Finished cheap boat seats mounted on my boat
Boat seats are often very expensive and it is not so easy to find cheap boat seats. I had the same problem when I was rebuilding my boat and so I decided to build my own cheap boat seats that will fit my needs and will be cheap. I managed to build boat seats really cheap, for about 50 € a piece.
First I bought some plywood, about 1 cm thick and cut it to a shape that had no sharp edges. I made two pieces out of that plywood for each of my cheap boat seats. One for the seating part and and one for the backrest part of my cheap boat seats. The dimensons for both pieces were 40×40 cm for the seating part and 40×20 cm for the baskrest part. I then screwed both of the parts on an aluminum rod that I bent by hand. Now I had the frames for my boat seats ready. This is the type of frame that is very strong and you can easily use it for building your cheap boat seats.
Summary
Total costs:
- 40 € seat foam
- 30 € artificial leather
- 10 € INOX staples
- 25 € seat rod holders
TOTAL: 105 € or 53 € per seat.
Building your own cheap boat seats:
 Plywood Boat seat frame |
 Seat rod holder |
 Seat frame, foam and coating |
 Seat with coating attached |
 Attaching the coating |
 Cutting off access material |
 Attaching seat’s back side cloth |
Finished seats mounted on my boat |
I visited my uncle at the time I was building my boat seats and he owns a woodworking shop. While on visit I saw that he has some old seat frames in the shop that are made out of plywood. I asked him if I can take two and he said yes. So now I had proffesional build plywood seat frame. You can see what I mean on the picture 1.
Next step was to buy some seating foam. I as was searching for foam suppliers I found out that there are several different types of foam and that not all of them are good for seating purpose. I bought a piece of green foam which is the best I could get for my boat seats. It cost me about 40 € for a piece that was about 2 meters long and 1 meter wide and 5 cm thick.
I then put the foam on to the seat and marked the shape of the seat and then cut out the foam. I repeated the process twice so I then had two pieces of foam that matched my seat shape. I then used a stapler to attach the foam to the seat frame with INOX staples.
I also bought some artificial leather for upholstering my seat at the end. My mom owns a sewing machine so I made her a template out of paper for the seat coating. She then sewed the coating together and I finaly had everything ready for building my seat.
Upholstering Boat Seats
You may also want to check out some cool youtube videos on DIY Upholstery Supply Store YouTube Channel, on how to upholster your newly build boat seats.
Everything you need you can get here at their web store: http://www.diyupholsterysupply.com/
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