Hi Lupus,

If you want to save a few bucks on the painting then do as I did:

Paint everything with matt or satin house paint or primer applied with a roller. Give it a couple of coats of this.

Smooth it all back and just do ONE coat of spray. Looks just as good, but is a lot cheaper.

Cheers,

Andy
(a thrifty scotsman)

Ok, I designed keyboard tray arm based on this keyboard arm:



This one was listed for $450(way to pricy for me)

This is what I came up with:





Figure I'll actually place a board where the keyboard is, and velcroe the keyboard to that. Use long 'arm rests' attached to the sides of my seat which will fold down to level and that I can rest that board on to use as my 'websurfing/fps' desk.

What do you think? I'm also not sure where I should mount it.

TBH, I am a bit skeptical about the PVC pipe holding all that weight at that distance. You will get a lot of flex.

You could possibly address the pipe flex problem by either going with a heavier schedule (thicker) PVC pipe, or using a light weight metal. Of course, that will cost more. The other concern I would have is how tight / stable all those PVC fitting based moving joints will be. Maybe something based on conduit could work better.

I suspect you would be better served by picking out 2 positions in space for your keyboard... One for deployed (in use) and one for stowed (retracted), and then designing something with minimal pivot points that swings the keyboard from one position to the other. make it out of wood/metal and some creative use of stuff you can get at the hardware store [ You already show a flare for that. ]

You can probably get pretty good stability out of something that either limits how far a strong hinge unfolds, or lets you loosen & tighten a clamping handle / wingnut sort of thing.

Good luck with it!

I was thinking the stability would be achieved by setting it across the arms of the chair.

But I've also been thinking about just having the right console open up and having the keyboard tray/lapdesk sit in there until ready for use.

You could do something similar to what airlines do in first class seating where the tray goes into the arm of the seat. Of course that is still a pivot but the trays generally rest on the opposite side of the seat as well.

I was considering something like that, I just couldn't figure out how to attach a swinging tray to the car seat from the junkyard I plan on using as a chair for this simpit. Any ideas?

Yep get some cheap low thickness angle iron and take a pivoting joint that allows rotation and turning and place it in there with a hard stop to keep it at the desired level. It could probably be done for less than $10 by scrounging and building it yourself. Start by asking a cabinet maker how they would build something like that. Heck I have a few guys around me that build things like that for free if you are willing to spend a few hours working with them to help out.

My problem is, I'm not sure where to find that kind of joint at my local hardware store, and after looking at the car seat in my Civic (as I'm likely to end up with something similar) I'm not sure how to attach the arm to the frame, as there doesn't appear to be any readily available 'hard point' to attach it to.

I figured any kind of flat ball bearing(like a lazy susan type) for it to swivel up and down with and a standard hinge on the arm to give it the rotation needed (although I like your description of a joint better if you can help me identify what I should use). But again, not sure where to attach that arm to the seat back.

Lupus if you take a look at the bottom of the seat you can most likely attach the angle iron to the seat rails there with a few bolts and some time with a good metal drilling bit on a drill. I will see what sort of pictures I can locate on the pivot joints that I have seen and used in cabinets and jigs for building things.

Go to this website link and take a look at the Jig and Fixture Bases with the "adjustable locking hubs".

http://www.carrlane.com/catalog/index.cf...A3C3B285355435E

At a place I used to work we built some things similar to what they are showing for mounting CRT screens at workstations and the keyboard mounts as well for those same dummy terminals. It was what we used to track inventory and production in the shop and the different users of the stations could adjust as needed and these puppies would not move once they were locked in place. However they were fairly easy to readjust when you needed to adjust them.