Seems like it's getting close to Christmas.  Oops!  Christmas is already past.  Around here, that's a good thing because it means I get a little more time to work airplane stuff!

Today, I started to work on assembling the seat backs.  The first step is to cut pieces of .125" 3/4x3/4 angle to length.  The upper ends need to be smoothed simply for appearance and feel.

It turned out that the accordion wrinkles in the seat backs were drawing the material a little short.  I "stretched" the seat backs and clamped the angle to them before starting to drill the angle to the sheetmetal.

Starting in the middle works well to keep stretching the seat backs out to the proper length as drill and cleco.

The angle supports are drilled to the seat backs and everything is almost ready to rivet.  Well, not everything.  There are still plenty of parts to fabricate and fit.

A piece of angle fits under the bent lip at the top of the seat back.  Because the sheetmetal is bent in a smooth arc, the back edge of the angle needs to be ground to a smooth curve that fits snugly into the curve of the lip.  Getting a smooth curve here assures that you don't overly weaken the angle while getting a good fit.

Pieces of piano hinge are fitted to the bottom of the seat backs to allow them to hinge forward and to allow them to be removed and placed in a different position (adjusted forward or aft).  It takes some care to get the side to side fit right.  Here are the clecoed seat backs temporarily installed to check fit.

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