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Old 02-28-11, 11:00 PM
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THEJAPINO
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Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Bay Area
Posts: 357

Bikes: '86 Schwinn Paramount

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Now is the very messy part. Rolling the edges. This step is a mix of stretching, flattening, trimming, pulling the edges up and back down, and removing sticky adhesive from all over your hands. I like to start at the easiest part, the sides of the saddle. Here, you can pull the material right onto the underside of the saddle. Trim later. Then I do the back. I work my way from the sides to the back, alternating from left side then right side until I get to the middle of the back of the saddle.

You'll notice alot of wrinkles.


I like to use a screwdriver to flatten the highest point of the wrinkle. I press the wrinkle starting from the edge of the saddle's base to the edge of the cover under the saddle. I 'pull' the material away from where the wrinkle was, sort of spreading the wrinkle apart wit the screwdriver tip:


I keep doing that around the wrinkles until everything looks nice and even. All while stretching the material:


Keep flattening those wrinkles until it all looks even back there. You won't get all the wrinkles flat, just try for being even (pic after trimmed):


Now the nose of the saddle is a different technique all together. There will be wrinkles there no matter what, your gameplan is to stretch the sides of the nose towards the back of the saddle while stretching the front of the saddle towards the underside. In the pic, the leather at the sides is almost flat and the leather at the front curve is tightly wrinkled, flattened:


Take your time here. By now, the adhesive is very tacky. It helps because everything stays in place. You can still lift and reposition here, it's just more difficult to slide leather around.

Here is the underside all trimmed:


Finished product:



Good luck, I'll try to ask any questions you may have!

Last edited by THEJAPINO; 02-28-11 at 11:06 PM.
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