Originally Posted by
AZORCH
This one is only the tiniest bit crusty.
Anyone have any experience recovering these?
You wouldn't recover that, really, would you?
At any rate what you need to do is drive out four rivets. That will free the cover. My advice would be to replicate the cover, don't try to repair it. The cover is a piece of padding with an outer skin over it; I would make the latter out of leather. Make the pattern based on the old one; it is one piece of leather with the sides cut and a triangular gusset is sewn into each. Figure out what you want to use for padding (mine has what appears to be a piece of felted horsehair). Fold the edges of the leather cover under the padding and sew around te perimeter. In the end you rivet the new cover onto the old frame. The nose rivets are hard to peen.