K-grip or other adhesive, versus sewing.

[mm]

A little OT, but I'm sure this comes up at home too, for awnings etc.

What is the best adhesive for vinyl-covered-canvas, where one ahering surface will be vinyl and the other canvas?

Would it help much to try to glue just the canvas sides together?

Have you ever heard of K-Grip, applied with a brush? How good is it? (Often applied with a sprayer but I don't have a sprayer and one site was about brushing it on.)

Background: My convertible top has shrunk and I want to try letting out the hem, so to speak. Opening it up at the front and restapling it according to the original instructions, which allow for more slack than it has now. (Now it has so little I can't latch the top!) But there may not be enough material so I wanted to sew on an additional one or two inches, from side to side, about 44 to 48 inches.

So I went to a couple upholsterers, and they both want to take the top off. (If I were taking the top off, I'd put on a whole new top. I'm planning for this job to just take an hour or two, 3 at the most.)

Both said they can't sew it with a machine when it is on the car (I'll buy that) and they don't want to sew it by hand. So now I figure I'll sew it by hand. I sew occasionally. It will take 15 to 30 minutes. But the second guy insisted that K-Grip would be just as strong, or at least plenty strong enough. As strong as a sewing job with not too many stitches, which was my plan, maybe just 40 stitches, one per inch.

What do you all think?

[Nate Nagel]

Have you tried simply parking the car outside on a hot, sunny day with the top "mostly" up, then trying to latch it?

nate

[mm]

I'm not going to sew anything on until I see if I need it, and how much. At most I need to let out an inch, I think, maybe less.

Thanks for the reply.

That wouldn't work. It's shrunk too much. (They do shrink. Even the top manufacturers say they do, that they all do. )

And if I could latch it that way, I'd have a latched top but it wouldn't stretch out so that I could use it normally from then on.

I dont want to be limited to putting my top up in the middle of a hot sunny day. I want to leave it down until I stop driving that day, maybe 11 or 12 or 3; and I want to put it down every day until October or Novemeber, but put it up and latch it when it rains or at night, in case it rains.

[HeyBub]

I'd do both. Who knows what will happen to the glue when it is subjected to the vagaries of the weather.

[mm]

Good point. Maybe then I could just sew and buy a can of weldwood contact cement

So far I've only found the K-grip in a gallon can or plastic bottle, and the 50 dollars bothers me but worse than that is that I'll only use a pint and end uup saving the stuff for years till it dries out, or maybe it won't dry out (It's a liquid) and I'll have to save it for the rest of my life! Although the number 2 uphosterer told me to ask the number 1 guy to sell me a small amount. I didn't know they knew each other. I should do that.

[EXT]

One stitch per inch!!!!!! That will rip out so easy that it is not worth doing. Personally, I would use the glue, then I would stitch it, but put in as many as you can. Either do it as well as you can or don't bother as it is likely to fail.