Chapter 24 - Armrests, Seats & Fairings
04-16-2009 (1 hour): I cut the panels for the front seat thigh rests, shaped them, and made their under-side layup. Not much to say - it was a quick job.
04-17-2009 (2 hours): Tonight I stopped by the hangar for a bit, and trimmed up yesterday's layup. I made the kerfs, taped up the thigh rest area, 5-minute epoxied the thigh rests in, then did the layup over the top. A bit of trimming tomorrow and this step is done!
04-18-2009 (0 hours): I tried removing the thigh supports this morning, but the layup hadn't cured enough to pop out without delaminating. I'll wait another day on this - no rush.
2009-05-21 (3.50 hours): Rear seats almost done. I had previously made the rear seat support panels as part of making the front seat sections. All I had to do today was glass them in their final curve. I did change one thing from the plans. They call for you to set the curve in the plane, then remove the supports and carve out the reinforcement area to do a 4-BID reinforcement. I set the curve on the bench, which let me carve this area out ahead of time. So I was able to do the main and reinforcement layups in one step. It looks a bit cleaner, not that anybody will EVER see it.
2009-05-25 (2.00 hours): More rear seats. This weekend I finished off the rear seat thigh and back supports. I prepared all of the hinges, then bent each hinge pin slightly so it wouldn't back out after it was installed. I then riveted each hinge to the respective attach tab. However, I did NOT install them in the plane yet. I'll save that for later for two reasons:
1) I'm doing a lot of work in this area and don't want the seats in the way. They're removable, but I also don't want to damage the hinges that get riveted to the floor.
2) When I was removing the thigh support from their curved form, I had a slight delamination at the top of each. I fixed it by working some epoxy into the gap with a brush, then making a flox corner right at the end of each support. I want to let this cure before I install them in the plane.
As I work, I'm trying to coat the edges of finished parts with micro to clean them up. I usually have a bit of micro left over from each step, and it takes very little to trim these edges. Hopefully this will save some time later.