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Kitplanes New Photo Contest - Show Us Your Shop!

Ironflight

Ironflight

VAF Moderator / Line Boy
Mentor
Now that you have all chosen a winner in the "Camping With Your Plane" photo contest, we've got a new one for you!

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Our next photo contest topic requires you to show off your workshop. 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. Send us your photos of a workshop you're proud of! Big, small, neat, or not so neat - let's see where your bird is being built.

Head HERE to submit your photo today.

(Please submit only your own photo and send the largest file size you have. One entry per person.)

Remember - we'll take nominations for a few weeks, then put the staff's favorites out for a general vote! A $25 gift certificate to Aircraft Spruce is at stake (not to mention your pride in your shop).
 
Aww, just a couple of months too late. My shop is currently being disassembled and moved into uninviting storage while I prepare to build bigger and better. The riggers come tomorrow to move the big machinery.
 
Ironflight said:
Our next photo contest topic requires you to show off your workshop. As homebuilders, we're partial to well organized shops -
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Hmmmmmmmmmm guess I will let this one pass...........................
 
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Mine's a Mess!

Ironflight said:
...As homebuilders, we're partial to well organized shops
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Uhhh, guess that leaves me out! :eek:

Ironflight said:
- they help us keep the project on track
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Hmmm, could be why it's taking me so long to finish my RV. :rolleyes:

Ironflight said:
...and it's no secret that many award winning airplanes came from shops that reflect the builder's desire to impress.
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Well, I surely don't have any dreams of having mine judged at Oshkosh, so maybe that's got something to do with it. :eek:

Good luck with your contest, Paul. Maybe seeing other shops will inspire me to get mine back in production! Maybe I should submit a "before and after" pair of photos. :)
 
And then there are a number of us who have converted / confiscated rooms outside the garage and basement as "shops". :D Vlad's not the only one. I no longer have a room in my condo that doesn't have parts strewn about and tons of shipping boxes. So much for "well organized".
 
sbalmos said:
And then there are a number of us who have converted / confiscated rooms outside the garage and basement as "shops". :D Vlad's not the only one. I no longer have a room in my condo that doesn't have parts strewn about and tons of shipping boxes. So much for "well organized".
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This doesn't qualify as a shop anyway. It's been ten years already wow! :D

 
It's seriously been a decade already??? :eek: You're going to make me take pics of my "shop" when I get home now, Vlad!
 
Yeah I'm not tracking with this contest. Most every wants to see the fancy pantsy Good Housekeeping shop/man cave w/ big screen tv, wet bar and oh yeah a shiny solo project; my reality is every piece of lawn, garden, automotive, and machining what-not is sharing "aviation space" on the well stained concrete floors......hardly magazine material.
 
I sure hope the best doesn't mean the cleanest or most organized! I didn't put everything away after each work session or clean the floor very often. Don't take this wrong, it wasn't a "mess" just not a showroom! Mine had lots of tables and tool platforms on wheels and stuff like that.
 
I am waiting for Mike Tippin from FL to post his pictures. That would be a serious contender to win. His shop is very tight but extremely organized. And he even has an RV10 there. :)
 
I just submitted mine. I'm proud of my shop; I put a lot of work into building it, and like to keep it organized. It was hard to pick just one photo... I wanted you to see the whole thing!
 
goatflieg said:
I just submitted mine. I'm proud of my shop; I put a lot of work into building it, and like to keep it organized. It was hard to pick just one photo... I wanted you to see the whole thing!
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Dang... just realized I submitted the wrong photo, and resubmitted the correct one. Hope that doesn't disqualify me; please delete previous entry. I guess I'm living up to my signature quote again...
 
maniago said:
Yeah I'm not tracking with this contest. Most every wants to see the fancy pantsy Good Housekeeping shop/man cave w/ big screen tv, wet bar and oh yeah a shiny solo project; my reality is every piece of lawn, garden, automotive, and machining what-not is sharing "aviation space" on the well stained concrete floors......hardly magazine material.
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Yeahhhhh, my thoughts and situation exactly, but it gets the job(s) done, aviation and otherwise. Maybe one day. . . .

On the other hand, maybe people should see where planes do get built, it should encourage people to use what they have and build more planes. Lets send all the pictures in.
 
I'd like to see before and after photos. Photos of that nice organized shop when you start the empennage, and again near the end of the project... Some people can keep it going, but now that I am working on 10 jobs at once to finish up, if I put everything away between jobs, I'd never get any work done...

