Boat seats are usually very expensive and it is not so easy to find them cheap. I spent a lot of time surfing the internet to find seats for my latest boat building project. I am a huge DIY fan and there are many things I have already built for my boats.
I started looking for a tutorial online on building a custom boat seat, but had no luck finding it, so I decided I would try building seats for my boat myself. I had drawn some sketches of what I wanted my seats to look like and began to calculate the amount of materials needed for the job.
I planned everything very well so I came up with this great tutorial with all the answers provided for those of you wanting to build your own custom boat seats. Not only can you save a lot of money by doing this yourself, but you’ll also find that the same skills go into making new kitchen or bar chairs.
I used some marine grade plywood to build a frame for my seat and additionally protected it with some marine paint and this presented a basic construction for my seat. I screwed an aluminum rod to the underside of the seat which is then used as the seat leg. I then bought some artificial leather and cut a shape out of my frame and an additional 8cm wide ribbon.
I then used a normal sewing machine and some polyester thread to sew the upper seat cover together. Between the plywood frame and the seat cover I put a 5 cm green seat foam. I then used a stapler to attach the foam to the seat frame with stainless steel staples and also to attach the final top seat cover to the frame.
For a final touch on my product, I stapled the black artificial leather cover to the back of the seat frame to hide the painted plywood.
I took about two days to make two custom boat seats for my new boat that I was rebuilding at the time and they turned out great.