I had a lot of folks at different forums want to know how to retolex a Fender cab with real tweed. Well, that class will start tomorrow everyone. Get your tweed, get your tolex glue, 2 foot long straightedge, razor utility knife, three extra blades, and your 3" paint roller and tray ready, we're gonna hit it.
 

I have some old folding tables, they work great for this, so if you have one, great, if not, clear an area about 6 x 6 feet in your garage, or put an old sheet down on the lawn or in the basement. The glue will probably "fly" a bit off the roller, so let's not piss the missus off by being too messy.

1) The materials you'll need. Fender Tweed, utility knife, extra blades, tolex glue, paint pan, 3" roller, straight edge, 1" sponge brush for corners and ambient air temperature of 45 degrees or higher to allow the tolex glue to dry.

2) Cut your tweed after measuring it 1" large all around. The reason you do this is so you have "fudge room" and because you won't get tolex glue all over your table! The 1/2" extra you've allowed will keep the roller from having to go right to the edge of the tweed (which gets cut off anyway), and keep you from making a bigger mess. So roll on your glue to your cab first, which should be placed on top of your tweed as shown. Start rolling the glue on, making sure you get it covered well, and then start on the tweed underneath. Make sure to get glue in the back corner areas where you'll wrap tweed around the backsides and over your back panel supports. Also, pay attention when you cut your tweed. If you don't cut it the right grain/angle, the tolex won't "flow" from piece to piece. OK? Make sure all parts go like this, lower right to upper left in the front.

This cab has two pieces cut the same, times two. That means after you measure one, lay it down on the tweed, and cut the other one, so there's no messing around with cutting it wrong. We've allowed an extra inch to fudge, so you should be ok if it's a little large or small, but do your best to make it the same. My pieces for this 4x10 cab are 24x15 for top and bottom, and 30 x15 for the sides.

Pour out some glue in the pan, roll out the extra in your roller, and start rolling on the cab. Be sure to place the tweed underneath to catch the extra tolex glue to drip on it in case you use too much! Like this:

 

Finished glue on cab, on top of tweed pieces with their glue side face up.

Put the cab out to dry for 30-40 minutes, less if it's warm and you have sun. Roll the tolex glue on the tweed. Be careful to have enough to cover the tweed, it will soak it up more than Marshall tolex which is vinyl backed. If you press too hard, the glue will go right through and you have to wipe it off with a sponge with hot water. If you notice you did this, don't screw around and wait, wipe it off quickly, within 10 minutes, OK? I did one wrong on purpose to show you how to save your butt if you did this.
Fugly, ain't it? Get your sponge wet with WARM water, and it should come off without too much trouble. But don't just let it sit there, the stuff gets sticky within 15 minutes and usually is fully cured within 30, so if you delay, the cleanup is a lot tougher, still manageable, but you'll wish you hadn't delayed.

Lay it all out to dry, or "flash off" as they phrase it, then go wash your tools in warm, soapy water in the sink, and go have lunch, a beer or whatever you like to kill the next 30 minutes. I posted this thread in that time, and just to let you know, you should have spent no more than 1 hour putting the tolex glue on, cutting the tweed, and letting it dry.

Well, now that we've let the tweed and the cab "flash off" we're ready to assemble the tweed pieces and apply them to the cab. This is going to stick really well if you did it right and you'll only get one or two "pull off" adjustments so make a note to have your tweed line up really close to where it's supposed to go. I line up the extra tweed for the back and front first, then eye up the overlap on top and bottom second. With the cab on it's left side, put the right piece on first. If you cut it right the tweed is angling from the lower right to the upper left. Here's the first pic of it laid down on the right side (as you face the cabinet. Get the tweed on flat, run the roller pin over it to flatten it out, and any air bubbles you might have. Do NOT pull it around the front edges, only over the top and bottom sides, like this:

Cutting corners on tweed. There isn't really any big secret to it, you just get a straightedge, in my case a short block of wood, line it up on the cab edge, and cut it along the edge line. Before the cut:

After the cut, view from behind. This was a rough cut, we'll trim this up with a small razor blade (I use a loose safety blade, you could use the razor knife, I find the safety blade easier to manage for small cuts like this one) after this:

After trimming it (use very small thin cuts till the two tweed edges meet flush on the edge), cut the extra tweed as you see here, to allow it to fold in along the insides of the cab. We'll also trim the other pieces under it, since we have an angle to trim on the front, too.

