LockdownVelocette
May the congregation please be seated, and open your issue to the Lockdown Velocette, part 11.
One of the headache-inducing issues of building project bikes is ensuring those jobs that aren’t being done in-house are undertaken at the right time, ensuring there’s little or no waiting time for the parts in question when they’re actually needed.
Of course, this requires a little forethought and foresight, and I can speak from personal experience that it’s a rather worrying scenario when parts have been painted and plated, and seats have been covered, when there is still a lot of preparatory work to be done on the larger components. Welding, grinding and general spanner twirling are not conducive to freshly painted/covered parts remaining in immaculate condition.
Fortunately, in this case, our illustrious editor has managed to outsource his seat covering (and tank painting – see next month) at what appears to be the ideal point in the project build.
James had sourced a seat base early on in this series (the second part, if I remember correctly) and had got it mounted how he wanted, with a little bit of fettling allowable by the bracketry that Robinsons senior and junior (mainly senior…Ed) had sorted out.
Although that was followed by the replacement of said brackets when a mudguard was fitted, while the fortuitous fact that James hadn’t decided whether he was going to get the seat covered (or cover it himself ), meaning that further fettling could be applied until the fit was just right without having to change or damage any kind of covering. That is all part and parcel of managing a project – not getting anything finished too soon. Things like paint and seat covering want to be near the end of the list in order to stay clear of any work that many damage them.
So, with the major components of the project nearing the point that they could be finally assembled into a running motorcycle, those parts that had been awaiting attention needed to have their place in the limelight.
Which meant, of course, James was going to have to make some decisions that, until now, were quite happily bubbling away on the backburner.
The choice of seats had been the swoopy single seat of a sporting style – most riders of modern motorcycles would probably refer to it as being ‘café racer style,’ or of the Thruxton seat dropped off by James’s friend, Rob. I, for one, am glad he chose the shorter, more stylish single seat as the dual seat tends to look overly long, in my opinion. If the occasion does arrive that James wants to take a pillion on the back of the Velo, it’ll be no onerous task to swap them over.
But that short seat base did need covering, and while there had been the thought that it could be done in-house at chez Robinson, it was deemed that father and son could concentrate on resolving the issues with the dynamo, shocks and primary chaincase fixings while the seat was being recovered by the professionals!
Tucked away in the countryside near Kidderminster are a series of industrial units that collectively hold the different divisions of Bespoke Auto Works (BAW), and this is where the seat base was headed, for Mark Cartwright and Rita Goode to apply their time-served talents onto a one-off cover.
They have a specially-constructed trim shop for the upholstery services they deliver, which involves not just motorcycle seats, but also classic and vintage car interiors too. This amounts to far more than covering seats, given that it also involves carpeting, door panel retrimming, headliners etc. – and while we’ll not be looking at the multitudinous processes involved with car interiors, there are a great number which pass over onto motorcycle seat covers. BAW can restore original seats by re-stuffing them using original materials (i.e. skin wadding and horsehair), re-do flutes with calico and skin wadding and, if necessary, use the original leather, which can also be restored.
The process of padding and covering a seat starts with Mark making a set of patterns to suit, with the patterns drawn for each individual seat based around its centre line, though also bearing in mind that not every seat is symmetrical... yet it always needs to look as though it is when finished!
As the seat unit for the Velo curves in three dimensions, it required four individual patterns to allow the curve to follow its contours. Initially, Mark marked out the base to ascertain not only the centre line but also the line along which the seams of the panels would lie, and which would therefore dictate the shape of the patterns.
This needs a special kind of mind, capable of thinking in three dimensions and of transferring a curvaceous seat base onto flat, two-dimensional patterns! The patterns were also given correspondence marks to ensure they can be accurately lined up with each other.
With a pattern cut out in card, it was used to mark out 5mm thick scrim foam (foam that has a backing of scrim, a heavy woven material that prevents the foam from pulling apart) for the sides and hump of the seat,
while 10mm thick scrim foam was used for the seat base – the bit that will actually be sat on.
The foam is cut with a specific electric knife (with a quick spray of silicon to ease the cutting and prevent snagging). The knife has a removable foot, ensuring the cut edge is perpendicular. To avoid sharp edges in the seat, the thicker foam has its edge chamfered, and while my assumption was that it was the chamfer that creates the contours of the seat, the foam is actually fitted with the chamfer facing down, which then forces the previously flat face of the foam to curve gently around, rather than having a sharp angle.
An impact adhesive is used to affix the foam to the seat base, regardless of what the base is made from (they can be steel, aluminium, fibreglass or even wood), it being applied to both faces before it is allowed to ‘flash off ’ (i.e. the high end solvents evaporate).