Hot Rods REAL Tuck & Roll!...who does it?

Does anyone still do real tuck and roll interior?...When I say "real" I mean the pleat is stitched, then folded over and stitched from the back...so you end up with a fuller looking pleat and a hidden stitch...

tuck and roll:


pleats:


Any recommendations for a good guy?...someone in Texas or the Southeast would be nice!

 

G Spot in Texas City. Not cheap but he does a good job.

 

Kenny I can recommend taking a class somewhere. I did at VoTech. Tuck and roll takes more time but is easy to do and nothing beats doing it yourself. I wish you would come see me if you get a chance

 

Lenard who did the shoebox interior can do it..... hes pretty resonable...

 

cool!...I think that's my best option then, I should've thought to see if he could look at it last week.

I've wondered about that too...always cool to learn something new.

I'm still debating whether or not I want to spend the money to go to Pate...If I do go, maybe I can stop on the way if I'm passing through at a decent time.

 

Technically "real" tuck and roll involves hand stuffed pleats. What you described is more of a blind stitched pleat and any competent upholsterer should be able to do it.


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K13 is correct. The material and a backing material are stitched together forming empty pockets the width of the pleats. Then strips of foam are stuffed into these pockets with a long flat stick similar to a yardstick. This creates the Round, full look of individual pleats. There was a series about this in the old small pages Rod and Custom magazines from the 1950's. Because its so labor intensive, probably few due it these days
Out here on the west coast, I think Sid Chavers can do it. Legendary Eddie Martinez did 2 cars for me using this method years ago.

 

Just had mine done..

 

My wife did real T&R in my '35. First time ever doing any kind of upholstery and it certainly wasn't easy. Especially when you .5" HD foam and .25" scrim back to fold over and stitch. Definitely took some muscle but I am so proud of her for doing a great job.

 

Beautiful! The look I will be going for when I redo the Nash interior.

 

You are a lucky man....

 

some people even stuff the pleats to get them puffier yet.

jeff

 

In 1965 or so buddy and toke my 55 Olds two door sedan to TJ for a new interior. We got there early probably about 8 and picked a little one man shop on a side street that somebody had told us about. He measured up the car and ordered the materials from a guy on a bicycle . The word at the time was that you had to stay and keep an I on them or they would use cheap Naugahyde and stuff the pleats with horse shit, so we hung around the shop and watched most of the time. One guy did the whole job himself, seats headliner package tray, door panels and carpets, all tuck and roll stuffed with cotton batting and US Naugahide .Beautiful job and he was finished by about 8 o'clock that night.Right at 8 hrs for $300 we were so happy we gave his cousin a ride back to LA which wasn t the best idea since he didn t have any kind of papers but after about half an hour they let us back in the US and we made it back alright.That was a long trip in an old car with slicks and a home built motor but we had a great adventure and did it again in my friends 57 Chevy a few years later.

 

#6&7 are right to a point. They are sewn as empty then stuffed with cotton using what are called tucking spoons. The spoons are long enough to reach through the cover ,they look like a salad server tog except flat. The cotton was compressed between the things and shoved in and you grab the cotton then withdraw the spoon. All you had to do was know how much cotton for the pleat took look good. No I won't do that anymore. Way too labor intense and the roll and double stitch with foam looks and works for most people.. Good luck Jack

 

The process using strips of foam is outlined in the September 1955 issue of Rod and Custom. Colgan is doing a 40 Ford seat, and the article showes whats involved in using a "pleat stuffer" to push precut strips of foam into the empty pleats. I watched Eddie Martinez do this on my 40 tudor and 32 roadster back in the day. Took forever, but thats the way they did it back then. Another lost art, I guess,

 

Maybe not lost but it was extremely time consuming and frustrating when one roll would not cooperate. The foam did make it easier to control the size and firmness as cotton had to rolled and the ginning process was not precise so density could vary. There are many old time ways that have been replaced with modern and faster , cleaner processes. Not all bad, not all good. Good luck Jack

 

When I had this seat done for my current project I insisted on tuck and roll. We read all about it in the Little Magazines in the 50's and it doesn't seem right to have sewed in pleats

 

Here's a shitload of real tuck & roll in and on my Titus-built Tudor with upholstery by his wife, stichbitch.

 

can someone post the R&C article? Make it big, so us old guys with reading glasses can see it.

 

Love that tudor.

 

Wish I lived closer to you some of you. I'd throw down some tuck'n'roll for ya.

*check my Albums for Upholstery Work.

 

I don't have the article, but this is how I did it in my '64 Pontiac in the early '80's....I wanted real tuck and roll and the upholsterer didn't know how to do it so I stuffed each pleat myself.

I used a wood dowel and a strip of 2 inch wide ribbon. The ribbon had one end folded over to make a pocket for the dowel to go into. Before I sewed the sides of the ribbon to make the pocket, I reinforced it with a piece of vinyl so it would stand up to the pushing the dowel would do. Then, you take a strip of foam, lay it on the ribbon, put the dowel on top into the pocket on the end. that basically gives you a sandwich with the dowel and the ribbon being the bread. Poke the dowel and pocketed end of the ribbon into the sewn pleat and push the foam in. When you get out the other side, pull out the ribbon and the dowel leaving the foam in the pleat.

 

Rich the Stitch in Utica, NY does some FINE work. Tell him Joe Fazekas sent ya.
315-793-0907

Not tuck and roll, but this will give you an idea of his work.

 

You do some fine work. That 55 's interior is killer.

 

I'm an upholsterer, only ever done the old way of stuffing each section once. Not fun, extremely labor intensive and time consuming. It is rare to even do the blind stitch way too, because you need more material per panel, and more time therefore more money. I like doing it that way, but a lot of people don't want to put the $$ out. Here is a quick little stool I made out of scraps from another job for myself using the blind stitch way.


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How much oversize do you sew the "roll"? double the thickness of the foam strip you are using? or slightly less? For example, if you are doing a 2" wide pleat, and using a 1/8" foam strip, do you make the roll 2 1/4" wide? or say 2 3/16"?

 

Well, hmmm....you got me wondering there. I'm thinking the pleats are 1 inch and the roll over the top was maybe 1.5 inches. I'm betting I used 1 inch strips of 1 inch thick foam....I wanted nice "rolley" pleats. It was nearly 30 years ago, so those details are a little sketchy. I might can figure it out when I get home this evening and look at the car and report back.

 

Here's an excellent thread on tuck and roll pleats. While not individually stuffed pleats, doing them this way still looks real good. I did the tuck and roll cushions on one of the couches I built for my office this way. They look real good, but I think I am still partial to the individually stuffed pleat style in my Pontiac.

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=372599

 

I have that thread in my subscriptions. Probably the best upholstery thread on the HAMB.

 

Gonna give this a bump for the evening crowd. Anyone have the R&C article? Anybody add more detail?