Chapter 26 - Upholstery

 For the upholstery, I thought about the cars I've had over the years, and what worked and did not work.  For kids and dogs, cloth upholstery was stained, covered with dog hair, and basically ruined very quickly.  I also knew this was a machine that was meant to go places, which meant long hours in the seats, so they had to be comfortable. Finally, heat in the EZs has been likened to that in air cooled Volkswagens, meaning almost non-existent.  So, seat heaters were called for.  With those as the guidelines, the materials selections were mostly made for me.  I went with TemperFoam for the cushions, knowing they weighed more, but were worth it both for comfort, and for impact resistance should an accident ever occur.  The seat material had to be leather or UltraLeather.  Seat heater kits were sourced from an automotive supply shop.

Matching the Desert Tan Zolatone turned out to be a real pain in the rear.  The tan with grey and black specks I figured would match nearly anything, but the opposite is true.  Almost nothing matched.  Not only that, but it is impossible to color-match from screen images when purchasing over the internet.  My advise is to get swatches of anything you are considering.  Above you can see one UltraSuede and one UltraLeather sample.  Neither matched.

Fitting the TemperFoam was pretty straightforward.  I cut everything too large figuring it was easier to cut more later than to have gaps.  The seats are three 1/2" thick layers as a base.  Green is the most firm, blue medium, and pink very soft.  The three layers made the seats very nice to sit in.  The white pads are the seat heaters.  Armrests are covered with one layer of green.  Here they are just slabs, with no bolsters at all.

More failed color matching.  This time with ~10-11 yards of UltraSuede that I bought, thinking the swatch was a match.  Honestly it wasn't bad, but I figure I get one shot in my life to build an airplane, so it is going to be right.  I think this material ended up as a teepee for my daughter.

Sometimes it is best to figure out where you really have zero talent, and find someone to do it for you.  Here I happened by a recommendation from James Redmon for an upholstery guy.  Rick Carberry worked for Lear for years doing business jet interiors.  He's a super nice guy, very talented, and knows his way around the EZs.  He worked for the Berkut guys for a while too.  Rick lived just over the hill, so I had him come and take a look.  He set to work shaping the bolsters, helping me find some Spinneybeck leather to use for the seats.  I got four full hides of their Acqua finish, which is waterproofed, for about $430 total.  This is an incredible deal, as Spinneybeck hides usually sell for about $900 each.  The rest of the interior is black Alcantara.  From the armrests up will be Alcantara, including the glare shield.  The rest is leather. 

This was the first pass on the rear panel.  It ended up in the trash because the embroidery pulled it too much.  Next time we did the embrodery first, then fit the leather to the foam.

Here are all of the pieces of the seats coming together.  The cables are for the electric seat bottom and back heaters built into all four seats.

 Here is a test fit of the pilot seat.

 The pieces of the pilot seat coming together.  Rick uses 1/16" clear Lexan as the structure for the seats.  It makes a nice tight package to hold them in place with Velcro.

 Here is the second back panel.  My mom has a fancy CNC embroidery sewing machine.  I sent the panel to her and she did all of the letters to the right size for the FAA.  It looks really, really nice.

Beautiful.  The interior on the plane is going to be top notch.