Refurbishing the passenger seats, part 2: PaddingMaanantai 21.10.2024 - Erja Reinikainen Refurbishment of the Caravelle’s passenger seats is under way. We repaired and washed original seat covers and now padding for 22 seats has been acquired. The refurbishment work includes four seat rows, i.e. 8 seat frames with a total of 19 individual seats. These include five 2-person seats and four 3-person seats. We are still debating about adding 2+2 seats to the open rear cabin area. This is how the seats will be placed in the cabin. When this picture was taken the cabin partitions and ceiling material had not yet been installed. This blog talks about replacing the seat padding. We have only one original seatback padding piece, made of foamed plastic. We had to order new padding to fit the seats and the original seat covers. Muovikum Oy from Raisio cut new seat cushion and seat back padding for 22 seats, based on seat measurements and on the test versions we had prepared. The new padding was delivered in the beginning of August. The seat cushion (40x40 cm) was cut from 10 cm thick E30 quality foamed plastic. Its thickness at the rear edge of the seat is about 5 cm and at the front edge 10 cm. The cushion will be covered with thin felt plate to hide the bevelling in the material, needed for the change in the cushion thickness. With the felt plate the seat cover will also fit better and look neater. This finishing job we will do ourselves. The seatback padding is made of 5 cm thick E30 quality foamed plastic. The size of the padding is about 41x75 cm. Preparing new padding for the seatback proved to be rather arduous because at the top there is a piece of foamed plastic, placed horizontally on top of the seatback edge as padding and supporting the seatback padding in its position. Originally this supporting piece has been made of hard foamed plastic and had a rounded shape. To save costs we didn’t acquire similar material or had it cut to shape but made it from E30 foamed plastic. Left: The upper part of the original seatback paddin. Right: The first prototype of the upper part of the new seatback paddin. First we made some prototypes of the supporting piece to find the right shape and make sure the seat cover fits nicely on the padding. Fortunately Muovikum had given us the waste pieces from cutting the seatback padding so there was plenty of foamed plastic for prototype tests and practising with the spray glue. The parts for the upper edge of the seatback padding were cut from foamed plastic waste pieces. After three test rounds, we had the seat cover top shape and angle right and “series production” could be started. Two foamed rubber pieces, cut to shape, were glued to the top edge of the actual seatback padding, using spray glue purchased from Muovikum. Spray gluing proved to be rather messy, fortunately we could work outside. New seatback padding on the ”gluing line”, with finished items drying in the background. The following step in the padding will be to cover the seat cushion with the 20 mm thick felt plate to make the seat cover look good. We aim to get the seat frame refurbishment as far as possible this autumn. Hopefully we will have one refurbished demo seat ready before the winter, fitted with new padding and “dressed” in repaired seat covers. Photos by Erja Reinikainen except if otherwise mentioned. |
Avainsanat: aviation history, restoration, Caravelle, OH-LEA, Sinilintu, Bluebird |