The rear seat backs have been built and installed and it definitely looks recognizable as a place to sit now, which is very satisfying. So, we're ready for passengers but unfortunately, no pilot or co pilot yet. Might be a scary flight :)
The seat backs went together without any trouble but it was much more work than I expected. You have to mark your own holes to drill and there are quite a few of them. Since we don’t have a bandsaw, it took me WAY longer to cut the thick aluminum angles than it probably should have. I used a combination of a dremel with metal cut off wheel, a die grinder with cut off wheel, and a good old hack saw. The dremel would over heat so I had to stop using it very much. The die grinder kept running low on air pressure and become completely ineffective until more air built up and so I used the hack saw in the down time between those. Whew, it was hard work! In the end I kicked myself for not having drove down the road a few miles to ask my new friend Kyle if I could make a few cuts on his bandsaw. Doh. Promise I won’t make that mistake again though.
The final piece of this section requires hinge pins to be cut and bent. Poor little Brandi cut one and started reaching to grab it and I started shouting out to her "WAIT, its hot!!" but she ended up grabbing it for just a second. That was long enough to burn her little fingers. :( She’s ok but boy did she ever learn the hard way about friction heat. After the fact she was like "I knew it was hot, I don’t know what I was thinking". Not the first injury during the build and won’t be the last. Glad it wasn’t more serious. We learned something about being burned though, apparently you're not suppose to put ice on it. I never knew that. I gave her an ice cube right away. Turns out you should put the burn in cool (not cold) water and then after that, wrap it with gauze.
Brandi is going to remove the seat backs and eventually cover them with material and cushions and stuff. We like our future passengers!
