While the garden is just about big enough to take the Vans RV-9 kit aircraft I intend to build, the wingtips would almost touch the house and the back garden wall at the same time and the rudder and spinner would be dangerously close to the side walls. As it happens, I quite enjoy a little gardening and I like to look out on some greenery. It is very clear that my wife Dorothy does NOT want to have the entire garden covered with a workshop and in fairness, neither do I. This was actually the biggest obstacle to be overcome in gaining her agreement to the project. I am pretty sure the neighbours would also be relieved at this line of thinking.
Though I have been involved in some fairly ambitious DIY projects concerned with rennovating the house and keeping it maintained, I have no workshop whatsoever. All I have is a boiler house containing a second fridge, laundry machines and storage for my tools. It is about 4 meters long by less than 1.5 meters wide. You can see it on the left in this picture.I considered renting a workshop but scarcity of appropriate spaces in my area and generally sky-high property prices in the city have driven the rent up beyond reason. I could expect to spend a minimum of €3000 per annum on rent. That's €12000 over the course of the project or over a third of the total of all other building costs. In addition, it would be that much more inefficient in terms of time to travel even a short distance
Several Vans builders have succesfully completed their projects in a one-car garage and I decided that this was the most space I could afford.
I started out with a week off work on 21st July. In the intervening period, I have used a further two weeks leave on the workshop project. I didn' keep track but I would say I now have in excess of 500 hours in this thing.
I worked from a book helpfully called "How to Build a Shed" and loosly followed the construction method for one of the models in this book. However, it had to be adapted to my site and to my own particular requirements. The structure is of 47X75mm (3X2) timber. This is less than the book recommends but the shop only has to last for the duration of the project (about 4 years) and then I will hopefully be able to sell it and restore the garden. It is lined internally with12mm plywood on the walls and 5mm ply on the ceiling. I have left the 'attic' space within the roof trusses open to the shop so that I can easily use it for storage. Also, I have made the infill panel for the end truss on the house/garden end of the shop removeable so that I can get larger and longer items in and out. I have two large windows and one pedestrian door. The overall style I am going for is 'New England'. I thought the light grey colour would be less imposing to look at.
The entire structure is lined with a dense version of rockwool insulation called RW3 in a 50mm thickness. This will not only make the shop useable in the coldest weather but it is also an excellent soundproofing material, which was the main reason I chose it, being so near to neighbours and our own house. As the big windows (which I made from large obsolete perspex signs bearing the old logo of the organisation I run) would allow enormous amounts of sound and heat to escape, I made up polythene covered mats, like gym mats, with the same insulation material, which can be wedged in the window openings while noisy work is going on.I have taken great care to get the floor perfectly level. If it decides to settle, however, I can wedge the entire building up or down at the appropriate corner.
The finished interior dimensions of the shop are 15'5" by 10' 3". This is not quite enough to fit the engine and propellor spinner to a completed fuselage. I have two strategies planned to cope with this. The first is that 60% of the side wall (up to the inner edge of the second window) is removeable, allowing me to push the tail of the plane out through this opening and work on the engine in the remaining shed. This will still not be an easy operation like opening a door so the idea is to buy a cheap 'party tent' and use it as an extension of the shop while that part of the project is going on - not in winter obviously. The other strategy is more radical and I need to check it out further before I even dare to mention it.
Inside the shop, I have built three standard EEA Chapter 1000 worktables. One of these is used for my three main benchmounted powertools; my bench drill, grinder/sander and bandsaw. Another table was adapted to take the compressor underneath and was clad with more 12mm ply and lined with 2 layers of carpet scraps to make a soundproof enclosure with a removeable front panel. This is remarkeably effective and makes not much more noise than a modern laundry machine. I just need to watch out for heat buildup and possibly build in a vent if it proves to be a problem. The third table has a massive 100mmX75mm aluminium angle along one edge for use as a straight edge and back rivetting plate for the trailing edges of the control surfaces.
All three tables have castors that can be extended by lifting each end of the table in turn, in which case the castors drop down and are locked in position. They can be unlocked by pulling on a string at each end. The weight of the table then carries the legs through to contact the floor as the castors hinge up out of the way. This design, which I saw Norm Abraham use on his New Yankee Workshop cable show, allows the tables to be configured in any way that suits the job at hand
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