How To Build a Seat Leather Truck Bench Seat (2023)

Introduction

I show you how to build a seat for my 1936 Gmc hotrod truck. I take you through the steps I take to make a bench seat from scratch and wrap it in leather. I also show you how I built straps to hold my custom gas tank up. Along with putting the final touches on the gas tank along with other updates on this flatbed build.

Content

Welcome back to show me trucks in this video.

I get this bench seat covered with foam and leather, and now I actually get to sit in my truck, which is nice, um I'll, show you how I do it, and then I also get my gas tank mounted and make some gas tank straps and show you some of the modifications I did.

I have the seat foam in the cab I kind of just sanded all the corners, I'm still going to kind of fine-tune it a little bit.

I kind of want it to have a little more of a arch instead of a really fat piece of foam, and then you can really tell in the back it's very flat.

So I think I'm going to shave the top a little shape the bottom a little bit just to give it kind of more of a a bubble.

Look also, I have another half inch, so really soft foam, that's going to sit on the top.

That kind of will fill up the space in the leather, so it doesn't look like such a stiff seat.

Obviously, back in the day they would use whatever they could for some padding in these trucks so uh.

I want it to look really plump and uh have some curves and not be as rigid as like a new car interior looks.

So I need to pull the bottom out so that I can pull the back off um shave all that down.

It's pretty messy.

I have a list that is getting smaller and smaller, which I knock a lot of it out this weekend, while the wife is gone, um and put in some long days, like some probably 14 16 hour days, so uh, that's what you got to do.

If you want these trucks to actually ever get done, uh you got work, so I'm gonna pull all this out and um keep saying it.

Stressful uh, the gas tank is ready to go in.

I just need to vacuum it out and uh.

I need to make some gas tank straps, so I'm sure I'll do that this video foreign, so here they are so now there's two.

Obviously I always try to put nice wells but uh.

I went hot all the corners on the sides because, if you think about it, a gas tank is, you know at least 60 pounds bouncing around on the back of your truck sloshing around and everything, and so these straps are the only thing that are holding it in from falling out the back.

I wouldn't be concerned about catching on fire.

I'd be more concerned about catching someone else behind me on fire, so uh pretty excited those are done.

I got some more stuff to do with like some little rubber, strips and stuff like that, but that'll be tomorrow.

So so I've also been pulling out some of these screws, which are very nerve-wracking um.

There are those clutch style screws.

I would say if I'm lucky, a third of them are coming out.

Most of them are if they do spin, they just spin and I'm like all excited and then uh it pops the head off I'll, be dealing with that uh, I'm probably gonna put a different screw in.

I might I might just buy new screws, some flatheads, or something and uh just paint them brown and put new hardware in there and maybe drill and tap those holes bigger because it's like a really fine thread.

That's what I'm dealing with right now.

Also I finally got some hubcaps super excited about these um.

I took the rams to get save lasted today.

So when those get back, I'm gonna brush paint those black.

Then I can throw the tires on a couple of the things I liked and didn't like um, I got.

I got two different kinds of foam adhesive or you know like fabric adhesive um.

The auto parts store only had the lighter duty stuff at first, which I do not recommend.

I sprayed it to attach the wood to the foam and then also to attach the dense foam to the half inch lighter foam.

Also, the leather I got pretty pumped on it, but it is a little tricky.

You have to set up your seats on the leather to make sure you cut it in the right place, because I would even though it looked like, I had a lot of extra leather and I do have a lot of extra the way the hide lays out.

I barely made it.

It was a little scary at first just because I didn't want to like staple it, a bunch and not get it right.

Um.

Also, I'm happy how the seams turned out um.

I was a little skeptical on how that was going to be, and I thought I was going to stitch a lot of stuff, but I didn't have to so real pumped on that um.

It's a lot of work.

I will tell you that uh pulling the leather tight and keeping it in place while you staple it, is pretty hard.

If you had someone to help, you that'd be very helpful.

Also, you had to take your time uh because it physically it's kind of hard on my hands.

I have real messed up: hands um, it's hard for me to grip things for a long time, so kind of take a lot of breaks just so that I didn't rush anything and leave a bunch of wrinkles the underside.

I don't I'm not worried about how it looks.

Uh I put a ton of extra staples in it just in case anything backs out.

I also left a lot of extra leather on the bottom so that, if something did happen, I would have something to hold on to uh to pull it tight again and then staple it back down.

It almost seems, like the seat is way more firm.

Now that I have the other piece of half inch on it and the leather, I don't know if it's because I pulled the leather so tight, I hate uh loose looking seat when I'm at car shows- and I see someone's seat- looks like they just laid it on there and stapled.

It didn't pull it at all.

Uh.

It drives me crazy.

The seat is pretty stiff um, because this is going going to be a bouncy ride in this truck.

I wanted a stiff seat um, so that's how everything went.

I hope you guys enjoyed um in the next video we're going to get the wheels back and get them painted, throw the hubcaps on mount the tires pretty excited about that.

My list is getting a lot smaller, but I do need to pull the seat back out.

I'm trying to mount my pcm and throttle pedal assembly and heater and everything under this seat um.

So I'm trying to figure out all the placement right now and the routing and trying to get all my wires to run straight out the bottom of the cab straight into the frame rail.

That way, I could tuck everything everything can look really uh sleek on this truck.

Eventually, I'm also going to work on this headrest, I'm still working on getting the screws all out and the headrest is down the road for sure.

But I would like it to be the same leather, but just making the contour it's going to be a long long job.

So we'll see what happens there hope you guys enjoyed later.

You.