George,
When I recovered mine, I screwed the elbow piece onto a piece of 3/4"
lumber and then clamped the board in my big vice. I laid newspaper
over everything, then applied the 3M 90 heavy duty spray adhesive on
both pieces. (I have stated elsewhere that the 3M 90 was not very
good, but for the leather, it seemed to work OK.) I let both pieces
dry to the touch, then sprayed the elbow piece again. I then eyeballed
the leather over the elbow piece and while still wet smoothed it down
in the center. I grabbed the edges pulling it down over the elbow
piece, stretching the heck out of it so that it formed the compound
curve. I removed it from the vice and unscrewed the board, then after
spraying the inside, I folded the leather over so that it was
completely covered. I used a very sharp pair of "flush cut" diagonal
cutters to trim the leather so it would lie flat on the inside. I
basically did the same procedure with the door capping pieces. One
thing that helped, I kept as much of the original covering as I could,
so I was able to see how the factory fit the original coverings.
The elbow pieces and door cappings on my car came out better than I
could possibly imagine, no wrinkles and they look great.
Good luck, and as always, YMMV and NFI.
Jim Bauder
'58 TR3
Palo Alto, CA
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