dining room chair cushions

i want to walk you through the stagesfor upholstering your chair this could be used on any chair where the seat theis recessed into a frame like this one here this is one chair that i've justmade and i've cut this plywood to fit onto the four corner braces and it worksperfectly fine i want to add form to it i want to add leather to it but before ido that i have to get this shape onto this piece of plywood so i'm going toshow you how we go about getting that piece of plywood sized and ready cut tosize so i'm going to bring my chair up on here so alter a new chair whicheverchair you have i've made this chair but you may not be making it put this pieceof wood what i've done first of all is i

cut this piece of wood to go directly inbetween the front and back rail with a 1/8 gap between this back rail and thepup in the plywood so that gives me 1/16 on the back 1/16 on the front maybe twomil on each side so this will actually fit into the recess this way you can seethis is square but this is splayed don't worry about that what we're going to dofirst of all is just find the middle of our piece of plywood this could be anysize i'm not going to give you my size because yours may be different but inthis case there's my centerline there so that gives me the center of my piece ofplywood i'm using plywood i'm not an upholsterer i'm not pretending to be anupholsterer but this method has worked

for me for 20 years i've never been backit looks neat i've never been back to any of my work in all those years it'slong lasting especially if you're using leather and the foamstays just as for me as it ever was the ones i've seen so i've got my centerlineand this is going to go on here so what i want next is the distance between thisback frame here and i've got thirteen and a half soi have to half that so that's 6 and 1/2 plus 1/4 6 and 3/4 here and then i go to13 and 1/2 here that's given me the distance between those two areas therei'm just going to use a square up here this gives me that internal corner likethat i'm going to mark up here that's

going to tell me that this is going togo against the form and on top of that is my leatheri want the distance can you see i want the distance between this face and thisback face and then i'm going to deduct 1/16 of an inch so whatever distance ihave and i have half an inch so i'm going to take this and measure my halfinch and take off 1/16 so that's there i'm going to use my finger like this andtransfer this to here these are square the board is square so i can use anyedge i want this is going to be such a short this and so i mark these two onhere like that so these two now correspond to this distance we just showyou right inside there i think you can

probably see how those two lines nowmark the position of my plywood on here watch what happens now i make surethat's centered on there like that and a mark this back edge here and i'm goingto take just a block of wood anything you have will work for this take theblock of wood put it onto here like this and slide it up between there and thenmake your pencil line here here and make this pencil line here okaynow then square those two lines over on to the top like that and even if yourchair is out of square this is going to mark the exact internal corners of thispiece of furniture so now what i need is the distance between the face of thisleg here and the back of this leg here

which should be 13 and 3/8 on my chairbut make it exactly what your chair is and i actually am 13 and 5/16 and that'sgoing to give us the perfect corner great so i think now you'll see what wehave are the cutouts now if you wanted a chair where this fits around those twocorners you would add 1/16 here can you see this you would add 1/16 here and1/16 here and that would be enough of an allowance for your leather to go aroundthose corners i don't want these corners cut that way because i don't think itlooks as neat because you get pulls in the leather that don't look very well sonow that could just be my inability as a non-professional leather worker but imake a mark across that corner like that

and that i'm going to cut off this isgoing to be exact sizing in a minute so i take that corner and i do exactly thesame to the other three like that that this is this is usually perfectsizing gets me exactly where i want to go get this out of the way just for aminute well i saw these i'm going to use it a fine-toothed tenon saw to get this let me show you which side of the linei'm sawing on normally we would saw on the waste side of the line but i'msewing on the good side because i want this gap this gap gives me a sixteenthof an inch of there about and that gives me a space for the leather when iactually put the leather upholstery on

here so that's why i've done this which take your corners off i'll have to go toa bigger saw here see if this one will work get me all the way don't worry aboutthis sara here none of its going to be seen but we're going to trim it anywaywith a plane in a minute last one nice and neat clean crisp corners let's takea look in the seat and see how it looks inside here so i take this now drop itin here and we've got a perfect corners on each one of these so what we do nextbring it up to the bench and sight the front edge here so we're sighting alongthis edge here for an equal gap along