Bottom part of the cab on the right side cuts to trim to fold in towards the baffle board.

That second angle is cut like this, INSIDE, not on the edge like some folks do it. That keeps your tweed consistent, although with this type of cab it can no longer be perfectly straight on the angles due to this cut.

Finished cuts in front, off to the rear of the cab!

Well, they are if you're careful! The straight back of the cab makes for a pretty sight if done right, but again, small cuts to line up the tweed where it meets should get you an "arrow or V shaped" tweed pattern in the cut where it joins. Use the same technique as the front, and it should wind up like this.

Notice the overlap of the tweed? It's overlapped 1.5 inches. It's over this far because the cab I'm covering is 3/4" pine. To make a uniform overlap of one tweed piece to another, I've wrapped it so that you see the edge of the top piece of tweed even with the inside edges of the cab. So cut your tweed twice the length of the thickness of your cab wood for the overlap. If you have a 1/2" cab, overlap 1", 3/4 cab, overlap 1.5 inches. 1.5 inches is the limit, from what I've seen of old Fenders. Here's the look of your overlap from the side.

Here are our completed corners in back, right side:

Left side:

Front view:

Now we're going to put on the top piece of tweed, overlapping the side pieces. We need to put some more tolex glue on the tweed, so that the top piece of tweed sticks to the tweed underneath. So get out that 1" brush, and paint some more tolex glue on right up to the edge where the top piece will sit on the overlapped tweed. This happens to line up with the inside of the cab sides where the baffle board will meet the insides of the cab, too. The reason the glue is straight is because I use a board to keep the glue from going all over the tweed. Not a big deal if you do, though. Excess glue cleans up with warm, soapy water, so if there's some extra, don't worry. We'll wipe that off after we've put the top piece on.

Be back for the top and bottom pieces, final trim cuts and a pat on the back for yourself if you've made it this far.

_

OK, now to put some glue along the seams for the bottom of the cab. Use the same technique and glue position as the top piece.

Now place the bottom piece with the same overlaps as the top piece, and run the roller over the tweed to flatten out the tweed to the cab bottom. Then smooth the tweed just over the edge, then make cuts as shown:

Line up your straightedge to make the tweed cut overlaying the sides as shown:

When you make this cut, make sure to have a very sharp blade in your knife, if it isn't you'll get frayed tweed, never a good thing! Be aware that with a very sharp blade you can cut through both layers of tweed, also not a good thing, so if you need to, practice on two scraps overlaid until you feel you have the proper pressure to cut one tweed layer, but not both. Then hold your straightedge very tight, and cut slowly, but firmly at it's edge. Don't rush it, as tweed has a slight grain due to the diagonal angle and double check your cut every couple of inches. Take the safety blade, line up the cut you just made with the cut tweed at the inside edge of the cab and then cut that straight and square to match those cuts you made earlier.
It should look like this when you're done. If not, well.. then you're going to be sorry. The only fix is to make a new piece of tweed, strip that bad one off, and DO IT AGAIN! So be careful, OK?

Now we have a finished cab, elapsed time 4.5 hours, that included waiting for the tweed to "flash off", taking pictures, sizing the pictures, loading them to my site, and writing this whole thread today. In reality, with no interruptions (you should have eaten lunch while it was flashing off one of the two previous times), you could do this in 2 hours. Back panels are easy, straight cuts for the most part.
Here's the end result, a cab you recovered that can hang with your buddies factory cabs. Screw your baffle board back in, bolt in your chassis and speaker, and go out and play!

Jim Seavall

South Bay Ampworks