the material. Since in this case I was using the kit material, and didn't paint the upholstery afterwards, I used contact cement to glue it on, which didn't soak into the material and stain it.

On the Monza I used the stuff I found at Hobby Lobby. I think I remember the seat was molded in one piece, so I separated the seat back from the cushion part to make it easier to upholster. In this case I used super glue and glued the material down working with one pleat at a time. Glued the first pleat, used a razor saw to sort of push the material firmly into the groove, then the next pleat and so on. I made the "roll" that goes around the seat by gluing a long, thin strip of the material to a length of aluminum rod, then shaped the piece to conform to the contours of the seat back. When using superglue on this material, it will stain the material, but that's not important, because when I was done with the upholstery I painted the seat with acrylic craft paints.

I'll dig up some photos of various Pocher seats I've done and post them here.

[Harry P.]

Aftermarket resin seats that I used on my Pocher Mercedes, before upholstery...

And after, using material from Hobby Lobby similar to what I was talking about, but this has a more pronounced texture. By the way, this is the way the material looks, this seat was not painted after upholstering.

[Harry P.]

Pocher Rolls Royce seats, upholstered with the Hobby Lobby stuff, the "beading" detail is soft, black rubber that I found in the jewelry making aisle of Hobby Lobby. I used super glue to attach it, working in short lengths at a time. The upholstery material is brown, and the rubber is obviously black, but no matter, as these seats were painted after upholstering them with gray acrylic craft paint. The wood trim is real wood, stained and "varnished" with Future. On these seats the outer shells are kit parts, but all the cushions were scratchbuilt using balsa wood and some very thin foam rubber (also found at Hobby Lobby)! You can see that on the rear seat the armrests are not yet in place.

Rear seat...

And the fronts...

The red "carpet" trim is yet another piece of material I found in the same section of HL as the upholstery material. In this case I also used that red material for the car's carpeting. The handles on the seat storage compartments and the horizontal trim across the seat backs is soft silver jewelry beading wire, found at... you guessed it, Hobby Lobby!

[Harry P.]

Here is a rare case (the only time, actually) that I used the kit supplied upholstery, because I liked the color and the stitching detail. I used contact cement in this case.

[Harry P.]

Alfa Monza... upholstered using super glue, then painted black...

[Harry P.]

Another Pocher Rolls Royce. This one will have a completely scratchbuilt woody body. Here is the front seat upholstered in that Hobby Lobby material in its natural color, which doesn't look bad if a brown interior is what you want...

But this car will have green upholstery, so out came the acrylic craft paint...

Rear seat is completely scratchbuilt.

[Harry P.]

Pocher Bugatti seats, upholstered with the same stuff, then painted...

Once again, the beading detail on the rear seat is that soft, flexible rubber bead stringing stuff found in the HL jewelry aisle.

[Antiny]

Wow,beautiful work,thank you

[Cato]

Using the same techniques and similar materials but leather as Harry mentioned, here's the rear seat of my Rolls. The pleats are scratch built from craft sticks and foam and leather adhered with CA Gel. The Gel will not bleed through. The methods apply to a variety of Pocher upholstery options:

 

 

[Harry P.]

...pleats are scratch built from craft sticks and foam and leather adhered with CA Gel. The Gel will not bleed through.

That probably depends on the specific material you're using.

[Cato]

That probably depends on the specific material you're using.

 

Can only speak for the leather I use. LocTite Gel and Bondini do not bleed. Marvin uses Bondini and Cox sometimes uses d/s tape.

[Apriliadan]

The materials I am seeing is vinyl, real leather is very hard to get where it's thin enough and is difficult to get to follow tight contours, this requires a lot of work, vinyl stretches very well, I use super glue fix all, I have never had it bleed through, and it doesn't make the material hard or brittle, white glue is also a good glue for almost all materials, but I think the problem that would occur would be it wouldn't want to bond well enough to plastic to hold the stretching. 

Just a side note, these car seats are absolutely amazing.