Bench seat

As this is a rolling resoration I try to time the restorations so that it is possible to enjoy the truck in rolling condition over the short Swedish summers, taking it out to car meat and old car runs.
Over the years I have complemeted the upholstary with som old felt blankets so the I could maintain a reasonable rideheigt in the cabin, and then covering everything up with a blanket, but now it was really time to take the bull by the horn and make a more permanent solution.

As this old bench seat, had done its chores, to say the least, the thaughts started to spinn on how I actually wanted the upholstary to look like when I was done. So I started to look for inspiration online. I have an idea on how the hole truck should look liek when it´s done and then decide what material and look the bench seat should have.

I soon found some favorites on the internet, but I am not so fond of ripping a design straght of the internet. I wanted it to be mistaken by an original upholstary by the public that´s not so into Ford tryck history, in other words I didn´t want it to be to modern.

Finally I went for a graphite gray, slightley shiny fabric where you sit and on the backrest, the rest should be black leather with visable stichings in the same gray collor as the fabric

With these thaughts in the backhead I took some greaseproof paper and trace copied one of the findings on the internet and then I let the ideas flow, witch resulted in a number of suggestions (more or less successfull), the readers of this blogg is free to use them if you like. After several days of shilly-shally I decided to go for number 7.

When I finally decided the design the work started to find a suitable graphite gray fabric. A hole lot of webpages was investigated with a never ending asortment of fabrics, it is lucky that most of the companies actually sent samples if you wanted. It´s a completely other ballpark to see a fabric in real life than on a computer screen.

Eventually I decided to go with a fabric called:
Bröderna Jörgensen Lamé 68013
As an extra bonus it tured out that this fabric was design for extra exposed environment such as emergency rooms, anywhere there are a lot of peoples. The backside of the fabric was also treated with a rubberlike surface to prevent any liquide to penetrate the fabric down to the upholstary.
I cant remember the price but it was really worth it.
Beside everything the size of the samples sent by the "Bröderna Jörgensen" was way larger than any other supplier I ordered from. The size was in the range of 8" by 10" while the other suppliers sent samples in the range of 1" by 1".
Finally after many phonecalls, e-mails it was time to get to action.

I started out by removing all of the remaining upholstary, when I was done the whole garage floor seemed to be covered with old HOG-ties. The upholstary looked like it was falling of the frame but it certainly took a while get everything of the frame.
Once the frame saw the lights again I realized that both the sidesupport ZIG-ZAG springes was broken, so now the question was, where do I find a spring like that here in Sweden. I t turned out simpler than I first expected as the Upholstary guy had them on the shelf, It seemd quite logical that he should have them afterwards. So when I finally got the springs it was a quick fix to bend them into shape and get them into place.

Bead blasting the frame was done and I must say the welds from factory shure didn´t look good, they had flowed away and large poodles was present, but then they will never meet the eyes after the upholstary is in place.

The powdercoating was done in Smedjebacken and after that it was time to handover all the parts, sketches, ideas and fabric to the upholstary guy (Läderinredarna in Mockfjärd) , and WAIT.

Well this is the afterpictures, a littlebit strange lighting but you get the picture.