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Tips
Tips

seatback foam tip

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tomshobby

tomshobby

Yoda
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I saw this yesterday when a professional upholster was repairing one of our chairs.

He was working on the seat cushion and had added to the thickness of the origional foam and wrapped it with an expanded material to firm up the cushion.

What had been a foam that was about 4 inches thick was now about twice that besides being larger in the outside dimensions. I was wondering how he was ever going to get back into the original cover and he said watch this and you will see one of the tricks professionals use.

He had a roll of very thin plastic film similar to a trash bag but much thinner. He laid the cushion on it with about a foot of the film past the edge of the cushion. In this case the rear because that was the open part of the cover.

He then brought the film over the cushion and cut it off roughly even with the the bottom edge of the film leaving about a foot extra there also.

Next he brought the sides up and lay them over the film on top.

Then he stuck the hose from an old and cheap vacuum cleaner in between the extra film in the rear of the cushion and held it around the hose and turned it on.

The cushion became less than a quarter of the size and was easily positioned back in the cover.

He centered it as well as he could and pulled the hose out and let it expand while working it into position.

I stood there amazed at how simple and easy it was and remembering what a PIA it was replacing the foam in the seat backs of my TR6
 
Thanks for the tip Tom, I'm working on the seats now, using foam so I will be able to use that trick! I agree with MD that's why they are called professionals in the trade.

Thanks, Tinkerman
 
Well, I didn't use the vacuum trick, but when I recovered my Spitfire seats last year, I did glue very thin plastic to the foam which made it much easier to get the covers on. Used the plastic wrappers that the new seat foam came in.
 
That does sound like a very cool way to do it. When I did my seats 10 years ago all I had was the VB guide to Re-doing your interior https://tr6.danielsonfamily.org/Restoration_VB_Guide.htm
and their method was to put a dry cleaner plastic bag over the foam. But I like the vacuum cleaner idea even better.
 
Tom,

The quote below is from your original post. I'm curious, in building up the seat foams did your guy add custom cut foam or simply wrap the original foam pieces with some basic foam wrap that took on the shape of the originals once compressed in the seat cover?

"He was working on the seat cushion and had added to the thickness of the original foam and wrapped it with an expanded material to firm up the cushion."
 
71tr said:
in building up the seat foams did your guy add custom cut foam or simply wrap the original foam pieces with some basic foam wrap that took on the shape of the originals once compressed in the seat cover?
Click to expand...

He had a sheet of foam, in this case it was about an inch and a half thick. He sprayed the foam with adhesive, similar to 3M, and then took it to his band saw to trim the edges. He used a blade with very coarse teeth.

Next he used some kind of expanded fiber material that was about 3/4 inch thick. He wrapped it over the top, front, and bottom, gluing it in place, and trimmed it with a scissors to trim that.
 
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