Getting organized...

I suppose one of the more intimidating parts of the project was just getting organized.I'm not gonna lie, its intimidating to think of how large this project will be, so I'm trying to break this down into small chunks. The first chunk: have a system, and be organized.

 I do not deal with chaos very well, and with the complexity of building an airplane, I knew I had to have my "poop in a group". When the kit arrives, it comes with an inventory list. The inventory contains the location of each part and how they are organized. Note how this list contains each "bag" contents.

I decided to just keep most of the bags intact, and just label them on my organizer. This keeps it straight in my mind, your mileage may vary. 

Here is how I organized the rivets. I have found that I just walk over and take a small quantity of the rivets I need when working. Its CRAZY how they can scatter when spilled. Lesson learned. I now take a small plastic cup and cut in so it's about 3/4' deep. I put the rivets I'm working with in that. That way when it gets knocked over, its not a big mess. 

I organized by AN426, then AN470. When the next subkit arrives, I know I will have additional room for rivets and harware. 

As for the sheetmetal goods, I installed overhead racks in my garage several months ago. When we decided to build the RV14, I took 99% of the "crap" from the garage and placed it into our attic storage. Each of the storage racks is four by eight feet. I was able to stack most of the parts and still have access to most part numbers. 

Sorry for the blurry image...

I guess I didn't really describe my building space very well. but I'm building this airplane in a three car garage. We live in a housing development where having a shop is prohibited, so the garage it is!!! Here is the rest of the empennage components. It doesn't take up that much space really.

This is my tool station. I bought the tool base for $25 off craigslist. I used some 2x12's to form the extensions on the table. My thinking was that I don't have a ton of real estate in this garage, so if I can eliminate a few tool bases taking up space, then great. Also, this tool base has retractable wheels so I can easily move it around. 

I left me buffer/scotch-brite machine on a dedicated/easily movable base. My thinking is that this has to be moved around a lot to accommodate weird shaped sheet-metal parts.  The only problem thus far is that the speed of the buffer causes it to vibrate and move around slowly when running. I'm probably going to put a large weight on that bottom tray and softer rubber feet so it stays put when I have it running.