Tackling the upholstery... staple question

[SoldTheBayliner]

No turning back now... the old upholstery is torn off of all the seats and the rear deck. It's a 2000 SAN. My wife is the one with the sewing skills...she's confident, I'm intimidated.

I know that I need stainless staples. What I'm not sure about is how critical the crown width of the staples is. The stock vinyl is attached with pretty wide crown staples. I have an air stapler that is a narrow crown, and I've used it to attach motorcycle seat covers, and a seat cover on a wave runner with no issues.

I'm leaning towards thinking it would be fine, becuase the staples in the vinyl were so close together on the stock stuff, that the end of one staple was closer to the end of the next staple than the width of my staples would be (does that make sense?)...so there is essentially holes poked in the vinyl very, very close to each other on the stock stuff, and not one of the seats failed in the staple area. Would I get less strength or more potential for tearing with a narrow crown staple?

Any experience is appreciated... Thanks

[Chexi]

First, to answer your question, the narrow crown will work for the starboard material, but may give you some issues when stapling into fiberglass. I did my 99 Air with narrow crown almost everywhere, but a wide crown would really have been better/easier.

Second, I hope you took a lot of pictures of how everything goes together. For novices like us, it is really better to do 1 cushion at a time (start to finish). Some of the pieces are easy to put back together, but not all. Also, if you do 1 at a time, you are never really without use of your boat. You may find that you have a boat for the entire summer that you cannot use, because this project tends to take a lot longer than people think (who do not do it all the time).

[pzthk6]

The crown of the staple isn't nearly as critical as the pressure to which the gun is set at. I would suggest several practice shots into whatever substrate you are using so the staple fully engages but does not blow through or tear the vinyl. The wider crown will allow you to run a higher pressure since it has more surface area, but not required. Air staple guns should also be a thing that is easily rented at a tool shop, or just buy a cheap one that you only need to last through this project.
Kodos to you wife for trying to sew the vinyl, it is a completely different animal than any other fabric and takes a pretty stout machine. I would suggest a ball point needle if her machine has the power to punch through.

[SoldTheBayliner]

Thanks for the advice... it's too late to do one seat at a time, it's do or die before summer for us. We took lots of pictures and labeled as we dissasembled, so not too worried about the re-assembly.

I have dealt with adjusting air pressure for staple depth while doing hardwood flooring...similar concept and I do have a pressure regulator, so we'll test first. Thanks for that reminder. Hadn't thought of renting a different stapler..will look into that. What's the issue with narrow crown and fiberglass? doesn't hold well?

[hyparks]

Where did you get your vinyl from? Is it from nautique or somewhere else and how close a match is it?

Sent from my HTC Desire HD A9191 using Tapatalk

[gride]

Nautiqueskins.com has factory patterns and copycatcovers.com is cheaper, and I believe they need the original skins, but I may be mistaken on that.

[SoldTheBayliner]

Nautique skins sent an estimate of around $2500 for the whole boat. After I picked up my lower jaw we started looking around...For that much cash I would expect them to fly to CA and install them for me. we're sending samples to a few different places. We're trying to match it in a 4-way stretch vinyl, which they didn't do in 2000 I don't think. So we'll see how close we can get. There are a few suppliers of marine vinyl that look promising, and doing the sewing yourself saves literally thousands of dollars apparently. It's not that much yardage...and the best stuff is all under $30 per yard...foam backed, 4 way stretch, etc. In our case all of the foam is in great shape, so we're just making our own skins, basically.

[jaybird]

220, 440

220, 440, apholstery, upholstery, what ever it takes :-)

Sorry, couldn't resist!

[SoldTheBayliner]

Yeah that's one of those words that always gets me. I'm going with the theory that 'apholstery' is higher quality than upholstery.

[Chexi]

It has just been my experience that it is harder to dial in narrow crown staple pressure to go through fiberglass without tearing the vinyl. The larger crown also makes tearing of the vinly less likely, as there is more vinyl between the staple prongs. Also, the larger crown staples tend to be stouter themselves, so you get less bending of the staples when trying to go through something hard like fiberglass. I watched my dealer finish up my last piece with a large crown stapler and it was easy. I fought with my narrow crown stapler something fierce.

[SoldTheBayliner]

http://www.harborfreight.com/20-gaug...ler-68029.html ???

Anyone know what depth of staple is standard? I could measure what I pulled out I guess... and a cheap source for stainless staples?

[Chad52]

I used the Harbor Freight Stapler and it worked just fine. Use good stainless staples though.

All this being said, I just finished up re-upholstering one cushion, the starboard rear chaise seat. Upholstery work is an art form. It is not as simple as you think it should be. The piece I was doing had two different foam heights, and a curved seam. Putting the actual piece on wasn't hard, but getting the seam and the curve to lay down and pull correctly took me 3 different attempts.

It's not as easy as you would think.

[SoldTheBayliner]

Where did you get your staples? And is 20 gauge OK/correct?

Don't worry...I expect it to be the most frustrating, time consuming experience I've ever endured. Those rear corner seats looks like they'll be brutal. I've done a couple of motorcycle seat covers, and those were frustrating enough, even though it's basically a rectangle. Did you use heat to get some more stretch out of the material? Any other tips?

[gride]

Slapping the heck out of the creases helps also. 2500 for all the skins is less than I would have expected. I don't even want to know what labor to install would be. Even if i(you) did all the staple removal.

[SoldTheBayliner]

2500 seems like a lot when you consider that we'll be able to get the vinyl for three or four hundred. It's a ton of labor, but you have to do most of the labor if you order the skins anway. I wouldn't attempt the sewing, but my wife is into that... she looked at what was on there and said "I can do that." That is the sentence that saves you over $2000 apparently.