This is one of the two rear bench seats that where originally in the boat. The bases were rotted and we didn't think much of them because they were SO low to the floor and with the two seats facing each other, there is NO leg room for anyone. (My Son is 6' 2", wife is 5' 10", daughter is 5' 8" - so we don't fit real well)

As part of the floor and transom replacement we ripped these out and went looking for seating ideas.

I don't know where I got this photo from on the Net, but we thought that a rear bench seat was what we wanted in the boat. I bought materials and even worked up a design for a rear bench seat.

But there were lingering doubts about the bench seat. Our boat does not have a splash well like this, its open all the way to the motor.

With time running out before the maiden voyage on the family vacation, we grabbed this porch swing that my wife was throwing out. We figured, hey, its about the right size and its already built..

We put some temporary legs on that old swing and lashed it to the ski pylon to keep it in place and ran the boat that way.

Well once we started tubing and sking and hauling people back into the boat, we figured out that this was not going to work.

We even turned the bench around and put it back to back with the driver's seat and that helped, but now I could not get to the Outboard if I needed to.

So, we thunk about it for a while

So this auction shows up on Ebay for the hardware ONLY from these folding seats that are in a Glasspar Citation boat.

Would you believe, that the hardware only, hinges, brackets, etc sold for $100??

Well, this got us to thinking, maybe folding seats similar to these are what we need. We can put them down when we have more than 2 or 3 in the boat and we can fold them up to travel and when we fish. Cool, now how does one re-create these seats.

Not quite as cool as the Glasspar seats, but better in some ways.

These are sized to take a standard boat cushion so I don't have to upholster anything, The lack of a fixed cushion lets them fold up in a 3 inch deep area behind the driver and passenger seats.

We re-used the lumber from the porch swing. Even though the swing was cheaply made, the lumber is mahagony and will stand up well. It also looks real cool.

As I assemble and install the 2nd seat, I'll photograph all of that for this project log.

We really liked idea that the Glastron seats folded completely into the bulkhead behind the driver and passenger seats. Our boat also has that kind of a space, so after some measurements we fired up Visio and started sketching.

We tried several different designs for different heights, etc. We also created a prototype seat with scrap wood and hinges, But, what we finally figured out was that our bulkhead is not high enough for the seats to work like the Glastron.

We also figured out that to make this work we would have to attach a pivot point to the floor 3 to 4 inches in front of the bulk head. So if we're going to use up space in the boat, why not just put the seats there instead.

We started designing seats that fold and store in front of the bulkhead. We started with and worked out a design, kind of like a lawn chair, where when you lifted the front of the seat, it all folded away.

We abandoned that idea when we figured out that we were putting all of the load of the seat on an area of the floor that is about 2 x 15 inches, and there are no stringers or frames under the floor right here.

So we settled on the design we are building where the weight is split between supports at the front and rear.

Here is our Visio sketch of the final seat plan. The front leg just sits on the deck and the weight of the person is spread between the back of the assembly and the front leg. The left half of the picture shows how the seat will store. The front leg drops down and the entire seat stores in about 3 inches by 15 inches.

Here are MOST, I missed a couple in this shot, of the parts that make up the seats.

The rear edge of the seat back is attached to the seat bottom with a pair of narrow brass hinges. Then the rear of the seat bottom has an adjustable shelf pin attached to it that rides in the groove of the side support blocks.

The front of the seat bottom has a 1/2 inch conduit leg under it. Because we could not make tight radius with the conduit, we used copper tubing pieces to attach to the seat.

This 17 inch wide by 21 inch high piece of 1/2 plywood is the back support for the entire seat assembly. We are attaching the top of this behind the existing fiberglass at the rear of the drivers seat. To get the front of this ply flush with the fiberglass we removed 1/8 inch of wood from the ply. We will add a block onto the back of this so we can screw through the fiberglass and into the block to attach this to the boat.

The bottom edge of this is attached to a block that is screwed to the floor.

Allot of the design of this hinged on the materials we had available. We switched the rear seat support from a 3/8 inch rod to the shelf brackets when we located this extra thick mahagony in the shop. This stuff is 7/8 inch thick, so we can take 5/16 out of it for the groove that the pin runs in and still have a decent amount of material left.

As you pull the seat up and out of the stowed position, the rear pin rides up this groove until it gets to the angled top. There is an aluminum strap on the top that keeps the pin from going too far. then when you release the seat, the pin slides down the angled top of the block and comes to rest in the seated position.

