Vintage fire engine WIP

[Harry P.]

The next step is to cut a piece of the upholstery material, large enough to get a good amount of overlap when I wrap the material around the balsa backer board and the foam padding. The material was found in the sewing department of Hobby Lobby. It's not really leather, but a very soft and flexible vinyl that has a grain to it that looks amazingly like leather in 1/16 or 1/8 scale.

[Harry P.]

Next, I apply contact cement to the edges of the "leather" and the back (bottom) of the balsa backer board. You can see that I also glued a piece of thin cardboard to the back of the balsa piece first... that's to strengthen the balsa a bit so it's less likely to crack during the next steps.

[Harry P.]

Next comes the trickiest part of the whole process. I lay down the upholstery material, face side down on the work surface, then the foam padding, then the balsa backer board. Then I press down on the balsa board to compress the foam, while at the same time pulling up the upholstery "flaps" and gluing them to the bottom side of the backer board. I also pull the corners taut as I press the material down so I will get nice tight corners. With contact cement you get one shot, and one shot only, because once the upholstery piece comes in contact with the backer board, it sticks tight! Once the upholstery is glued to the backer board (with the compressed foam in between), I use an X-acto to trim off the excess upholstery. I want as smooth a surface as possible on the underside of the seat cushion:

As you can see, neatness isn't the goal here on the underside, as this side will never be seen once the cushion is installed. What's important is that I get a good, solid bond between the upholstery and the backer board. I also flow some CA over the corners after I trim the excess material to "lock" the corners of the upholstery in place and prevent the upholstery from coming loose later.

[Harry P.]

And here is what we have at this point when we flip the cushion right side up. Basically a padded cushion:

In some cases this could be the final product, depending on the model and what I'm going for. But in this case we're just beginning! Now we have to add the diamond-tuft detail...

[Mike Kucaba]

Incredible stuff and a soon to be fantastic build!!

[Harry P.]

To do so, I cover the cushion with a piece of masking tape, and use a ruler to lay out a grid pattern on the cushion. I divide the width of the cushion by four and mark the long lines. Whatever the dimension is as a result of dividing the width of the cushion by four, that dimension (in this case 1/4 inch) becomes the distance that the short lines are spaced apart. So I basically have a grid of 1/4 inch squares.

Now I take some small brass pins (actually the planking nails from a model ship kit) and use my needle-nose pliers to push the pins down through the cushion and into the balsa backer board in an alternating pattern that will form the "diamonds" of the finished pattern:

[Harry P.]

Once I have all the pins in place I carefully remove the masking tape, being careful not to pull any of the pins out as I pull the tape off. Now I push the pins all the way through the balsa backer board, and pull them tight from the back side. The trick is to pull them all equally, so they all compress the cushion the same amount on the face of the cushion:

I'll check the face side of the cushion to make sure all the pins are pulled the same amount. Once they are all good to go, I place a good size plop of CA on each pin on the back side of the cushion to lock the pins in place. Once the CA is completely dry, I snip the excess pin lengths off with sprue cutters, as flush to the surface as I can.

When we flip the cushion right side up, we have this result:

This could very well be the finished product, but in this case I decided to go with black upholstery, so I painted the cushion with black acrylic craft paint. The finished product:

[Harry P.]

And how it will look when installed:

This is the same way I made the cushions on my doctor's buggy, buckboard, stagecoach, Barcelona taxi, etc.

[Harry P.]

Here are a couple of other models of mine that have cushions made the exact same way:

[Ramfins59]

Fantastic tutorial on those cushions Harry, I love it..

[uncle potts]

Another tip to add to the many I've picked up here on the forum. Very nice model, Harry. It's coming along nicely, and we're looking forward to more.

[Harry P.]

The fenders have been painted and foiled. The running board storage compartment lids were painted silver and then black window tint to bring out the diamond-tread detail, and the edges were trimmed with gold BMF. It's beginning to look like a fire truck now!

[peekay]

Fantastic! That seat actually looks comfortable.

[Bennyg]

That seat is awesome.

Ben

[Harry P.]

The kit wheels are molded in a brown plastic that has some sort of grain in it. They actually look a lot like real wood, so all I did was add a black wash to bring out the detail.

[Alyn]

The seat is over the fence, Harry. Same goes for the other seat examples. Great technique.

There's an added satisfaction when the modeling technique closely matches up with the way the real thing is put together. This one certainly does.

[Joker]

Crisp clear pixs...easy to focus on the subject.

I fear black window tint paint is flying off the shelves.

[cobraman]

^{Very nice ! Your builds look like the real thing.}

[Harry P.]

^{Very nice ! Your builds look like the real thing.}

That's the idea...

[Jim B]

Your build is looking great. Extremely realistic. The cushions are really cool. This is going to be a really nice Brass Era fire truck. I wonder if your cushion idea will work on the 1/16 Kenworth W900. Hmmm.

[John Teresi]

I betcha……..he gets a Cover shot and feature with this

[Danno]

I betcha……..he gets a Cover shot and feature with this

Only if he's got any good connections with a magazine.

{Hey, John! I was just thinking about you yesterday. Good to see you post. Don't be a stranger.}

[sjordan2]

I betcha……..he gets a Cover shot and feature with this

I totally agree, and I wouldn't let Harry's connection with the magazine get in the way.

[cobraman]

If were lucky the post office won't rip the cover. : )

[PappyD340]

Looks AWESOME Harry!!