1954 Chevy Pickup | Fabricating Sun Visors

April 15th, 2007 : Fabricating Sun Visors

My good friend, Steven Battaini, gave me a pair of original 1954 Chevy pickup sun visor brackets ... I had none in my truck to begin with, so I appreciated having these parts without having to hunt a pair down or, worse yet, buy some aftermarket garbage.

When I got them, the mounts were very stiff and difficult to move and the visor-flaps were completely frozen and unmovable ... but a few shots of GIBBS Penetrating Oil took care of that easily enough.

1954 Chevy Pickup Sun Visor Brackets

These are a funny color but that's of no concern to me, as I'll be covering them with elk leather -- of course!

I'm not yet sure how I'm going to fabricate these ... the original design involved stapling pieces of cardboard to the visor flaps and leaving it at that! I certainly won't be going that route, but this will be a fun project to kill some more time with while I'm waiting for the truck to get back from the paint shop.

I imagine I'll come up with a cool shape for these ... not just rectangular ... and a firm material that I can fix securely to the visor-flaps. Once I figure that out, I'll include the pics and the update.

Update: May 6th, 2007
Today I decided to cover the hardware with black elk. After selecting elk pieces to use, I punched a hole in each (to slide the mount-cover over the sun visor arm) and applied high-temp adhesive to the back sides of the leather and front sides of the mounts. Then I slid the elk pieces into place and when the glue was ready, I set the elk in place. After the glue set, I cut slits for the mounting screws to pass through, trimmed the excess elk off and made relief cuts around the bends.

Gluing Black Elk To the Hardware

Next, I applied glue to the back sides, waited for the glue to be ready (3 minutes) and wrapped the elk around the mounts - continuing to work it and press it into place for another 15 minutes, until the glue was set.

Gluing Black Elk To the Hardware

This next part was really tricky ... and fairly stressful, too! I cut two small pieces of elk to cover the small section of the sun visor arm which will be exposed after the sun visor is made and installed. The challenge here was two-fold: First, getting the leather wrapped around the arm and pushing it down into the opening of the mount (without getting any glue on the elk that was previously installed) and, second, making a 90-degree turn ... believe me when I tell you that acheiving this small feat before the glue set was a challenge and a half - but, alas, I was successful!

Gluing Black Elk To the Hardware

As noted above, I'll be trimming the arm-covers after I make the sun visors and see how far they go down the arm -- I imagine they'll go to the knuckles you see bulging under the elk in the photo above, but better to be safe than sorry, I say.

To be continued ...

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