We added a small block to the far side of the top of the block, so that when this is assembled from the side there won't be a gap showing. (More pictures of that later as we assemble this in the boat)

Starting in the top left and going down and counter clockwise.

1. Broom clip used to apply tension to the front seat leg to hold it in position. (Failed - No Longer Used)

2. qty 2 - 1/2 inch copper tubing caps. Used to close off the end of the front leg

3. qty 2 - 1/2 by 1 inch long pieces of rigid copper pipe to connect the caps to the street elbows.

4. qty 2 - 1/2 'street' elbows, installed in the ends of the conduit and form part of the 'hinge' for the front leg.

5. qty 2 - 3/4 inch plastic conduit clamps, these hold the copper elbows to the seat bottom and are the other half of the hinge

6. Qty 2 - 1/4 inch shelf support brackets, these are the rear seat supports and pivots. (Failed - No Longer Used)

7. Qty 1 pair - 2 inch wide 'narrow' brass hinges, these attach the seat back to the seat bottom

8. Qty 1 - 1/2 emt conduit bent in a 'U' shape that is 15 inch from outside to outside and the legs are 10 inches from the floor to their tops.

We missed a couple of pieces in that last photo. Here is the 3/4 x 1 1/4 mahagony piece that gets screwed to the floor to support the bottom of the 1/2 inch plywood back.

Qty 2 - 3/4 x 1/8 aluminum straps that have been bent and drilled. These are installed on top of the side blocks to hold and guide the rear pins.

Here are all of the parts that go into the front leg laying as they would go together.

From top left again, the broom clip (No Longer Used, Failed), the copper pipe cap, the 1 inch length of copper pipe the street elbow, with the conduit strap setting over it. And finally the 1/2 inch conduit.

Actually the name 1/2 conduit is quite an oxymoron. This stuff measures 5/8 inch on the inside and just under 3/4 inch, actually .700 inches, on the outside.

Where they get the 1/2 from I don't know. But, that makes about as much sense as the 1/2 copper street elbows that are 5/8 on their OD, such that they will fit into the conduit.

Some one must be thinking, "Hey, thats only copper pipe and you could have all of a person's weight on that and crush it, couldn't you?" Well yes, and no. NO, if you have filled the entire inside of the copper pipe with epoxy dough.

This is not the most elegant solution to a problem I would like, but it works. With a conduit bender you can only bend about a 6 inch radius corner in 1/2 inch conduit. Based on that, there is no way you can get the corners to land on the 2 1/2 wide sides of the seat, the pipe would have to be attached to either the front of the seat or the slats, which are not strong enough to support the weight.

So to get a tighter radius on the bend, we switched to copper fittings. We didn't use copper for the entire leg, because a 10 foot section of conduit is less than $2 and copper is over $10 for 10 feet. Also its going to be hard to keep this from turning green all of the time.

To hold all of this together we used epoxy, there is not need to solder these joints, to attach the cap and short pipe section to the elbow. We got out the epoxy filler stick, I used the plumbers stuff I got at HD instead of MarineTex. We kneaded small amounts of the 'dough' and rammed to down into the copper fitting with a stick until we had the entire thing full of epoxy filler. Now these copper fittings are filled solid with metal reinforced epoxy filler. And, yes this did get warm as the epoxy set up.

Now that the copper fittings are one solid unit, we moved to assembling the elbow into the conduit. But of course things do not fit as easily as they should. So we used a 5/8 inch twist drill bit to clean the burr and junk out of the inside of the pipe. Once that was done, things fit fine and we mixed some slow setting epoxy to attach the elbows to the leg. By laying this down on the 1/2 inch plywood back, we could make sure things were straight and parallel while the epoxy set up.

Well, it looks like we lightened this up just a little TOO much. We took the kids out tubing the other day, and since we had one of the seats installed, we used it.. Well, it lasted about 1/2 an hour and someone ended up sitting on the deck.

The shelf pins that we used for the rear pivots are attached with only one screw and they twisted on that screw such that the entire seat came out of the mount. we had some suspicions about this before and its good that we figured this out before we got both seats installed.

Here is what we had originally designed for rear supports. This is a 3/8 inch rod that is held to the top of the seat bottom by two 1/8 x 1 1/2 inch aluminum brackets. This should not fail.

The 3/8 inch rod is strong enough and the brackets are held onto the bottom of the seat with 4 screws, so they will not pivot out of place.