the front edge and the back edge so i'mjust trying to have the distance between the front and the backlike this and then i look at the gap here in the gap here an equal latter andit's all looking pretty good the back gap here and this corner here look goodso i'm ready now just by eyeballing it i'm ready to markthe exact angles directly from the chair i can't bring the camera under here idon't need to because you can believe what i'm doing here i'll show you therei have the angles cut ready for working so i cut those out now just using acouple of clamps just to hold my wood actually i might just use one clump anda crosscut saw just extend that line up

to the top those are the corner bracesthat stop me getting right to the corner but that's close enough now this is right on the wall of thesecret of the seat aprons or frames rails so i'm going on the inside of thisthis line and i'm cutting exactly to the line can you see their fill right thereso i'm cutting exactly to the line but i'm on the good side not the waysidethat's going to give me the sixteenth of an inch gap with just enough to trim offwith my plane so this now gently in that last bit don't like do it like i justdid no it is fine it worked out great this one same way a clamp really morefor safety security and everything else

waist side of the wood now i go on thegood side again stay parallel to that line gently i'mpushing this against the side of the plate to make sure it aligns perfectly now we're good for the seat this goes inhere and i have the exact distance all the way around so the gap on the back isparallel to where i want it to be and i'm happy with this it's going to workvery nicely the only thing is like this back corner phil can you get right intohere i feel like this one is just a hair too tight and this one is too tight i'vegot a good gap here and i have a good gap down here so i'm going to cut thisi'm going to put a mark from here 1/16

to 1/16 and just move that over with myplane okay i don't want it too tight there the reason i don't want it tootight there is because it'll cut the leather as people sit on it and i don'twant to cut through there i want the gap in other words take that down just to the line here andthe same on this edge good shot play okay this is the upper side of the seatif i stretch the leather around this corner like this this shows a crease onthis edge and i don't really want that hard edge because the let the foam isgoing to be pulling it and it's going to show a hard edge i don't want that a soi'm going to take a quarter inch miter

or sham fur all the way around this downto this line like this just use your finger as a gauge like this is plentyaccurate enough especially for this so this is the underside of my seat thisside this is the upper side i've still got my up mark on there do this to yoursize here you can see i've got my scrub plane here so i can take a heavy shampoo so four strokes and i've got a perfectshampoo for so i don't have to look anymore this is taking off that hardcorner front edge here this is perfect forupholsterers - normally this would have been made in the past it would have beenmade with a wooden frame you would have

had some banding some strapping burlaptype strapping going across to form a web and that would have given you enoughsupport to then put some layers of fabric i'm going to go with mask rubagain just on the under edge two strokes just to take off the hard corner just anice practice to be conscious that you want your chair if the joinery on yourchair is going to last a long time you want the rest to the foam probably won'tlast the two hundred years the chair will but it's replaceable plywood iswell proven now i don't have any objections to fly when it's well proveni'm sure this plywood in this situation will probably last for 80 years or ahundred years so there is the underside

done and dustedi still have soccer on these two edges i'm going to take it out just becausethat could i'm not saying it will but it could chalobah the left the leather andshow as an unevenness that corner just needs to shavings so i'm cleaning up mysaw work one last corner and then that's theplywood close to finished with now we've got to just get rid of this because nowyou're going to be working in a minute with your upholstery and you don't wantthis being transferred inside your leather keep your workplace clean sothis is my upside here i just need a straight edge and to take me from thecenter of this this this and this and i

got the center off the marks that i hadfrom my layout just to center line here this is giving me the center of this thevery center of my seat close enough it's not dead centered this way but it'scentered between the point then here you could either measure or you could youcould do really anything you want you could take your square and make yourmark here and here you want to be somewhere the same two and three eighthstwo and three eighths and that's just giving me five crosshairs to bore fivethree-quarter inch holes one two three four this allows the air to escape whenyou sit down and it allows the air back in when youstand up so we have to do this it's a

common practice i'm going to bore onthose marks just with a brace and bit what i do is i go right onto thecrosshairs until that snail comes through then iback out and i go to the next one i counted eight so i'm going to do eighteach time that should give me the snail one two four five oops didn't work sixseven eight right on if i go all the way through it's going to splinter that'sthe underside of the chair seat one two threei don't want to leave the broken fragments on the underside or eitherside really one two three that's that so i've got nice clean entry holes on thisside even though it's not going to be

