Monday February 25, 2008
Shop Setup! (Shop Setup)

It's been nearly 11 months and over a thousand miles since my last update. Many things have happened since then. For one thing, Emily and I moved to Fort Collins, CO, where we were stuck in an apartment for six months where I had no room to work on the airplane. In October, we moved to our new home, complete with a two-car garage a.k.a. workshop. My dad came out and helped me insulate and drywall the entire thing. Then, for various reasons, I did very little work for several months. Now I am getting back out to the garage in earnest and making things happen. Here are some pictures of the current state of things.

This is what the garage looked like shortly before my Dad left in October.

It has changed just a bit since then. You see here the shelving units that I threw together in the last two nights along the West wall of the garage (the garage door is on the North). They're made out of 2x3 cross pieces, 2x4 vertical braces, and half inch plywood. The entire unit is made of two eight foot sections. It has a total of 80 square feet of storage space, not including the floor.

This is the South wall of the workshop, which used to be a crappy orangish drywall. I patched and mudded the holes and painted the wall white. Finally, I have built a TV shelf and hung cork & peg boards. I have additional plans to build a little computer desk in the area between the TV shelf and the work bench using a spare piece of MDF.

A close-up of my TV shelf.

This is my new wing jig (if you can pick it out amidst the leftover drywall). I've elected to go with a one-wing-at-a-time philosophy. Soon I will unpack my wing from the crate and hang it.

This is the remaining mess I have to deal with, including the big wing crate that still needs to be unpacked.

When I emerged from the garage, I found a surprise layer of snow on everything. It was 60 degrees yesterday...

Anyway, I'm super excited to be getting back to work on the airplane. I can't wait to pound some more rivets.

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