anyone made their own door panels?, Don't want to spend $$$ if I can duplicate the old pressboard Options

[914Mels]

I'm continuing the interior rebuild, moving on to the door panels. The old ones are pretty basic construction, press board, foam and vinyl. The press board is shot after fifty years plus the big hole for a door speaker I'm not putting back in. I can get the board for cheap at HomeDepot so I plan to trace the old ones and try my luck. I'm not worried about durability so much as the car never sees rain so If I can duplicate them so much the better. One thing I noticed, the vinyl is sewn together at the bolster but the vinyl I see for sale shows two separate pieces. There is a channel they tuck into so how do you hold em together?

[rjames]

Yup. Not hard at all, just takes some patience and a lot of staples.
I have a late car, but instead of trying to recreate the late version where the pressboard is formed at the top to replicate the metal strip (if I recall correctly), I bought the metal top strips from someone that were from an early car and just cut out a pattern using pressboard from home depot and vinyl from the fabric store that matched the seat bolsters. I could've gone with the original basket weave material, but I hate that stuff and thought the door cards looked better matching the seat material.
Don't forget the vapor barrier.

I didn't take pictures of how the 'tuck' at the top strip is done, but there's a thread on the site somewhere showing detailed pictures of how it's done.
I'm happy with how mine turned out.