Title
Making Panel Upholstery

Author
Dan

Published
Thursday, May 3, 2007

I was looking for something a little different for the interior of the AMT GMC Astro 95 Cab Over Big Rig kit. To be more concise, I wanted something other than the poorly detailed wall panels in the sleeper area of the cab. I recalled Alex's Tutorial on working with leather. I took some of the principals of that tutorial to develop a faux upholstered panel look. It is a simple and inexpensive procedure. I hope that you find it useful.

Materials:



1.One piece of heavy paper or card stock

2.Pencil

3.Scribing tool or Burnishing tool

4.Ruler

Step one:



I first marked my paper by making a box of equal size on the paper, for this tutorial I made a 5" X 5" square. The paper is available at office supply stores as well as many craft outlets and some Wal-Marts.





I then marked the lines of the square in equal intervals, These marks are approximately 1/8 inch apart, I was using my 1:24 scale conversion ruler and made my marks at 6 scale inches.





Next, I lay my ruler corner to corner on a diagonal. Holding my ruler in place I then used the rounded side one of my scribing tools and as I applied downward pressure, I scored a line in the heavy paper. I next moved my ruler to the next set of marks. I repeated the procedure until I had the square covered in diagonal lines. I then rotated the paper and scribed in the other direction, again covering the square. I have shaded an area to show the result of the scribing.



I next cut out a desired shape. In this case I cut out the shape of a door panel. I have drawn in the arm rest and a handle. For a practical application a hole the size of the arm rest could be cut out or the handle could be removed from the actual door panel and applied to the faux panel and attached to the kit panel.



I show this picture to demonstrate that you can cut many panels from this 5" by 5" square. You can make your original square as large as you like so that you have enough material for many projects.



In this last photo I have made the pattern larger. I accomplished this by using equally spaced marks. I used a line on the see through ruler and aligned it on the previous line until I reached the desired size. This leaves me with left over material that I can use in a future build.





You can now paint your panels. I painted my panels with Tamiya's Acrylic Desert Yellow. I painted in several light coats being careful not to lay the paint on to the point that the paper got wet. I have found that after three coats the pieces were evenly covered. After the paint had dried I then took my scribe and ruler and went over the lines again. This added a darker line that helps to show off the depth of the upholstered panels.



Here is a piece installed in a build of the Astro 95.

Thank you for looking in on this tutorial. I hope that you find this tutorial useful and that you may be able to use this technique to enhance one of your builds in the future. It is a quick and simple way to give your builds a custom look with very little expense. Feel free to modify or change this procedure to suite your needs.