As homebuilders, we’re partial to well organized shops – they help us keep the project on track and it’s no secret that many award winning airplanes came from shops that reflect the builder’s desire to impress.
My wife agreed to let me build a RV but not in our garage! So after a year long battle with the local township, I built a pole barn just behind my house. Not as big as I wanted but good enough. The photo does not show how nice it turned out and there are dozens of features designed into it for the purpose of building the RV, but I wanted to point out the most amazing feature of all. I built a three-dimensional overhead crane system that just about allowed me to build this project single handed! It is built from surplus and used steel and a hoist from my business that had been sitting around for years. The only parts I had to purchase were the end trucks. All in all, it helped to make the build very enjoyable. Some other features are radiant heat, air-conditioning, lots of electrical, enough light to make you want to wear sun glasses, all season insulation, metal walls for sticking magnets to with documents, a built in paint booth, storage, music, etc. A great place to hang out.
One corner of my 25×25 shop, shortly after taking inventory of my RV-8 empennage kit. My custom C-frame/tool table is in the foreground, my plans easel is on the right, and my paint booth fan system is stored against the back wall.
RV-14A vertical stabilizer in the shop. No dust here!
In a rental house with only a two car garage that still has to function as a garage, you get creative. The lightweight wing assembly table is a hollow core door, reinforced, on two food carts. Tools are in two roll-arounds at the back, along with the air compressor and shop vac, and the power tools are on a wheeled steel table. Limitations? Only a portable fan for temperature control, terrible lighting, and only one power outlet. But the job is getting done!
The winner will receive a $25 gift card from Aircraft Spruce.
When it came to choosing a kit aircraft to build, columnist Amy Laboda and her husband opted for a metal design, in part because it would be resistant to destruction by lightning strike and also because fatigue is easier to detect in metal than it is in a composite plane. However, new nanotube technology, if integrated into composite construction material, could not only help identify wear problems, but also potentially heal them.
