Making a custom seat for my Vulcan 500

[burkbuilds]

Well, I'm at it again. This will be my second custom seat for my 500, 3rd custom seat I've done overall. I would love be able to just purchase a seat that is comfortable to me and meets my specs, but that just doesn't seem to be an option on this bike. So, I've taken what I have learned from my previous two custom seat builds and started working on a new seat. It will probably be about another 3 weeks before I am finished, but here's what I've done so far with pictures. I started by purchasing a seat on e-bay that I could modify using part of the original seat pan. I wanted to have a single seat and I wanted it to have a release lock instead of bolting down like the Vulcan's OE seat does. I also wanted to be able to switch back to my old seat if I wanted to so the lock couldn't interfere with the OE fit.
After stripping the padding off the OE seat, I started cutting with a hacksaw to modify the pan.




I found a GZ250 seat and lock on e-bay and installed them.


Then I checked to make sure it latched properly.




I started by using some cardboard to make a template for the shape I wanted.




Next I transferred the pattern to some 1/4" plywood.


I glued and screwed some blocking to the underneath side of the plywood to give me a place to attach some supporting material.


I thought I had some more pictures of some blocking I screwed into the seat pan but I seem to have missed those shots somehow. Here's a shot of some OSB screwed into that blocking.


Next I added some more blocking to attach my perimeter plywood to.


I then cut some 3/8" "bending" plywood to get the shape I wanted and then glued and stapled it to the blocking.



Okay, I'm having some connection problems here, so I'm gonna post this much and then make a second post with the rest of the stuff in it.