but it turns out to be one of the most useful things ever for DIY. Basically it is a plastic that becomes moldable at 67oC, so pour over some boiling water, fish it out with a fork and make whatever you need. My immediate thought was 'I can use this to make a pilot's chair', so I grabbed 3 offcuts of OSB and a kettle and that's what I did.
The reason I had not attached my controls to the chair before was that there was no convenient way to fix anything to the arms. The underside is uneven and rounded. With the polymorph though, all I had to do was put a couple of screws through the wood and drill 2 corresponding holes in the underside on the chair arm, then mold a block of polymorph around the screws and screw the wood on to the arm then let the plastic set in position. The resulting join is completely solid and there is no movement at all.
- 4a178a13-d55e-4a3d-9be6-7a668f4e684d copy.jpg (69.79 KiB) Viewed 790 times
As you can see, I was not too worried about how it looks, so just left it sort of blobby, but if you want smooth sides and straight edges it is quite easy to shape as it sets.
Next I rolled out two more bits and squashed them between the edges of two bits of wood. This gave me two 'channels' to slide in a cross piece after sitting down.
- 9dbc473f-3a50-499a-973c-4f0c3dc1ebfc.jpg (81.46 KiB) Viewed 790 times
Once assembled it looks like this:
- 517204c1-cac1-4e66-b5c9-f31f4b7bb092.jpg (104.13 KiB) Viewed 790 times
I did find that the cables got in the way when getting in or out of the chair, so the stick is screwed down, but I used a bit more plastic to make two pegs for the throttle to sit on. Now I can lift the throttle off for easy access.
A 1Kg bag of polymorph cost me less than £20 and I have not used more than 250g on this.
- key.jpg (55.04 KiB) Viewed 790 times
1 - HOTAS stick.
2 - HOTAS throttle.
3 - Headset with ED Tracker.
4 - USB hub.
5 - Trackball. Needs a lot less room than a mouse. I use this for the UI and SRV turret control.
6 - Numeric keypad. Programmed to handle wing commands, docking request, launching and power management.
7 - The most important part. Mug holder for my tea
