The seats weren't too hard to make after I finally decided how I wanted to make them. I made a tool for bending the strips for the seat bottom although that probably wasn't necessary. I didn't know that the strips would be so easy to bend. I did need the larger tool to make the seat backs so it wasn't a total waste of time. It used the same end pieces with longer rollers.

I started by shearing the .032" aluminum into 1 1/2" strips. Then I marked them for all of the rolling and bending.

I like to use masking tape for marking the aluminum. The edge of the tape gives a nice crisp line and it is easy to write on.

This is the small version of the rolling tool I made.

Here I am rolling a curve into one of the strips.

This is what the strip looks like after rolling both ends.

After rolling the strips I had to bend them over for the verticle drop I wanted in the seat bottom for a cushion. I just used a steel tube and a block of wood with a radiused edge, rolling the tube over the edge and bending the strip.

Thisis what the strip looks like after bending.

Because my roller wouldn't bend the strips quite far enough I had to put the strip on the seat and bend the strip a little more to get the ends going toward the center of the seat. Later I fiured out I could use the longerons in the back of the fuselage to do the same job (same diameter and less bending over).

Here the strip is after the last bending. You can see the "loops" are parallel now.

Next I needed to bend the stips so they would be parallel to the seat bottom. For this I just used a piece of wood with a radiused edge and bent it over by hand.

This is what it ended up looking like when the loop ends are squeezed together.

Here is what the piece ended up looking like after bending and before trimming to the correct length.

Once installed this is how it will fit.

Here the first strip is installed (with clamps) into the seat frame. Just 10 more to go for this seat (and 11 for the other one). These actually only take about 7 minutes each to make once you figure it out.

Here all of the straps have been clamped in place across the seat. Each of these straps is a different length because the seat tapers so they have to go in a certain order.

Here all of the straps are in place and clamped. The pieces of tape are marking the diagonal across the strap and then I marked them for drilling for the screws and rivnuts.

Here are all of the straps for one seat bottom drilled and ready for painting

In this photo the seat has been assembled and the rivnuts installed. I had screws and nuts temporarily holding it together to keep everything in place.

One seat bottom installed... one to go.

This is the beginning of my seat back. It is trimmed to basic shape and marked with masking tape.

This is the larger version of the roller tool. It uses the same ends but just has longer tubes. I filled the tubes with plaster of paris to try to stiffen them up but they still flexed a little..

Here I have trimmed the corners (at the top) so I can bend the sides.

Here one side has been bent. The hardest part is getting the "wing" to bend far enough over because it contacts the seat back.

Second part bent back. We're not having enough fun yet.

I used an old piece of square tubing to bend the back over. There is a piece of round tubing inside the wing to keep it from crushing.

In this picture you can see the seat back bent over to almost 90 degrees. The last little bit had to be bent by hand because of spring-back.

Here I have the wings bent and I am measuring where I will bend the top. I had to trim the top part of the wings down enough so when I bent the top I didn't get cracking.

This is a front view of the seat back almost finished..

A quartering rear view. The little cut out at the top of the wing is to clear a tube in the fuselage structure. The cutout is not  in the front seat.

This is the completed back seat. Later I may add some lightening holes with flanges to stiffen it up and make it a little lighter (every ounce helps!)