Part Nineteen: Seat, Sit. Sat.

In the New Year, 2018

It's time to tackle the Dinette area and I'll be honest... Matt and I have put it off because we knew it would be one of the greatest challenges yet!  The Dinette seating sits in the coach at an angle, the seats themselves will be curved to match the table so it can turn into a bed, plus they will be curved on the ends. Also, the wall they meet up with is curved in a totally different direction.  So we push forward and try to figure this thing out!

One of the first things we did when we started building walls and cabinets was mark everything out on the floor in green tape so we could get a "visual" and work out placement and measurements. 

Next, after a lot of crazy measuring and figuring, we began to build the framing for the seats. We know the coach will take a lot of bumping and bouncing down the road, so like everything else, we built the frames very sturdy with interlocking pieces which makes them very solid and secure.

It took a lot of careful test fitting to make sure we had everything right. All the angles, curves and fitment have
to be exact!










In this seat, we are hiding the Fresh Water Tank, while giving it a safe, secure place to live.  Also, there is easy access to the water pump or any other plumbing connections.

On each side we built the seats to match the curve of the table. At some point there will be cushions and the table will be able to be lowered to create a twin sized bed.

Here you can see where the speakers will be 
mounted in the bench seats.



This is where it gets really interesting.  We had to come up with a "Birch Skin" for the face of the seat.  We searched everywhere for a bendable birch plywood to no avail.  Several people told us about a bendable barrel birch, which we found.  The problem was, the grain was going the wrong direction and we have painstakingly maintained a vertical grain throughout the coach.  The solution? We took 4x4' sheets of 1/4" plywood and ran them through Kent's drum sander.  It was tedious and we had only basic means of getting the thickness accurate.  It was trial and error for a bit until we figured it all out, but once we did, we had the material we needed to skin the seats.  Here are some pictures of the glue-up process.

Testing the skin to be sure it fits correctly:

Each piece was held in place by lots of clamps.  By doing it this way, no nails or fasteners were necessary.  This is the way most of the Astroliner has been built.

Each seat was glued up with epoxy and clamped into place.  After the glue was set, we mixed more epoxy and laid fiberglass cloth over the inside surface to strengthen the thin birch and help it hold it's shape.  

Almost looks like we are building a sled!

Before:



After:



The speakers are set in place to make sure they fit appropriately. Check out the size of those magnets!  Those are going to sound good!





Even though the frame is glued in, there was still a bit of concern about the weight of the speaker pulling on the skin.  After all the epoxy and glass everything "should" be ok.  But as brother Matt always says, "We'll never know if we made it too good."  So in the spirit of always making sure we build it solid and we build it right, we added some carbon fiber to the frame for extra strength and peace of mind when the camper bumps over those Indiana potholes!

























Now the holes are cut out with a router, the skins are glossed over with a few layers of beautiful amber lacquer and the speakers are installed in their new locations.







































They are definitely starting to look like seats!

Time to make lids that open for storage.  Looks like the fitment to the table top are spot on!





The lids are a simple, hinged open with finger hole pull.  Check out those sweet curves!







The Astroliner is getting fuller and she is really starting to look like a real camper!  

That's all the time we have for now!  We hope you are enjoying the build and we promise to be back very soon for more updates.  The build is coming along faster than we can keep up with the blog, so we are hoping to have it caught up in a couple more posts!

Until next time, Happy Creating!

Michael and Carrie