Chris
 
goatflieg said:
I'm proud of my shop; I put a lot of work into building it, and like to keep it organized.
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Yeah, me too... but the airplane shares the garage with a mower, three bikes, a motorcycle, a weed whacker, a lawn edger, a paint box, two walls full of various lawn implements, a large kite, fertilizer, weed killer, a garbage can, a recycle bin, car maintenance supplies and tools, a few yard games, a couple of car seats and a stroller for the grandkids, painting supplies, gardening stuff and generally 30 years worth of accumulated garage "stuff". Oh, and my wife's car.

I have nothing at all against the guys with fantastic work areas that look like Tony Stark's lab. I would say they are kind of edge cases, though, even among RV builders. That's why they get magazine articles written about them, right? You're not going to see a four-page spread about your local flight school's tattered '72 Cherokee rental bird - or my garage.
 
Kitplanes should do an article about the real world workshops / garages to give the readers both sides of the story. I sure wouldn't want a future builder to shy away from starting a project because he thinks you have to have super organizational skills or a tidy work space. The reality is most builders workshops are not all that pretty and are an adaption of the family garage or some other space that can be adapted to facilitate a build.

I have a good friend that has built 4 YAK 3's (think Russian version of the P51) and a Potege bomber (twin engine radial like a Beech 18) in a 35 X 50 hanger. Most of the work is done by himself and his fabrication skills are amazing, but his shop is a disaster. The word organized is not in his vocabulary but he knows where everything is and is amazingly efficient and maticoulous in his work. I know there are some folks that have built in one car garages or in apartments. Heck if I recall there was a international airline pilot that stuffed parts and pieces into a suitcase so he could work on his layovers and there was the guy that was doing his panel build while on deployment in the middle east. These guys take the word dedication to a new level and I admire their tenacity.
 
I would agree, or at least a sidebar on one of the pages - "More realistic workshops of a homebuilder", with a few of our pics. :D
 
I vote for Randy's

Alright Randy you need to send your shop photos in. Your shop is operating room clean as well as your clean 12 and roadster.
 
smallest space examples????

Jrskygod said:
.....Heck if I recall there was a international airline pilot that stuffed parts and pieces into a suitcase so he could work on his layovers and there was the guy that was doing his panel build while on deployment in the middle east.
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......this reminds me of a Tony Bingelis article, where he had a 'workshop' shoebox of sorts, where he built ribs for his project in a broom closet, onboard ship, while deployed somewhere in the Pacific?....and from that extreme, I think the guys who recently completed a project in some part of the Boeing plant probably qualify as 'largest and best equipped' workshop! :)
 
My shop is my 2-car garage. Its floor is 55 year old garage concrete, stained and uneven. The walls are insulated and drywalled. There's no ceiling but the rafters have sprayed foam insulation. There's electricity along the walls and eight windows.

It's a very effective shop.

But the tables and cabinets are built from framing lumber. The garage door opener hangs down right in the middle of the shop. The air hoses lay on the floor. The sound system is a 24 year old boombox. It's not a house-beautiful place to work and worse, there's zero effort towards making it a man-cave. Even worse than that - there's no fridge!

No way will I enter this in any shop competition.

Dave
 
I entered my shop which is a 28x12 storage building that I wired, insulated, and installed AC and heat. I also installed a yellow pine floor, ceiling fan, wall mounted TV, sound system, sitting area and wifi to make it very comfortable and productive for me
The project is a Hatz CB1 scratch built from plans which I have been working on since 2008. The shop is just about a year old and progress on the Hatz has sped up considerably because of it.

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The Shop

http://i1298.photobucket.com/albums/ag57/fixnflyguy/20150915_205238_zpsk7ih5ahp.jpg

So here is my current "shop" at 8A7..It is where Casper, my RV-4 was completed and became an airplane. Its also where continuing maintenance is done, all the worlds problems are solved, safety briefings for the airport are held, and unmentionables may have occurred...Even Vlad has been here, so obviously Scotch has been consumed. It is a canvas of many years of fiddling, my best attribute.
 
I don't expect this shop to win any contests, especially since I'm just beginning to set it up after a 2200+ mile relocation. I consider myself very fortunate to have found a house on an airport (45G) with an attached 34x40 hangar. This is way more room than I had in my 2-car garage in California, and it comes with 17 feet of built-in workbench with cupboards underneath, 3 tiers of 20-ft long heavy duty shelving, and 5 sets of 6-ft lightweight shelving. That said, I have to be careful laying it out and organizing it to leave room for my 170 when it comes out of rebuild.

Planned upgrades are plumbing for air, and radiant heat if the existing furnace proves too expensive to operate. And, for after the toolbox is closed, a kegerator (coming this Saturday; happy early birthday to me!)
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