More Workshop

Why no updates?  Because I'm still wrestling with getting my workshop ready.  Last weekend my wife and I spent the entire weekend insulating the shop (she's a trooper!).  R-19 fiberglass in the ceiling and R-13 in the walls.  We covered it all up with DuPont Tyvek, a heavy paper-like polyethylene wrap that acts as a vapor barrier and keeps the fiberglass in the walls and out of my lungs.  Here's what things are looking like now:

I like that the Tyvek is white, it increases light in the shop and makes it seem bigger.  However, it is kind of paper-like (though very durable), so it remains to be seen if it will hold up to me moving around.  If it starts getting ripped or punctured a lot, I'll probably bite the bullet and put up some gypsum wallboard, since it's only about $7 a 4x8 sheet at Home Depot.

The insulation made a noticeable difference inside the shed, but it's not enough in the Georgia heat.  Temps in the worst part of a hot day are down from about 110 degrees inside to about 92 degrees.  I think the remaining problem is one of a lack of air conditioning output.  My 10,000BTU portable is not up to the task, so I'm going to get a 25,000+ BTU window unit.  That should be able to power through all this heat and make things comfortable.  I think I'm also going to put a tarp cover over the roof to keep the sun from beating directly on the metal.  That's a minor measure, we'll see if it does anything.

What's next?  Well, to get the larger AC unit installed, I will need 240V power.  That means an electrician, and luckily one lives across the street.  He's going to take a look, and we're going to take the opportunity to replace our ancient fusebox in the house with a modern breaker box, and do some other minor electrical work we've been putting off.

Hopefully the saga of getting a good workspace to build in is ending soon, and I'll be able to start posting about the actual Sonex build process soon.  Those boxes of tail parts are screaming at me to get moving!

Workshop Coming Along

The workshop for building my Sonex is coming along nicely.  I got power run to the building, and have installed the 10,000 BTU portable air conditioner.  Unfortunately, the A/C unit is no match for the Georgia heat in a metal building, so even running all out for hours, the temperature in the building is often above 90 degrees in the hottest part of the day.  A lot of heat radiates down from the metal roof, so I'm looking at putting up some high reflectivity insulation that will block the heat filtering down and allow the A/C to do its job properly.

As for workspace, I just finished building two EAA standard workbenches:

True to my woodworking skills, though I built these to plans to the best of my ability, they are not completely straight in all dimensions.  In my defense some of the 2x4s I bought were curved or twisted.  But I'm sure there's a little builder error involved as well.  They are stable and level though, which is all that I really care about.

The bench dimensions are 60" x 24", which might seem a little long and narrow.  However, the tables are designed to be easily movable and to accommodate a variety of shapes.  They can be pushed together to make a larger workspace, or laid end-to-end to work on longer structures like wings.  For a small plane like the Sonex they should be adequate for just about anything I'll be building.

Next I need to build some stairs into the building (the leveling process left about a 15" step up into the doors), and get things cleaned up from all the woodworking.  Once that's done it's on to building!  I'm hoping I can at least get that started sometime this weekend.