Maverick can step aside because when it comes to aviation there’s a new top gun in town. These aviator stools are hands down the coolest repurpose of helicopters and airplanes we’ve ever seen.

These wicked aviator stools are the creations of Aero-1946. Aero-1946 design and produce out of a small workshop in Colonge, Germany. Since 2007 the 2 founding gentlemen, Reinhard Cramer and Rolf Bauche have been meeting every Saturday to work together on their hobby of riveting and shaping aluminum. While they initially started off making toolboxes, somewhere along the line they decided to create upcycled aircraft furniture instead.

These aviation stools are made from scrap aluminum sheet metal from helicopters and aircrafts. Because the raw material is quite rare, the aviator stools are all handmade in Germany and produced only in limited numbers. Some of the helicopters used were damaged while fire fighting.

In order to secure the material, Aero-1946 make regular visits to helicopter maintenance companies. They then remove the rivets from the sheet aluminum and mark out the future stools, ready for cutting.

These are the parts for 1 aviator stool cut out from a part of a BELL police helicopter tailboom.

These stools are very lightweight but can bear heavy loads. The part of the Bell UH 1-D  tailboom depicted with an arrow below had a very thin sheet of 0.35mm aluminum.

The weight of the stool it produced was only 1002 g and yet it could bear a load of 145 kg.

Aero-1946 use about 200 rivet holes for each stool they make. In order to get the best results they use aircraft tools, sometimes those that are no longer in production.

From scrap metal to upcycled furniture, we think these aviator stools are just incredible!

Source: Aero-1946