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Preparations

Preparing the workshop A project of this kind calls out for a proper place to work in. Since I live in a cold climate I need to control the temperature and humidity, as well as I need good space to work in and room for storage. I also like to keep the shop tidy, so I had to do a major job just to throw away stuff I had collected for the last ten years! My garage is made in concrete. It consists of a garage (23 feet x 19 feet) and an adjacent room (10 feet x 19 feet) where I have been working on my model-planes and doing other repairs and wood-works. The model-plane-room is heated, the garage was just a cold room. I have power and water installed. The height inside is 10 feet.

Then I built the epoxy hot-box and the cloth-cabinet with the cutting-table. I built these two together so the hot-box is connected to the cabinet. In this way I can use the excess heat from the hot-box to warm up the cloth-cabinet. The cutting-table is painted with three coats of varnish, it's very smooth and handling the cloth is easy.

I also had to close some air-gaps between the garage-door and floor and walls. I found a genious solution in a brush-gasket. Works like a dream!

I insulated the whole garage, including the garage-door. Then I installed a heat-pump to warm up the garage in a cheap way. The temperature at winter seldom falls below 32F/0ºC. It was no problem keeping the garage pretty warm - approx 68F/20ºC without any extra heating before I insulated the garage-door. Now - after insulating the door - I easily reached 77F/25ºC with an outside temperature of 38F//3ºC. I didn't run the heat-pump at full power, so I'm comfortable that it will give me the heat I need.

Sorry car - this is as long as you get until the Cozy is finished. Come back in 5 years or so...

The heat-pump outdoor-unit

Both temperature and humidity is under control

Closing the gap between the sliding garage-door and the top and side-walls

Closing the gap between the door and the rather rough concrete floor

The glass-fiber cloth-cabinet on top of the epoxy hot-box

The hot-box is heated by a small oven with a thermostat

The door of the cabinet forms the cutting-table

I've marked the cutting-table under the varnish so it's easy to cut straight or 45º. I also have an electric scissors.

A couple of thermometers give me the temperature in the cabinet and the hot-box

The next thing I built was the working-table. It's 4 feet x 14 feet. Takes up almost the whole garage, but I've constructed it so I can cut it in half when I'm finished with the wings.

The top is made of particle-board. Easy to change if I need to.

I also have a smaller work-bench for other type of work

The last thing I had to do was to modify my sticky-stuff dispenser. The one I bought was set up for the West 105/205-system with a fixed ratio of 1:5. I'm going to use Ampreg 20-epoxy with 1:4-ratio. My version of the pump was not possible to modify in an easy way so I had to change the geometry of the lever so that the pistons traveled differently. After some calculations and drawing I found the right position, and just drilled new holes in the lever and moved the pivot-point a bit to the left and down.

The modification works very well

So - now I'm all set up to start. I have not counted hours at this stage, but I've used a lot. Hopefully it's worth it.

The foam is waiting!