New shelf to stow VS so Rudder work can continue

As simple and mundane as these three pics appear to be, this process took several hours for me to complete. The entire time all I kept wishing was that I was spending that time working on the rudder, but in the end I knew that this had to be done.

There are so many angles I want to cover about this, so this might turn into another of my epically long posts, but I will try to keep it short, as it has been a rather long day today. So lets start with the explanation for what I did and why I did it. The left side of the top photo shows several shelves that I built to remove all the ground clutter in the garage when I first started preparing for the project. Also notice how almost every inch of that shelf space is already used up. One thing about building an airplane is that as you complete each part of the project, you transform all the little parts and pieces into a much larger part of the actual aircraft. Each of these sub assemblies must have a place to live while the rest of the airplane is completed, and that "place" cannot be my work bench unfortunately. So I needed to make more shelves. I have several additional 18" x 7 foot long pieces of particle board and plywood that I actually double stacked on the shelf brackets on the left side of the garage. So I decided to use one of those for a new shelf for the VS, and I also decided to suspend the new shelf from the rafters as an experiment of sorts.

Any other Vans airplane builders will surely recognize the dollar sign painted on the end cap in two of the pictures. I used the spare wood from my wing kit crate to make both end caps for the shelve. Don't discard that lumber. There are a million and one uses for it as you progress through the project. The rafters in the garage are on 24 inch centers, and so I needed to trim up the shelf a bit so that it would fit in between the two end caps. I used 4, 4inch long metal L brackets from Home Depot. I inset them 2 inches from the edge of each end cap, and then positioned them on the bottom and marked adn drilled the holes. The wood for the end caps came from the siding of the crate for the Wing skins, and it measured 1 inch thick x 9 inches wide, x 18 inches long. The shelf is 3/4 inch ply.

Additional measurements were made to ensure that the shelf would properly support the VS and perhaps the Rudder when it is completed, and that it will allow enough room for the VS to be layed on the shelf without hitting any of the rafters. I had 9 inches to work with, and ended up drawing a line that was 2.5 inches from the top of the end cap to leave enough wood overlapped against the rafters for proper support. This would leave me roughly 6 inches to work with after the shelf was installed, which was plenty, considering that the girth or thickness of the VS at its thickest point when laid on its side is only about 4 inches or so.

The weight of the VS is only about 10 pounds, so I had no concerns about the shelf being able to support the weight. In fact, my only concerns were that the end caps would be able to support the weight of the shelf. It is amazing that such a large object is so very light, but that is the nature of the game that us plane builders must play. The last thing I need is to go out to the garage one morning and see my VS all bent up on the floor of the garage after my shelving experiment fails.

Anyway, I think it all turned you great, and the VS is now solidly sitting on the new shelf. I place a long piece of rubber tool box liner on the shelf to help prevent further scuff marks on the VS, now that the blue vinyl covering has been removed.

This will not be the last time that I have to do this either. As it stands right now, I will need additional shelf space to store 2 elevators, 2 ailerons, and two flaps, not to mention the space needed for the 2 wings that I hope to get started on next month.

KPR............................