restoration of headrest for scheel seat - bnn style

[deQuincey]

small project inside,

some guy, you know him, right ? was so kind to offer a bnn style headrest that belonged to a scheel 100 seat

i have my scheel 100 equipped with conventional headrests but this looked interesting so i gave a try as it was clear it was not going to be a plug and play (this actually made things more exciting)

after my extensive resto of a scheel 100 seat ( https://e9coupe.com/forum/threads/a-scheel-tale.22688/ ) (thank you phbckt for deleting the pics) i was prepared and with enough knowledge and expertise to accomplish this challenge

so what´s next ?

 

[deQuincey]

so a quick overview,

fabric was not very happy, it was disintegrating in form of a persistent black dust

structure was not chromed anymore

foam was,...eeerrrr, well 40 Y.O., right !

 

[deQuincey]

so what to do ?
try to make a new foam,....

first problem, proper material should be very high density 70/80 automotive quality, difficult to find
but there are always places,...

 

[Keshav]

some guy, you know him, right ?

I’m the culprit! Colpa mio.

 

[deQuincey]

I’m the culprit! Colpa mio.

yes you start the infection, but the virus is soo sweet ,...

 

[Keshav]

Tell us the rest of the story. Knowing you, you have made a headrest better than it originally was.
Also it gave you something to do in the winter (do u have winter weather ) to keep you gainfully employed!

 

[deQuincey]

yeah, but how do you cut foam when shape is 3D ?

this did not worked well

i made a completesetup including a 12 volts 8 amp source and an electronic regulator, ending up with a hot wire able to cut expanded polyester, but not foam,...scheisse !

and a ham knife worked no good:

 

[deQuincey]

so finally i decided to make the foam stable by vacuum plus CHCL and some impact glue to repair broken pieces, previously i removed the frame by a surgical cut (with the ham knife)

 

[Christopher]

DeQ - upholsterers use an electric bread knife to cut foam - might be worth checking out next time you've got a foam project

 

[deQuincey]

so chromed the frame:

 

[deQuincey]

DeQ - upholsterers use an electric bread knife to cut foam - might be worth checking out next time you've got a foam project

i tried that too, problem is density, the foam for a headrest is very heavy, dense and (latex addition makes it very sticky

ham knife is sharp like a razor´s blade, was good for seat foam

 

[deQuincey]

so, disasemble the cover, templates of the cloth pieces,

 

[deQuincey]

foam and frame are joined together,

new fabric pieces

 

[deQuincey]

hand sewn to make shapes

plus machine sewing

 

[deQuincey]

it is like a glove but you must finish by hand once the insert is inside

i dedicated some time to think how to sew these two ends together while keeping the tension and making it uniformly
the answer is in this photo, smart, isn´t it ?

 

[deQuincey]

hand sewing is not my speciality, but does not look very bad either:

 

[deQuincey]

in the seat, it is much more confortable and ergonomic

hope you enjoyed it ;-)

 

[Gransin]

Very, very nice work DeQuincey! I wish I was able to do these sort of things for myself, but my head explodes just from thinking about trying..

 

[rsporsche]

as excellent as always deQ ... so where did you get the scheel fabric from - Gerrit? i want to get a piece about 1.5 / 2m long (full width) to do the insets on my scheel sport seats

 

[rsporsche]

by the way, we used to make architectural mass models with the hot wire machine. we used a rigid foam ... with practice you could cut a sphere. soft foam for upholstery? might be a bit difficult.