Garage Layout

I've always enjoyed my garage space, and I was lucky enough to find this house about 7 years ago that had an enormous extension built into the back of its original 2-car garage. The photograph above looks back into this extension from standing in the front garage area. Normally I've used this extra space to work on cars or other car-related projects, but now I've converted this area to be my RV-10 build space!
 

A few new and a few old power tools thrown together on this long and narrow workbench I built for the project. I may redo this configuration at some point, but it seems to be working alright for now, albeit a bit muddled. That chop saw in the photo serves as a good segue into the biggest project I undertook for the workshop prep though: Building four EAA work tables!

Drew up some plans for four EAA work tables, slightly modifying the original plans to accomodate some ideas I had. Here's 32 8-foot long 2x4's after a 3-hr visit with the chop saw. The saw's laser sight came in super handy... Every piece here is just about exactly the intended length and square, making assembly go much more smoothly!

A few hours later the tables were built. Here are three of the four tables, with the "landing gear" system (credit: Charlie Becker, EAA) visible. The landing gear allows you to kick those 2x4's on the side into place, boosting the table up about a half inch and allowing it to roll freely on casters. Kick those same 2x4's out of place, and the table falls back onto its legs, becoming stationary.

I wanted to give an extra feature to one of the tables as a fiberglassing/downdraft table. It is the same height/dimensions as the others, but the top flips up and exposes a sanding valley that can be connected to a shopvac to keep the mess under control. Hopefully this will prove to be useful during the few (but important!) steps in the -10 build that involve composites. The tabletop also has an aluminum C-channel embedded into one edge, allowing for easy cutting of fiberglass, carpet, upholstery, etc.

A view of the downdraft table with the top flipped up. The valley underneath hasn't been screwed on yet.

The fourth table, shown here almost complete. I wanted this table to have a built-in (and homemade) C-Frame tool with an adjustable height base able to accommodate any standard die set. I also wanted to have a long back-rivet bar flushed into the work surface as well.

Here is the completed riveting/dimpling table, along with a few clamps and organizer trays that I thought might come in handy for the build.

The only other modification I made to the standard plan was that I made the crossbeam 2x4's go inside instead of outside, so there would be room along every table's edge to use a clamp (or clamp-on vice, visible in the previous picture).