I've had a couple of people ask about how I made the rubber edging. Mine is not 100% accurate at all, but it's reasonably close and pretty easy to do. I didn't take many pictures, but I figured a write up would be somewhat helpful.
First, make a paper pattern of your neck roll. I did this by tracing the outside perimeter of my foam core. The lines will likely be messy from tracing around a curved object, but you can clean those up easily enough before you cut the template out.
Once you have your template cut, wrap it around your core again to make sure it still looks good. Ideally it should be pretty exact to the outside of the neck roll.
I decided that I liked the look of 1/4" dowels for the ribbing. Its up to you if you want to go bigger or smaller. Same with the top and bottom piping... I used 1/4 as well. I think if I was going to do it again I'd do 3/16" ribs and 1/4" piping.
I found that hardware stores don't seem to have dowels smaller than 1/4", but craft stores have them all the way down to 1/8"
Using the template, figure out how much dowel you will need. Mmmm, math! ( Dowels are cheap, so I just went with really high measurements and had leftovers )
- Find the tallest part of your neck roll... right in the center back. Measure that and add 1/4".
- Measure the length of your template and divide that by your dowel diameter. That's how many pieces you will need.
- Dowels are generally 36" long, so divide 36 / the height of your sections to see how many sections you'll get from a dowel (round down)
- Divide the "how many pieces number" by the "how many per dowel" number and you have a shopping list.
For example:
Say I have a 30" long pattern piece that's 1.5" tall in the middle. I'm going to use 1/4" dowels
- My pattern pieces will be 1.75" tall (1.5 + 0.25)
- I'll need 120 of those (30 / 0.25)
- I'll get 20 per dowel (36 / 1.75)
- I'll need 6 dowels (120 / 20 )
In addition, pick up 2 dowels for your piping (one each top and bottom)
OK, so now you've got dowels! What you do here is going to depend on the tools in your toolbox (or workshop really).
To cut the pieces, I used a PVC pipe cutter.
View attachment 310351
It doesn't make the cleanest edges, but that's part of why I scaled my pieces up a bit, to allow for the rough edges. You could use any sort of saw you are happy with.
I used hot glue to attach the dowels to my pattern piece, being really careful to keep them straight and square with the bottom edge. Once the pieces were glued down, I ran it through a bandsaw to trim the wood down to match the size of the pattern, then used a belt sander to smooth out the edges.
I then took a hand sander and beveled the top and bottom edges of the dowels slightly, to simulate the look of ribbed leather wrapped around a curve. It's not a perfect match, but I think it looks better than squared off ends.
When it was all cleaned up and smooth, I glued it down to a piece of 1x4 wood I had in my garage. You want to make sure the board is flat... a twisted board will ultimately give you a twisted casting, and that's not good.
Putting the piping dowels on was a little awkward, but not too hard. I glued them to the board, starting at the center and working my way out to the edges. As the ribbed section curved, I bent the dowels in place and applied more glue. At the curves I used a couple of finish nails on the outside edge to let the hot glue set.
Once it was all shaped, I used some wood filler to smooth out all the gaps and ridges, then sealed it with a few coats of smooth-on's sealer product (I forget the name).
The last thing I did was make a small flange around the edge with some 0.080 styrene. In the castings this becomes the seam allowance to sew it to the leather.
I know a huge block of text like that isn't the easiest thing to follow, but it's better than nothing
