The Upholstery Forum

Hi,

I'm a woodworker that has done some minor upholstering efforts as part of several projects building craftsman and rustic hickory furniture. However, in this case I have a set of four dining room chairs from the Old Hickory furniture company, made out of hickory logs, that I want to reupholster. The upholstery of the chairs is very simple. Webbing is stapled to the chair's hickory logs to form a seat. Foam is then laid over the webbing. Finally fabric is laid over the foam and stapled to the chair's hickory logs.

My question is this. What I have never encountered before is that as I'm removing the staples and taking the original fabric off the chair I'm finding that the fabric is glued to the foam. It isn't completely glued to the foam; it is only glued around the edge of the foam.

So, as I put new fabric onto the chairs (the foam and webbing are in good shape so I'm just going to reuse them) should I repeat what was done at the factory and glue the fabric to the edge of the foam? Second, I've never used glue in my upholstery projects so if I should repeat the process of gluing the fabric to the foam, as was done by the factory, can you please recommend a glue to use.

Thanks in advance for the help.

@jbasen,

I am going to think the gluing of the fabric to the foam on the outer edges was to keep it from shifting while the pulling and stapling of the material was performed. I would think they may have wanted to glue the whole surface of the fabric but risk the bleeding or clumping effect. I cannot recommend a glue but maybe @klbdn can.

I think you woill be fine just using staples. Just be sure to pull the fabric evenly to avoid pulling dimples every where there is a staple.