My Interpretation Of a "Poor Man's" Bomber Seat....

yup, will be going to the surplus store on monday. thanks and sweet job.

 

I agree i deal aircraft spares for a living and am suprised what is passed off as bomber stuff,not taking any thing away from this seat post i think its great and more original than "bomber seats"
all these extras are just what we in the industries call AEROSEXUALS ,buyer beware most of your ebay bomber belts will be ex vietnam Huey belts not WWII at all ,they are exactly the same but dont believe any army or usaf printing on them,anyone can stencil that on there ,most of the time they are not printed as the paint can erode the strength of the stitchings and they all had a sewed on tag to indicate part numbers and no usually no indication of what aircraft they had come off unless you know the specific part no. for that aircraft ,to buy these belts new will cost you around the $2k/$3k with shoulder harnesses , expect to pay around 600usd from an aircraft grave yard (if theyll sell em to you),they were designed to have the shoulder harness included,so usally you get matched sets and belts supplied without shoulder sections are usually just crew belts, added just in case they had grunts on board ,99%of flight crew wore shoulder harnesses as well,there are plenty of lap belts still around as they werent used much,so dont pay top dollar unless they include shoulder harness as well or unless you just gotta have em!!!!!!ps if any one wants any pm me and ill see what i can do.IF THEY ARE GREEN THEY ARE NOT USUALLY WWII! (THEY ARE EX ARMY HUEY BELTS,THE ONLY MARKINGS THEY HAVE STENCILED ON ARE "INSPECTED "+ DATES,AIRFORCE USED SILVERISH WEBBING OR THIS MAY LOOK FADED OFF WHITE COLOR)

 

That is awesome!!

 

I see that the bottom has the center hole for a trailer hitch ball in lieu of a lap belt

 

I like those...and the project.
Buttera like in layout and execution. Simple and purposeful.

VERY nice.

(I'm not a "smoothie" fan...but for me, Buttera isn't/wasn't about that. His work was always about simplicity...and thats a different build plan than what you see in most modern street rods.)

 

yeah but how do you know its real!!!ive seen plenty of warbirds and none have had seats that resemble "bomber seats"most ive seen are of tubular construction,welded not riveted ,but i cant talk for every aircraft,just the ones ive seen ,unless you took it out of the aircraft yourself you dont really know as look at the quality of seats HAMBERS are building ,the only way i think you could tell is a real one is it is probably not that well built!warbirds were built cheap,disposable aircraft,not the works of art restored birds you see at airshows,more like flying jalopies!!!

 

looks really killer man...nice variation

 

The quintesential "bomber seat" as everyone knows them didn't come in all aircraft. Take the P-51 seat. How cool would it be to say you have a seat out of a Mustang? In reality, they are pretty ugly. And they are the exact same seat as a T-6. So right there, you loose any kind of provenance that you are hoping to gain by having a "real" Mustang seat.

 

the same goes for bomber belts i doubt there are many real belts left on earth ,most as ive said before are scrounged offa hueys,but you cant really tell the difference so they must be bomber belts,you can buy better new off speedway motors but they dont have the patina from sitting on a dirty shelf for 40 years

 

Great idea!
I love the creativity that shows up on this site!

 

Creativity at it's finest. That gets my vote for build it and they will come, this case, marvel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Looks great! KNUX!

 

Hey 'Burb, much better avitar pic.

 

At $1000 for a seat . . . it's elevated to gold chainer status . . . no worries here.

 

I came across these bomber seats on ebay a few years ago. I believe them to be authentic, but who knows for sure. What was interesting about them is that they are made of wood. At times in WWII, aluminum was hard to come by, so it makes sense that some of these may have been made of wood.

Anyway, attached are the photos off ebay and a little reverse engineering sketch I did at the time.

Talk about cheap, these would cost next to nothing to build and you could customize them to fit your own butt very easily.

Hope this helps someone. I think they could be pretty cool painted dark olive drap and using tent fabric cover cushions.

I'm going with old narrowed jeep seat frames with webbing replacing the springs.

 

Brilliant!!!!!!

 

Great work........and much more practical for us wide ass drivers!!

Great look.

regs

 

Looks killer..nice job and i betcha cant tear them up and water certainly won't hurt them

 

Looks great!

 

I'm not a huge fan of bomber seats anyway and I think they are somewhat played out. Not to mention the comfort level is about a 2 just above a milk crate.

Your seat looks great man, very original and well exicuted, and I really like the handle too.

The seat fits the car, I don't think any bomber seats no matter how nice or expensive would come close to the look you ended up with.

 

I can't believe this thread is still going!

Its been in the car long enough that I can give an update.

I've lost count of the number of times the seat has got wet and so far no ill effects.

The sun bleached the colour real quickly. Odd as you would have thought most of that sort of thing would have happened by now. It doesn't show as its happened evenly over the whole seat.

I've picked up a few stains (!) along the way but all adds to the "feel"!

 

I think the sun fading adds to the apeal and will look even better over time.

As for the stains...........well I guess there's "a story for every stain".

Anyway it still looks great!

 

Just an idea but anyone out there try and find uh1h seats or OH58 Kiowa (military jetrangers)seats ,should be easy to find in the usa they are tubular cro-moly with open weave covers stretched over and laced up aaround the frames like a tennis racket ,covers come in red or olive drab ,they look great and top and bottom are separate so are an easy fit into what you like and are realy comfortable as well,im using em in my T coup will put picks up soon

 

Killer, really looks nice!

 

Can you talk more about how you 'Personally' mounted the aircraft seat belts to the car? I have belts That have these ends on them for mounting. Do yours have these?

 

Seats look great!!!
Thanks for the idea !!!
i took mine to a friend for sewing today, and took an old canvas tent. His son said " Now let me get this straight ? You want this to look like sxxt? Old and dirty ??"

yes thats what i want ...
Pics later on in the thread when i get it back.
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=143214
The tent already has stains so i guess i will need to make up some stories ???

 

Maybe you should add some new stains too, that are related to some new stories. Call it an "ageing process".

Don't you think the confused looks we sometimes get from others while going through our builds, makes the whole process even more fun?

 

Just came across this thread, great idea, great look, might be just the thing for my Model A coupe project!

 

LOL @ 'lost count of the number of times its' got wet'........that'll be a roadster in the uk all over then! I've often looked at roadster guys n wondered if it wasn't a little sadomasochistic,especially the last day of the hayride when it chucked the rain down!

The threads' still going 'cos its' a really neat idea well executed,n so peeps have picked up on it.........respect is due fella,good job

 

Bump because I need to be able locate this thread faster next time.

 

I came up with a pretty low buck "bomber seat", but yours is WAY cooler!!

Mine was pretty much a one-time-use type of thrill ride thingy...