Rearranging the workshop again

As I predicted a long while back, I have waited until it is as cold as it has ever been this winter to get started on the project again! Why I do that I will never know, but that's just the way that it is I guess. The first order of business is to rearrange the work shop in preparation for the wing stands that I am about to receive thanks to a local fellow RV-8 builder Aaron Miller.

I became acquainted with Aaron in much the same way that I have become acquainted with so many new friends while building my airplane - a post by Aaron on VAF contained some pics of some metal wing stands that I have also seen on some other builders sites. I had been agonizing over exactly how to do this for my project. The choices are to do the 4x4 wood stand or to bolt some metal posts to the garage floor.

I had resigned myself to using the wood posts because I did not know anyone locally that had a set of metal ones or knew how to make them - until I saw Aaron's post that is. We have since exchanged mnay emails and it looks like his Dad is going to weld me up some brackets this weekend, which I will then mount to the garage floor after drilling about 16 holes in the concrete to anchor them down in just the right spots.

Aaron's builders log is located here. Another site that contains the specs for the same stands is from Rudy Greiling in South Africa. I will need to rent a rotary hammer drill to drill the holes for the anchors that will be used to secure them to the garage floor. I will be using RedHead 3/8" x 2 1/4" concrete anchors, 4 per stand for a total of 16. I will drill 4 half inch holes in each mounting bracket for each stand to allow some wiggle room in case I don't get the anchors drilled in just the right spot.

But before I can get to that, I had to determine of I would even be able to build both wings at one time or if I would only have enough room in my 2 car garage to build them one at a time. After a long bit of eyeballing the space inside my garage, I decided that I could in fact build both wings at the same time AND still manage to get both cars in and out of the garage when needed. IN order to do that, I needed to rearrange several things.

I basically determined that I could turn my large white storage cabinet 90 degrees and remove the 2 foot wide doors, adn then I could trade positions of my freezer and my other 2x4 foot storage shelf, and this would open up the area enough to allow me to setup the second set of wing stands. I also moved my table saw out to the shed since I do not use it that much for the airplane anyway.

Now for some long awaited pics:

First is the chaos on the work benches after cleaning all the stuff off of the shelves so I could move them:

 

 

And here is the freezer moved from one side of the garage next to the compressor on the other side:

 

And my parts shelve now located on the other side of the garage where the freezer used to be:

 

This little switch made it easier for me to get my car in the garage and also gave me more room on the other side to place the second set of wing stands. The first set will be located in front of a parallel to my work benches. I will have to find another place to store the long table I have been using, and I think this will make its way to the back porch for a while. Funny how switching a couple of things around can open up new opportunities.