1970 Beetle front seat cover

The driver's seat out of my 1970 VW Beetle, looking a little worse for the wear after 49 years. I picked up a set of black basketweave vinyl seat covers on eBay for $140. They match pretty well, all things considered. The link is here: https://www.ebay.com/itm/VOLKSWAGEN-BEETLE-FRONT-SEAT-COVERS-1970-1972-SEDAN-OR-CONVERTIBLE-OEM/201845925599?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

Disassembled. I watched a couple of YouTube videos on how to do this, the seat back came apart from the base easily, aided by one of the castle nuts being missing. The pressure was holding each post to the seat frame, but I'll be back on eBay this afternoon looking for the correct hardware.

There was an attempt to remove the old seat cover without damaging it in case the new one didn't fit, but there was no chance it was coming off without stripping all of the padding off as it came, so the box cutter came out and about 10 seconds later it was off.

The world's cheapest set of hog ring pliers, pure Chineseium. It was somehow cheaper to buy the pliers and 200 hog rings than a bag of rings at the local home improvement mega mart, I figured I would need 20 of these at most, so that decision was easy. If I use them enough and they break, I'll get good ones, but apart from doing the passenger seat next I don't think I'll be doing any more upholstery any time soon. It's not hard to do, but its very hard to get a professional result if you've had a couple Jameson's.

New cover on. There are prongs welded on to the bottom and top frame that are pointed and sharp, they are bent back, the covers are pulled taut and then the prongs are hammered flat. The ends of the prongs broke off, so the next person who recovers these will have to weld new ones on.

All done, apart from the buttons! I didn't do the bottom because it was in good shape and it looked like it was going to be a bitch. Plus it was late and I was kinda buzzed. I hate to get in a hurry when doing something like this, I'll revisit the bottoms and seat buttons later. All in all not too bad, the local auto upholstery shop wanted $600 to do both seats, I figure it was worth my time. If this were a show car I'd hire a pro, but this is a driver that will see a lot of use.

Bonus doggo pic.