Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Fizik Arione Sugar Skull saddle

So you had to know this was coming. I wanted a seat to match my bars and seat bag so I made a seat cover. I ride the Fizik Arione so I peeled the cover off one of my older seats and traced the cover shape onto the leather.
      I found a design of a sugar skull I liked, made some changes to it, and drew it out on vellum paper. Then traced it onto the leather.
Traced onto the leather and ready to start cutting. I start by cutting every line of the pattern into the leather with a swivel knife. 


About half way through tooling the leather down. The stars under his eyes I used a wrench from an Avid disc brake set. Some of those cuts are tiny! This is 2mm thick leather and you have to cut about half way through the leather to get adequate relief. Go too deep and you basically ruin the entire thing by creating a tear or hole. 

Done. I went back and touched up a ton of spots. As the leather dries (you wet the leather to tool it) it changes quite a bit. I totally botched the stars under his nose.   

Mounted on the Fizik. 

The last thing was to dye it. I think this is the most stressful part. When you first smear the dye on it looks awful, black with swirls and smears. You control the darkness by how quickly you remove the dye. Leave it on a long time and it's dark and the smear lines will stay. I tend to wipe it off immediately and then reapply a light coat if I want it darker. This was three coats. I tried to make the nose dark and have it fade back. Looks OK. 

And the finished set. I don't like the seat bag so I'm going to make another one that matches.



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