Post 10 – Progress

I have made quite a bit of progress since the design review. I have passed the exploration stage and therefore determined what shape the gauge cluster cover will take. I have settled on a large piece of vegtan leather, bent over the radius of the fascia’s fillets and mounted to the wooden based using screws.  This leather piece needs to have its outer, shorter edges cut at an exact angle, one that allows them to sit flush to the vehicle’s dash, completely covering the less than attractive plywood base of the cluster. I used a paper towel onto which I made some marks to determine a rough template for my first leather cover iteration. Using this template, I could trace the shape of the cover onto the leather stock and have a good starting point on the angles of the cover and its overall dimensions. Once the shape, in addition to a cutout for the wires to pass through, was traced onto the leather with a pencil, I could finally cut out this first version. I did this using the best tools I have: a sharp box cutter and a cutting mat, in addition to a ruler wherever applicable. I also used a leather hole punch that I already had from axe sheath making to punch holes in the leather for mounting screws. You can see pictures of this process below. Once this was all fabricated, I brough the cover to my truck to check its fit on the gauge cluster (which is glued to the dash). It turned out that this first cover design was too narrow and could not reach all the way around from one side of the base to the other. Obviously, this leaves a gap which looks very unaesthetic (see the picture below to get a grasp of what I mean). Therefore, the next step for this project is to revise my cover into one that’s significantly wider, at least wide enough to remove the gap between the cover and the sides of the plywood base. I will do this next using revision A as a template, since revision B would essentially be an extended version of this first iteration that I’ve made.