E 29 Cushions

[SAILSHIGH]

Hello Ericson Owners,
When I bought my 1975 E29 it only had 3 cushions in her. They are in bad shape so I am looking to replace them. Does anyone know of a good upolstry shop or cushion service? How about good used cushions? Any help or advice would be appreciated.

Thank You,

Wes Zimmerman
1975 E29
"SAILS CALL"
Grand Lake Oklahoma

 

[Don Taugher]

I redid my 29 and was shocked by the price given to me by a sailmaker. He wanted $ 4000 !!! I was very happy to find a upholester who used did the job for $ 1000 labor, I supplied the materials. I have also heard that RV shops are a good bet for what you need.

Don Taugher
E38-200 Running Free

 

[Bob in Va]

Cushions

Don, I just did mine (E-23) and learned a few things in the process. If you have an upholstry shop do it from scratch, you will most times be paying top dollar for the material - sometimes about double what you can get it for if you look around. I did some searching at a couple of yard-goods outlets and found marine grade vinyl for $7/yd and a number of nice woven fabrics for about $10. There was even some marine vinyl for $3 but not in a color I wanted. My upholstry guy didn't care if I supplied my own fabric - he's a smaller shop and just looking for business. But that was a question I asked before we even got started. I ended up going with a patterned weave, and found some beading (cording?) already made up that matched, on sale at $0.89/yd - that's about a third of normal price, and all he had to do was sew it in, not make it up. He did 6 pieces (4 cushions and two panels) plus two matching pillows for $220 labor. The whole works came to about $425 with several yards left over (we decided to make the bottoms of the cushions in vinyl for moisture resistance.) You might want to check the current issue of Good Old Boat - there is an article in there about a streamlined way of making your own cushions, and the boat that is featured is an E-27. They did it paying only for materials and the results look pretty decent.

 

[Sven]

We just redid the v-berth as step one in replacing all of them. Used Sunbrella from Sailrite, two layers of thermarest (2.5" x 2) foam from Costco and our trusty Sailrite LZ-1 machine. If you look closely you can tell that it wasn't done by a professional, but in navy blue it is dark enough to hide my mistakes ... it sleeps wonderfully !!

BTW, one Cal-king foam pad was exactly enough to get two layers in the v-berth, but only because we didn't angle the side cuts to match the hull. We learned too late that Sailrite was absolutely correct in suggesting that an electric knife was the right way of cutting foam. We did it with razor blades and it doesn't look pretty when out of the covers. Fortunally you can't even guess at the ugly cuts when the covers are on.


-Sven