1954 Chevy Pickup | Custom Interior Preparations

January 1st, 2007: Starting My Interior Designs | Tools & Prep Stuff

First things first. If you plan on doing any vinyl or leather work on your interior, you must use high-temp adhesive or everything will come loose and fall apart on you! Click on the picture to the right to order the Performance High Temp Trim Adhesive that I'm using on my interior projects.

I started out by purchasing a Stitching Awl and some Waxed Thread to try hand-stitching but that idea wound up in the trash.

Cream Colored Elk Hide

The hand-stitching was way too labor intensive, looked sloppy, and the waxed thread was just too fat-looking for this kind of leather. In the end, I wound of buying an industrial sewing machine ... it was the only way to do what I wanted and to get it right.

I also purchased a Skiver ... this is a tool for shaving leather. When I wrap the radio faceplate I won't want a lot of bulk behind it, so I'll shave the leather parts that wrap around and behind the faceplate, making that area of the hide extra thin. However, after getting some experience with all this, I've found that a dremel with a die-grinder is much quicker and does a better job of it.

And I picked up a few Silver Conchos ... these have machined screws in the back for very secure mounting. I'll use one of these to go on the steering wheel to cover the spot where there was, originally, a Cadillac emblem ... I wound up using the Ivy Cross (the one on the bottom).

I'm going to start four projects this week, beginning with a Moose hide that I ordered from ACS Trading Post. This was a good hide to learn and practice with ... it was only $60.00 for eleven square feet. The elk hides I'll be using are twice that price but, from what I've found, elk is what I want: It's as soft as pigskin and has the most beautiful grain I've seen of any kind of leather.

Cowhide has no grain at all ... when you do see it with any kind of grain, it's an embossed grain (stamped) that may be fine to some but not for me. I can't help seeing the repetitions and similarities of the grain throughout the leather .. a monotone of patterns and depth of grain that simply irritate me. Elk hides have a grain that varies from large and deep in some areas, to thinner and more shallow in other areas, to a basketball kind of stippling elsewhere ... plus, an ocassional scar can wind up being a beautiful highlight and feature -- elk is the way to go for me!

12 Sq. Ft. of Moose Hide

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