Just be glad you don't have to do any hand stitching like I had done!...

^Desert camo sterile surgical gloves, who would have thought?

The guy in the back who clearly looks like he wants nothing to do with any of it is my favorite part of that photo.

He was the head medic. Notice everyone giving the "thumbs up".... military humour

My Speedy Stitcher came on Saturday afternoon, and...that's what I've been doing this weekend

I did a test row of stitches on some vinyl to see how it was going to work and look, and the results (while slow) were good, so I decided then to do the whole thing by hand.

First job is to mark all the holes. I printed out a 5mm 'ruler' at the office and used that and a finely sharpened Sharpie grease pencil to do all the marking; following the procedures outlined in Cesar's (cechaflo) videos. I tried to avoid looking at the clock too much, but just the marking probably took almost an hour.

Instead of trying to punch through the leather and stitch with the awl, I used the machine to pre-punch each of the holes. Taking off the presser foot helps with visibility and there are markings on the machine to help keep everything aligned. There's no thread in the machine and each hole was punched turning the machine by hand. Doing this was a huge help when it came time to do the actual stitching.

The awl comes with a couple of needles, both of which are BIG. Fortunately, a regular Singer-style needle will fit in the chuck, so I used the same needle in the awl that I used in the machine to punch all the holes. Then, it's just a lot of stitching: push needle in, pull back, feed the bottom thread, pull needle out, tighten threads by hand. And repeat that almost 400 times. (I'm a desk jockey by day but I go to the gym and lift heavy and am very grateful I have some decent callouses on my hands, because there's a lot of thread pulling involved!) The toughest part is that it isn't a movement that lets you get into any kind of rhythm or can be sped up. Each stitch took somewhere around 20 seconds, but I had to take breaks and keep myself distracted now and again. All told, I think it took about 5 hours over two days. The wheel itself also got a quick repaint, since it was chipped up pretty badly during the build-up process.

A lot of work, but hey, that's looking pretty good!

That's a real commitment,  so when you are done will the leather be sewed on, glued on or both?

That's a real commitment,  so when you are done will the leather be sewed on, glued on or both?

I'm doing a Euro stitch for sure and will glue down at least the back part of the cover where the finger dents are. I may glue more of it but will feel that out as I go. Opinions on gluing covers seem pretty evenly split.

 

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Looks great so far. I'm assuming the stitch design will make more sense to me when it's done.

I'm feeling pretty good about that.

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Nice work. Have the orders started coming in yet? 

Anyone who wants to pay me $1000 for a steering wheel is welcome to place an order!

Haha!! Exactly. "And then a completely unprofitable huge amount of time later, you have this...."