We ran into a little problem with the shelf brackets holding the rear seat securely, so we replaced them with a 3/8 inch rod and aluminum brackets. This piece of plywood also goes across the front of the side blocks and the rear of the seat rests on it when its open and this piece holds the seat in place when its stowed

With the change in the rod size and placement, we had to cut new grooves in the support blocks, and fill in the old grooves.

We are on the fence as to whether we're going to just replace these with newly machined pieces or not.

Here is a photo looking down on the top rear of the seat at the pivot rod. This shows how the rod is captured by the brackets and held in place. This 3/8 inch rod will not bend or pivot like the shelf brackets and this should stay in place.

Part of the reason the rear of the seat failed, is because the front leg slipped out. We had tried to use a friction catch on the leg but that did not hold it securely enough.

We looked at cabinet stays and folding / card tables legs and they looked like they would work, but they would not fold down inside of the leg area.

We also considered using a chain or strap, but that only prevents movement one way and we need to hold this from moving either direction.

The leg brace is attached to the seat with hinges so that when we stow the seat, we un-clip the brace from the leg. We fold the brace down, the right hand photo, and then we fold the leg under.

Because the seat tilts up at about a 10 degree angle that same angle must be used if the leg will be at a right angle to the deck. So to keep the leg from folding back, the block is in the way. and to keep the leg from flipping forward, the aluminum strap, 1/2 x 1/16 holds the leg back against the block.

I need to get these installed this weekend so I can test and prove them out once and for all.

Why in the H didn't I do this when I started to glue up the 1st seat, instead of only remembering to do it for the last seat.

I attached 2 scrap blocks to my work bench at perfect 90 degree angle. Then as I assembled the seat slats, and frame, I just pushed the whole assembly in to this corner hard, and it squared the seat, kept it flat and let me make minor adjustments to the alignment of the corner. I left the gap between the two pieces in the upper left so I could see and get to that corner as well.

Here is one of the side support blocks, with the new groove plowed in it (far left groove) and the old groove 'fixed'(Lighter colored in the center). On the right is a hand chiseled notch in the front of the block so that the seat can not slide back once it is opened up. The bottom of the notch aligns with the front corner of the block and goes back about 7/16 of an inch. Basically we gave the 3/8 inch rod a 1/16 of an inch clearance.

we also added a block on top of these to fill in under the aluminum brackets, you can see this in the following pictures.

Someone has got to be thinking, thats an awful lot of screws, and those are really close to the edge.

Well, we need to miss the grooves in the back of the support blocks and we have slightly over 7/16 of an inch to work with, check out the next photo. So, we used number 6 screws that are 1 1/2 inches long. Six screws on each side. all drilled, counter sunk and pilot holes drilled

Here is a photo of the side block with a picture of the screw we used superimposed over it. There isn't allot of room to run the screws in, but careful measurements and work make it happen.

For example, we drilled all of the clearance holes in the back piece on the drill press so we could get them straight.

Another picture of the side blocks with all parts, other than the front plywood, installed.

The aluminum brackets create the space where the 3/8 rod on the back of the seat runs. We also added small blocks to the top of the side blocks to fill in the outside area under the aluminum, it just looks better.

Here is the back and both side blocks installed almost ready for installation. We have the 1/8 inch of material removed at the top to fit behind the existing fiberglass and all of the side blocks and brackets installed.

Here is what the back of the driver and passenger seats look like in our boat. The back piece of plywood goes up and behind this fiberglass is secured there with screws

Because we will be fiberglassing this plywood into the boat this fall, when boating season calms down, we sanded off all of the paint on the old fiberglass down to the gelcoat. can you believe this boat used to YELLOW?

We have also countersunk 4 screw holes in here to attach the backing.

So that the screws have something to grab onto, we added a scrap lumber piece to the top back of the back so we have more to screw into. This is completely hidden up and behind the seat, so If we used a real scrap, even with grooves in it no one will see..

here is where the 3/4 by 1 1/2 rear support comes into play. This is screwed to the floor to provide support for the seat. The plywood backing is screwed to this from the front before the front plywood is installed.

These will be eventually sealed and glassed over. You can also see how the seat sets when it is open for use (the seat back in hinged down and setting on the seat bottom)

Here is a wider shot of the seats so you can see how the backing runs behind the fiberglass, and in general how it is installed.

Now we need to figure out how to enclose this new 'lockers' space between the driver seat back and these new seats, with doors and make them look nice..