Fuselage - Cabin

2006-09-09 - Seat backs (right seat). (6.0 Hrs).

We finished the right seat back. I think there is some sort of time warp in my garage--err airplane factory. I mean, the right seat was pretty much done a few days ago. All I needed to do was to drill the holes in the cross angles, enlarge all holes from #40 to #30, deburr, and rivet the seat back together. This should have been an hour, maybe two, but after finishing up the right seat back, I looked up and six hours had gone by. The only possible explaination has to be a time warp.

Drilled the holes in the F-637C angles and the seat back. Also, cut the top hindge and drilled it to the seat back and side rails. Note, I did not drill the top holes in the side rails according to the plans. I just drilled the top and bottom holes in the upper part, then I drilled two evenly spaced holes in between. I should have looked at the plans closer, because the upper hindge needs to be 3 1/2" from the top of the seat back. Consequently, I ended-up with an extra set of holes for the hindge in the middle of the top part. I didn't see this as a problem at the time, but I will later (see below).
For the F-638 hindges, I used the hindge pieces that I had previously cut to 15 1/2". It turns out that these fit perfectly.
Here, you can see how F-638 attaches to the seat back using the hindges. The hindge on the seat back is 16" long, with no eyelets on the ends, and the hindge on F-638 is 15 1/2" long, with eyelets on both ends--makes sense.
Cut the middle eyelet from the bottom hindge on the seat back. I guess this is now the right seat. All that's left to do is to drill all of the holes to #30, deburr, and rivet this puppy together.
F-638 is done.
The F-637B side angles were a bit long, and they extended past the top of the F-637A seat back by about 1/16". I spent a fair amount of time trying to decide just how the end should fit, and sanding down the part to get it just right. This is what I settled on. The angle is a hair shorter than the seat back.
Right seat is done. Let's make sure it fits.
Oops, here's a good reason to follow Van's hole placements on the plans. As I said before, I didn't exactly follow the plans, so I had to drill a new hole to get the top hindge in the right place. Here, you can see that the rivet in my original hole is blocking the F-638 hindge.
My solution was to drill and file down the shop head on the offending rivet enough so that the hindge fit in place. If you look closely, you can see part of the shop head is still there.
Ok, everything fits.
Dufus heard that I would be finishing the seats today, so he came over and plopped his big ass in the right seat before I could even get in. At least it's only the copilots seat. I guess he knows his place. Good thing I didn't finish the left seat, yet. There's plenty of leg room, but it looks like Dufus is going to have to loose a few pounds if he wants to fit side-by-side with anyone else.