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.