Page 34 - Yachter Autumn 2024

34 NEED A NEW LEATHER STEERING WHEEL COVER?
NEED A NEW LEATHER STEERING WHEEL COVER? READ THIS...!
I recently replaced the leather steering wheel cover on my Hallber-Rassy 36 and, since this was the second wheel that I have covered in the last few years, I thought it might be helpful to pass on what I’ve learned.
The selection of colour for your new leather wheel cover seems to be limited - only either tan or silver. Equally, your choice of provider seems to be similarly limited - I found only 2 outlets on the interweb selling leather wheel covers - Clyde Marine Leather in Scotland and SeaDogs in Cornwall. For both of my wheel cover projects, I purchased leather from Di at SeaDogs (https://seadogs.co.uk/ ). She’s super helpful with advice and, if you have (ahem) accidentally ordered the wrong size, she is very non-judgemental when you have to ask for
an exchange item. Di also provides everything you will need with the leather kit - needles, whipping twine and double-sided tape.
Ordering the correct size of leather is extremely important - especially the width
of the leather, which needs to match exactly the circumference of your wheel. The width needs to be accurate, so that the edges of the leather will exactly match up when you stitch it in place - too narrow and you will have a gap - too wide and you will have an overlap. The overall length of leather is less important, as you will be provided with a size longer than you need and which you cut to fit. The SeaDogs website has a handy guide advising
how to measure your wheel - both the overall size of the wheel itself and the required size of the width the leather. Or you could simply do what I did and use standard measuring tools. Having got your leather, you now need to decide how you wish to stitch it in place. The simplest method is to use a cross stitch using 2 needles - in fact, this is the method suggested by Di @ SeaDogs. However, having tried this once, I found the resulting stitching very, er, average - easy, yes, but not especially neat or tidy.
After some research, I found this fella
on YouTube, who supplies and installs leather wheel coverings (in the US) and has clearly fitted a few. The video is a bit dated and clunky, but demonstrates the best technique that I found - https://youtu.be/ FHTuLV1L1tg?si=OnxOknd-U1jd8hnB - or search ‘Leather Wheel Cover Installation Boat Leather’ by Tom Armantrout.
The method involves using a herring bone stitch which gives a really neat and tight result. It requires some practice, but once I got the hang of it, I found I could progress fairly quickly. Having said that, stitching a wheel normally takes me around 4-5 hours.
The YouTube video gives lots of helpful advice, so I won’t cover it here. But in addition, I found the following, which might be helpful:
Wear leather gloves for pulling and tensioning the thread. If you don’t, and stupidly continue through the obvious pain and discomfort, the resulting blisters will take approximately 3-5 weeks to heal...
Make sure you keep a straight line with your stitching, correcting as you go, if required. It will be all but impossible to straighten any errors once the leather is tensioned and in place.
Your leather will probably be supplied (deliberately) too long and will require trimming to fit. Cut and join the 2 halves
of the leather well before you get to the end of your stitching, otherwise you won’t have enough play in the leather to make the join. Equally, do not cut and join the leather too soon - you cannot accurately determine where the join will need to be until you have stitched and tightened the leather in place.
Use a bradawl, or something equally pointy, to make the holes that you will need to make the join.
Do not try to use a herring bone stitch to join the end of the leather - it won’t work. Simply use the cross-stitch method suggested in the instructions from Di at SeaDogs.
That’s about it. Applying a leather wheel covering can be a very cathartic exercise. But it can also be super time consuming if, like me, you are prone to OCD-ness and you complete one section, only to realise you made one small error and then have to unpick that whole section and re-do it...
Bill Gray