Now we turn to the floor assembly to begin the build of the seat box. The first thing you might be asking about this is why is the floor shaped funny. The front portion of lifted floor will be used to house a hidden on-board powered computer speaker that will need to be open to the outside of the box of course while the inside of the box needs to be sealed off to eliminate mechanical noise as covered earlier. As you can see, I am using glue and screws and I have also used staples to hold this S shaped assembly in place as I reinforce it with the drywall screws. I am treating the entire seat box as my most rigid portion of this build, as the vibrations from the shaking motor and the slamming of the air rams will be pounding on the joints of this part the most. This assembly combines S, R and Q. Next center the spacer pad we will be attaching the air cylinder mount for the torso's animation to and screw to R. This piece is not shown on the cut out list and is approximately 5" X 10" X 1/2" thick. This will offer the perfect spacing I will need to use my 10" air ram. Since I wasn't able to post actual air cylinder item numbers here because my rams were purchased used from surplus recyclers you will need to measure carefully before making your mounts. The critical dimension here is that your torso air cylinder has at least a 5 1/16" throw. More will be covered on this later, so this is not important at this juncture.

   Here is what your box will look like once you put the sides on. I cut out my openings before assembly, as you can see there is in fact a small amount of the raised floor that is exposed to the opening, keeping us from being able to make this cut out after the box's assembly. Access inside this box will be important while installing the mechanisms that will run our prop. Here is a look at the underneath side of the floor. You can see that I have used face frame screws and pocket-bored to the sides and front so that I would have the strength of screws without the head of the screw showing. This turned out to be a non event, as I had many screw heads exposed by the end of this construction anyway and they weren't even visually evident. Another thing you see here is a 1 1/16" hole bored into the corners. This will allow us to not only get our fog ducting through the seat area, but provides ports for air lines and electrical wires. Drill all 4 corners at precisely centered to where the chair's hollow leg openings will be through both the floor and the top of the box as shown on the right. Once you are completed with the assembly, belt sand all edges flush, wood patching any voids first.  Here we finally get to see the back and leg assemblies attached to the seat box. It will be easy to screw through the rear back stiles into the box with 1 1/4" drywall screws, but the bottom of the armrests will need to be attached using L brackets. I used 1" x 1" brackets, carefully avoiding overlap of the holes in the seat. Here you can see the mending plates attaching the side of the armrest to the leg section. Now assemble your lower L shaped leg sections identically to the ones that went under the armrest using the 4 3/4" long pieces E and L. These can be glued and stapled to the rear back stiles B as shown in the photo below. The connection of pieces L and the bottom of the seat box will not be able to be attached, so be sure to attach L to the pedestal that you will be building next. Otherwise this is a very fragile section of the build. There is no worry about the fact that it isn't terribly strong however, because this is strictly a decorative section anyway that bears to stress. You can see that the front leg pieces (K) have been attached to the arm rest and seat box. Use plenty of glue here and staples will be perfectly acceptable to it's stress. Everything we have built so far is permanently attached. The removable pieces will be covered next.  

   And here we see the chair with the outside removable channel covers attached with 2" drywall screws. Space your screws roughly 6" apart, starting no closer than about 3" from the ends of each piece when possible. Once you have assembled the chair, belt sand all edges perfectly flush, filling gaps or voids with wood patch. Exposed edges of the plywood should be fully coated with wood patch as well, sanded smooth to the adjoining piece, otherwise you will be filling this with sanding sealer for a year and a half to get the end grain voids fully filled out flush!

   The pedestal is a fairly straight forward box with a hinged rear door that will be frenched in below the top and above the 3/4" floor. I used a 3/4" X 3/4" glue block to attach the front to the floor as you can see in the picture on our left. As mentioned earlier in the how-to, I am using some solid oak braces that will be attached to the top and the floor that will allow me to remove the sides of the pedestal should I need access inside to work on the fog expansion chamber and ducting system. The rear pieces you see near the corner is set in 3/4" from the back of the floor and can be flush with the side. The idea here is the top will fully overlay the sides for maximum support to the seat above. The braces shown on the left and right of the photo will be placed just forward of the front legs of the chair and can be flush as well. After this point you will attach the sides to the floor and front panel with 2" screws only, so they may be removed. Then attach your top down to the sides with screws only as well, then glue and either staple or screw down to the permanent front panel. Then fit your back door to be snug so there is no sagging when closed. Attach the door with a continuous piano hinge and use every other screw hole provided. More than that can cause the wood to split apart.

   And there you have it. Position the chair to the back of the pedestal on center from side to side. You will be screwing (no glue) through the top of pedestal top into the legs of the chair to attach them, but remember that you will need to be able to remove the chair to complete the installation of the speaker as well as install the fog ducting up through the legs of the chair. This would be a good time to do your final finish sanding and wood patching to make sure everything is as close to glass smooth as possible before you enter the painting phase. For finish I sprayed the chair with 3 gallons of sanding sealer, sanding with #220 grit sandpaper between roughly 6 coats to get it glassy smooth and followed that up with a full gallon of automotive gold paint to give it an industrial look.