1954 Chevy Pickup | Interior Faceplates Covered With Buffalo Leather

February 2nd, 2009: Interior Faceplates Covered With Buffalo Hides

This will be the third time I'm doing this project. The first was back in August, 2003 when I dealt with the original butcher job that was done on my dash by a previous owner ... and the second time was back in January, 2007 when I was playing around with moose hides.

Today I decided to tackle the faceplate for my radio once again ... not only to do it with the buffalo hides which are now the final choice for my interior designs, but also to make the faceplate with sheet metal, so I can shape it to the rounded face of the dashboard.

Fortunately, I've gotten into the habit of making cardboard templates for every interior project I've done, so I had the template for the radio faceplate handy, which saved me a whole lot of time!

I ran into a problem when I tried to fit the new faceplate onto the radio. The buffalo is thicker than the previous hides I used and although the radio fit into the hole vertically, it was way too tight horizontally. This was easy enough to get around, because the radio had a chromed plastic piece around it that was removable and taking that off gave me a better fit vertically than before ... but created a new problem -- I now had a quarter inch gap left and right to deal with!

I didn't want to use another piece of buffalo and I didn't want to cut another piece of sheetmetal, so I decided to get creative. After some thought, I discovered a way to solve the problem and add some cream-colored buffalo into the mix. I simply glued two pieces onto the backside of the faceplate, to fill in the gap. What an easy fix!

This turned out to be a really cool "mistake" because I want to add some cream buffalo wherever I can, but not where it can easily get soiled ... and this adds some cream, along with a really nice design element that looks great!

Stay tuned ... my next project will be linked to here (and, of course, in the menu at the top of the page) as soon as it happens.

[My Truck Is Back From Paint! | Click Here]

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