I decided that the armrest connection to the base seat boards could use the same treatment as the armrest by screwing the armrest to the base seat boards. Therefore I drill a (mostly) clearance hole in the base for stainless steel decking screw and countersink this too. Next I drill a pilot hole for the armrest by placing the armrest into the seat base and drill through the clearance hole into the armrest. All the holes are aligned with the angle of the armrest.
I dry assemble the seat one last time and secure the armrest with my screws. This allows me to first have a trial fitting and figure out the best way to assemble all the spindles and to set up my clamps to the approximate lengths for clamping. So once I did this I couldn't resist putting the dry assembled seat on the Lykamobile frame for grins.
The gluing procedure that I decided was to dip the ends of the spindles into a cup of glue and tap the end a bit to remove some of the excess glue. Trying to use a brush or squeezing the glue bottle for each spindle would just be too time consuming. Once you start to glue you are on the clock so to speak and the glue begins to dry.
There was enough glue on the spindle tip to adequately coat and cover the seat base holes, however I decided to squeeze a bit of glue in each spindle hole on the armrest. I also completely covered the seat base armrest connection with glue too. As you will see the forces of gravity thinned out the glue on the top area of the spindle dripping down the spindle some.
The process to getting all of the top portion of the spindles into the armrest was a bit challenging. I started by placing the armrest into the seat base loosely and then working my way from one side to the other - lifting the armrest just a bit for each spindle as you go around. You will have prior spindles jumping out of their holes but gradually you will get them all in. Once they are all in I did secure my armrest loosely with the two screws before final clamping. After I clamped the seat, I snugged up the screws. I used four furniture pipe clamps with felt on the clamps to protect my paint finish. All the excess glue was wiped and scrubbed clean with damp cloths from the seat base and spindles. This actually took a fair amount of time to clean all of the glue joints, spindles and seat base.
After the glue cured overnight, I removed the clamps and added a second screw to each side for the seat base to armrest connection.
Final pictures of the now assembled seat resting on top of the Lykamobile.
As you can see in the following picture the parking brake lever will have to be bent over a bit for good operational clearance. This probably means a little disassembly to properly make this adjustment.
** UPDATE - I was able to bend the lever without disassembling anything, just had to support the brass receiver and pull the lever away with gentle force a couple of times. See image below:
I'm all caught up on the kits. The seat cushions will be added in a later kit shipment. Steam Traction World supposedly has two more kits ready for shipment. They first send out the local kits before the international ones. Hopefully in the next two or three weeks I will have my kits too.
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