It is a lot like being a first-time parent, where you are getting a nursery ready, painting the room the right shade of blue or pink, new crib, Canadian rocker, you know, The Treatment. of course, In this case, the garage was getting The Treatment. For us, it was a major undertaking. First, over fifteen years’ worth of sawdust, metal and plastic scraps, paint, car parts, bike parts, special projects, tools and what-not strewn, tucked, tossed, positioned, piled, ensconced, splattered and shoved in all sorts of nooks and crannies, It all had to be cleared out. We needed plenty of space for the build, and need to be able to put at least one of our cars in the garage at least some of the time while we were doing this. That was of utmost importance.
Imagine laying in a snowbank while changing the oil in an aging minivan pushing north of 260,000 miles in a grinding cold winter day. That sucks. As in contents of a septic tank being evacuated sucks. Obviously, not only would we need space for working on the plane, we would need to be able to park a car inside at least some of the time. To paraphrase King George the 43rd, we would need to do some “strategerizing” to make this happen.
Right. We developed some strategery. We would have to clean up the garage full of squalor…So we cleaned up the squalor. ‘Nuff said! Well, maybe not: Let’s just say a high-powered leaf blower can be very useful indeed when cleaning out a garage, Blast away my kiddies!
Next came the more exciting part of the garage make over. We have the same storage and work space problem all home owners have. At 22 ft by 22 ft, our garage is a wee bit space challenged, even as a 2-car garage. We did have one nice advantage. with the expansively helpful benefit from putting an over the garage bonus room in our house, we ended up with 11-foot ceilings in our garage. It puts a nice capitol B in Bonus on that one. The only thing to do now is colonize the extra space in first world style. Fortunately, part of the exploitation was already done. Not long after we moved in, we installed some heavy duty shelves using custom steel brackets our neighbor made and some 2X10s from River Head Building Supply. Awesome!! Furthermore, later on we installed an Electric Kayak rack. Double Awesome!!
We set to it. First, we cleared 15 years bunk and junk and springs and things off the shelves and stored it safely away in other safe places. We now had a nice spot for the yet to be completed empennage. That left the wings. For those, we had our Electric Kayak Rack (EKR, This is aviation, we have to have a few acronyms). About 4 years ago, we decided to get kayaks. I love Kayaks, you only need one paddle instead of two like a row boat, that makes it only half as complicated to operate. Its kind of like a jet engine (Or a Sling!) with one power control instead of piston aircraft’s two or three. Sorry, I digress.
The EKR had a pair of Unistrut lengths which hung from sheaves mounted to the ceiling on either side of the garage door opener. At the other end of business was a genuine Harbor Fright winch. A set of carefully positioned sheaves guided the rope from the winch to the two pieces of Unistrut. The kayaks were strapped to the Unistrut, and when you ran the winch, the kayaks would lift up into the top of the garage. It was really fun to watch.
Now the conversion. We kicked the kayaks out to a rack behind the garage, love can be so fleeting. We took the 2 pieces of Unistrut from the EKR and a new piece from Granite Electric, and with a couple hours of cutting and grinding later we had nice 4 x 8m frame. We covered that with a sheet of ½ inch AC from Riverhead, making a nice light weight but sturdy 4×8 platform. The real trick was doing up all the ropes that lifted the Platform. We redid the rigging, positioning the sheaves so that the 4 ropes lifted the corners of the platform. Once we had the rope reconnected to the winch and platform, we had a brand spanking new ESWS, or Electric Sling Wing Sling!
Next, an ensemble of furniture. We started with the work benches. The EAA has a lovely practical design, a cleaver arrangement where each leg was a pair of 2X4s cut and nailed/glued together which support a shelf and top. A lovely functional design. We didn’t use it.
Instead, we came up with a cunning plan. First, we made a bee line to Riverhead Building Supply which is often cheaper than Home Cheato. It’s a great place, the guys know what a 2X4 is. You can literally drive your minivan right into the store, right up to the plywood pile without anyone so much as raising an eye. Just act like you know what you are doing, is all I’m sayin’. We picked up a couple of sheets ¾” AG, ¾” birch and maple plywood and twelve (12) 2X4’s. and we got a whole bottle of glue.
The design in the EAA site has a shelf that is 7-inch shorter than the top to accommodate the 2X4 legs. To get a longer shelf, we made legs from plywood. First, we cut four 4” wide strips from the AC sheet length-wise using our abused and ancient table saw. Then we cut two 39- inch pieces from each strip. We made the flour legs by gluing 2 pieces together at 90⁰ to form a butt joint. (Ha Ha! I wrote the word “butt”! hee hee hee!) We also screwed the pieces to hold them while they dried.
We did the platforms the same way they show doing the top platform in the EAA plans: http://www.eaa1000.av.org/technicl/worktabl/tablefig.htm . One would be the top, the other a shelf. After they were made, the plywood legs were glued and screwed to the corners of each frame, one frame was flush with ends of the plywood legs, the other was glued and screwed 8in from the other end of the legs.
The top piece of AC was cut to match the overall dimensions including the legs. That was glued and screwed down. We covered that with the Birch and Maple plywood, glued and clamped down, which made the top a more heavy-duty 1½ in thick. Plus, the birch is a much smoother surface than rough AC or CDX grade plywood. The shelf was a piece of AC that matched the dimensions of the 2X4 frame. Getting it to fit took some fitting, but it made a bigger shelf, nicely screwed down firmly. Finally, we added some nifty wheels, from Rockler, and used these mount brackets so we only needed one set of wheels.
The last part was the Sling Plans Holder. It would be nice to have some sort of holder for the instructions so that they don’t end up getting destroyed in by laying where ever fits the time only to get torn, soiled, or end up with a massive cup ring. Plus, they wouldn’t take up valuable bench space. After all the bench business, we had a 2-foot wide piece of AC left, and some birch and maple. We turned that into a nice Sling Plans Holder, (SPH) just look at the photo.
With all the furniture done, there was nothing to do but wait for our airplane in a box.
Next: Week The First: Inventory
And if there is some other part you want to skip to:
Week the first: Inventory