seen go into the center of those holeswith the auger bit i don't want to burst through i want to go through withcontrol again that other side the side you'relooking at is not going to be seen but i want it clean and that's basically itfor preparing for the upholestry so now we have to look at the leather andthat's the next part of this so there you have nice crisp clean holes on theunderside and that will this is about where the bottom hits first on thepadding on the leather pushes the air out you stand up the air comes back inand you're ready for your leather now we're going to show you how to make anupholstered seat like this one this

would fit in a chair like this here sitsinto the corner it looks very nice when it's done i want to show you how you getthere this one is actually vinyl not leather here's my leather this is theone i'm using for the demonstration but vinyl is very good for children'sfurniture cloth back vinyl it does last fairly well and it's easy clean and itholds up enough for the child years of your family so here i've got a two inchfoam in this case you can go up to four inch you're going to compress the foamas you do the upholstery first off i've avoided using any machines in this sothis is all handwork i've sharpened up a knife here if you don't know how tosharpen a knife like this we show you on

another video but this one is just aregular kitchen knife it's use for bread it could be a carving knifethis one is serrated but there's no serration left in it because i'vesharpened it so many times watch here i've sharpened this so i go through tothere and then i pull in a continuous stroke like thisseparate the two out nice crisp clean edges move it around just so you can seemake sure you're still flush with the edges and again get the knife down tothe bottom make sure your knife is good and sharp i sharpen this one up for thisall the way through separate and the last major stroke is this one like thisthere we go

now the corners obviously they have tocome off so go down as far as you can to the bottom and pull if it's got a littlestagger in there don't worry about it because this really does get compressed now my knife is super sharpso probably yours will need to be this sharp so be very careful now the wayi've cut this foam it probably is symmetrical so i probably could flip itbut this is the upper part of my seat i've done my air holes to allow the airto escape i take this place it on top of here this shows me i've got to bevelthese corners now and again i take a sharp knife and you can make marks onhere if you want to just to give you

some kind of a guide this is two inchfoam i want 45 degrees so this line is one inch in from the edge around here likethis just use your finger as a guide and a sharpie leave its mark on here so simple effective now while i've gotthe long piece on here i'm going to take this knife and take my corner down at 45just eyeball 45 that's all we do so i'm going right on the back line here pullthere's my 45 it's close enough through the first piece hold that andpull if you can get it in a continuous stroke all the way through all well andgood if you can't just go back in trim out that bottom edge a little bitthis gets super compressed in a minute

so whatever you've done is usually goingto take out any flaws in your cut work through the first here and then pull ina continuous stroke you'll feel it riding on top of the foam after a whilebut just go back in and cut now there's a little bit of a ridge there you couldgo in get your cut started trim off this a little bit nearer but i wouldn't worrythis is going to compress way down that's it clean off your work areaget rid of the excess that's my foam done so i can set that aside don't putit in the seat in case somebody sits on it so there's still uppermost herehere's my leather this is my next layer now i need to get two pieces out of myremaining piece of leather and what i

want is i want to one thing i didn'tshow you is when you're using that knife if you just have a little drop of oilmachine oil on here white both sides it'll stop the knife from pulling in thecut you get a cleaner cut that's that done so here again uppermost here now iwant three inches all the way around so i measure three inches from the longedge here move this until it's in position and three inches from the end so this is going to be my lowest pointhere i think there's three inches there i've got three inches there three and aquarter i don't need that much this gives me enough pull on my materialenough leverage really to pull my

material around so just work parallel tothis edge and then mark your three inches here here straight edge just foryour cut lines three inches from here leather is not very expensive it's notas expensive as people think for upholstery it's quite inexpensiveusually there's my cut line i can go straight to a knife like this so now we've pretty much got ourmaterials ready to task oh where's my pen gone we don't want this on theleather we don't any sharp obstacles underneath we've got to make sure wetake care of all of that and yeah we

want to make sure nothing marks theleather so it's very important knives staples all of the thingsnormally associated with things like this we've got to be careful with - onemore mark here the three inches on this side and now we're ready to do ourstapling pulling our leather and i'll show you how we compress the foam how westretch the leather and how we staple it

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