"Then I tack the burlap in place," Steve said. Note how he uses another leverage tool braced against the windshield post to pull the fabric to the desired tightness. "This material will never lose its stretch," he insisted. "It's designed for support in sofas and chairs. It's what they install on the bottoms, then set the springs on top, so it's very rugged."
Steve begins measuring for the top material. First there's a burlap covering that's installed over the webbing. This becomes the base for the top padding and it keeps the padding from pushing down onto the headliner.
He's tightening, tacking, pulling, and fitting. Skilled, practiced, and meticulous handwork ensures the finished Carson top is perfectly smooth with no wrinkles.
Steve uses a pneumatic stapler to drive the staples tightly into the wood.
Because he installed laminated wood under the window frames, Steve can staple the material right to the frames, creating that finished, enclosed Carson top look.
The padding will be installed right over the burlap underliner.
There's a step here that wasn't photographed. "I use what's called un-bonded polyester that's 2 inches thick for the padding," said Steve. "The muslin holds all the padding. Then I start laying out my top cover."
With the padding installed, Steve's creating the pattern for the actual top. The padding material was compressed with another layer of muslin.
"Those marker lines show the actual stitches where the seams are going to go. I lay them out ahead of time, so I know exactly where they are going to be," Steve said. "I'm also marking where the raised bead will go."
Here he's sewing a test panel for the raised bead. This bead is a functional, very attractive styling element on a Carson top.
Steve's German-made pin tuck sewing machine's twin needles create a parallel seam stitch. He uses this special double-needle machine to simultaneously run a piece of piping up under the material to give it that desirable raised effect. This is the same effect Mercedes-Benz used in its 190SL seats and 300SL roadster door panels.
"This stitching is hard to do by hand," Steve said. "Even with this machine, when you try doing two parallel stitches, it's easy to make a mistake. You're making them exactly a quarter-inch apart from one another with a piece of piping in between. It's very difficult."
"Now, I am actually installing the top and I have finished the rear window, and slid it up into the slot," he said.
The rear bow section is also tacked tightly. It will be finished off with a strip of Hide-em and vintage-style chromed tips.
Next he does the final tacking, and then he completes the trimming and piping and installs the Hide-em strip to finish off the front of the top.