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Charles and Rob:
I use a fiber board material that you can find at the home improvement
center. If you look in books for custom upholstery or auto upholstery
restoration, many of them recommend replicating your door panels from this 1/8"
hard pressed fiber board. It works very well. I don't know of any
other material that is impervious to water and can be used for this, not to say
that there isn't one out there. I do know this much, if you decide to try
this, do not buy the fiber board with the melamine backing, the
spray adhesive doesn't like the melamine as well, probably because it is
so slick. You can also add a 1/8" layer of closed cell foam over
the door panel, either all over, or you can literally carve
out patterns (with an X-Acto knife) and then place your fabric
over the door panel. If you have an embossed looking detail, you can
achieve this buy cutting that part of the design out of the foam, and then
pushing the fabric down inside of the design using an old screwdriver that
you have rounded the sharp corners off of. I did flames for my
nephew's truck using this method....looked very cool. You can also reverse
the effect by adding the design on top of your solid piece of foam, so you
put a 1/8" thick layer of foam (that is your design) on top of your 1/8" piece
of foam that attached to your board, so that you achieve an outward 3D
effect. I would suggest that you go to your library and get a copy of
"Custom Auto Interiors" by Don Taylor and Ron Mangus. Many esteem this as
the Bible for custom auto do it yourselfers, and I would say that I thought
it was a good, easy to understand book.
Hope this helps.
Teresa Smith
1959 Imperial Custom South Hampton, and various other old,
old Mopars
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