CozyWorld.net

The Switch...back

bhassel — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 16:37:00 GMT

I believe the postmark on my Cozy plans envelope says 1999. Here it is early fall of 2006 and I've come back full circle. Along the way, I bought the 'How To Build an Airplane' book (plans for the BD4) and assembled most of the empennage (tail section) of an RV9A. What made me take this journey only to end up right where I started from (or should I say almost started from)?

When I bought the plans in 1999, I really wasn't going to start building right away. I bought the plans because I thought the Cozy was a good design, met my flight requirements/expectations, but mostly I bought them because the desginer, Nat Puffer was in the middle of legal battles with another company. It's a long story that I won't go into here. I mention it only because at the time I'm wasn't sure that Nat would keep selling the plans to the Cozy. I didn't want to get left out if the plans sales stopped.

I was interested enough to go to a couple of meetings of my then local EAA chapter (North Dallas - McKinney, Tx) where I met a really nice fellow by the name of Mike Pollock. Mike was a Velocity pilot/builder that was also building a Cozy. Mike had built and owned the Velocity with several other partners and she was a great bird. Mike had me over to his shop and let me see his Cozy project. Mike had a beautiful build with great craftsmanship. I even got to do a tape lay-up. I went over once or twice more to check out things. It was great and I was really considering actually starting the build. I had heard alot on the email news group about the cozyiness of the Cozy and before I started one I wanted to sit in one.

I should say here that in the beginning when I bought my plans the Cozy builder community wasn't as open minded about modifications to the design as they are now. It amounted to sharpening the stakes and buildng up the fire. I had never built anything before so this was going to be a major challenge and a massive education. I should also mention that I'm a low time pilot and those hours that I do have are spread over decades.

One weekend Mike called us up and wanted to know if Jan and I wanted to go on one of those $100 hambuger rides in his Velocity. We didn't even think twice. We flew over to east Texas somewhere. I can't even remember where. I was struck with love - ok lust. This Velocity was incredible. Mike showed the 'stall' nose bob and I was sold. Mike let me take the controls and I flew just as he had instructed, with the thumb and fore-finger on the stick. Total control. Nothing like the Cessna's or that old Citibra that I flew. I'm not a macho, hanging upside down by my jock-strap type of guy. I like straight and level. When it comes to weather - I'm a coward. Stability was critical. So I kept poking around and studying. I later met Dave Burtrum (sp?) installing the strakes on his Velocity and went over to Donald Hamm's place to check out his Velocity project.

Well Jan and I kicked it around and we decided to go to Oshkosh. In 2001 we made plans to met her folks there. Her dad, Bill was interested in a build project as well. We had both always wanted to go to Oshkosh and this was to be our excuse. I was the typical 'deer in the head light' first time Oshkosh visitor.

The highlights of my visit were daily treks by the Velocity tent, the obligatory stop by Van's (I have a picture of Bill trying on the RV9) and more aircraft than I can remember. I also met Nat and saw his Cozy. I met Steve Wright who was busy showing me Greg Richter's then mazda powered Cozy III complete with that incredible BMA EFIS he was sellig in his tent. I took all kinds of pictures of Greg's bird. Greg later comment that I had better pictures of his bird than he did! Oh well back to the story...

After Oshkosh, Jan and I tried everything we could and the damn calculator just couldn't figure out a way to make the Velocity kit work with our budget. I looked at the BD4 at Oshkosh but decided that for some reason that bird wasn't for me. The more we thought about it the more we started leaning towards a Van's RV9. There was a large support community in the local area of RV builders (try to find an airport anywhere in the continental US that doens't have at least one). Classes were availalbe for learning metal work on an RV intro kit via George and Becky Orendorff at GBI north of Fort Worth. We bought about $2,000 worth of tools, took George and Becky's class and soon we were on the way to building our RV9. You can see our process on the empannage kit at my old web site.

While we were busy pounding rivets rumors of the RV10 were circulating. I still wanted the extra load carrying capability of a four passenger. We like to travel, play golf and were aren't necessarily light packers of luggage. I decided to stall or slow down the building of the RV9 until Van had firmed up the pricing on the RV10 kit. I was hoping that he would just have more kits at the $5K price point. It didn't turn out that way and once again the four passenger/load carrying had to take a back seat (in someone else's plane).

Then life took another turn and our opportunity to return to New Mexico came. This time we moved to Santa Fe, Jan's old home town. I was able to tele-commute my old job for a year to help the transisiton and Jan had found a challenging job as well. The first thing that hit us was the incredible beauty and uniquiness of Santa Fe. The next thing was the incredibly high price of housing (especially after coming form the Dallas market). Plane building really went on hold while we settled in and adjusted to our new life style.

Earlier this year (late spring) I again found myself thinking about building an airplane. Van's kits had now risen from the ~$5k sub-kit prices to $6K. That wasn't likely to be workable for us within the structure of our new environment. I grabbed the Cozy plans off of the top of the bookshelf and started going through them again. I found some great resources on the web, even more than what I knew about the first time. Creative & interesting things were being done and people weren't (always) burned at the stake for thinking out loud about some of the mods. [I should note here that sure there are some that are emotional about this or that but most of the concerns raised are rational, intelligent and knowledgeable people using critical thinking to espouse them. In short they are issues that should be thought about before proceeding].

I still had my epoxy pump that Mike had quietly suggested to Jan "would make a great Christmas gift". I could buy what ever I could afford in foam and fiberglass when I could afford it and press ahead in chuncks of hundreds of dollars instead of thousands. I knew that when it came time to install an engine and then stuff the instrument panel, I'd have the same issues financially with any aircraft. I joined the Central States Assocation (CSA) and soon became the New Mexico state representative. Then I met Lloyd Gimple in Albuquerque, NM that had built and was flying a Cozy MK IV. Lloyd has a beautiful 200 hp Cozy built to plans with the electric speed brake and nose retract. Lloyd spent 4 (probably very long for him) hours with us answering our questions and letting us set in his bird. It turns out that Lloyd's plans number was less than 10 from mine!

Needless to say we were convinced this was the new direction to take.

You can follow our build on the on the rest of the pages of this website.

Oh and by the way, for a real taste of irony, if you look close on Nat's official Cozy web site on the 'Why Build a Cozy' link, you'll find some comments I made to the email newsgroup. Well, I guess it's time I take my own advice - and start building!

The Mods

bhassel — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 18:18:00 GMT

The Standard Mods:

Electric nose gear either by Steve Wright or Jack Wilhelms. There is no way I want to manually crank gear. Plus the plans method does not allow for the aircraft front gear to be extended or retracted while a passenger sits inside.
Electric speed brake
Wider canopy either Todd's Canopies regular Cozy canopy which is wider than the old standard or his Texas Cozy canopy which is wider and taller. The Texas Canopy was built for Jerry Schneider's Cozy and is being offered as an alternative to Cozy builders. Also, I'm looking at other canopy manufactures. I really want a Lancair 360 canopy like Buly's but Lancair won't even talk to you about it. Anyway one thing is for sure; I won't be going the standard canopy!

The Non-Standard Mods:

There's the Cozy Girrrls strakes. This provides more elbow room at the pilot positions and more storage or fuel in the rear strakes. Hard to pass this one up. The Cozy Girrrls IP mod. It adds an inch in height to the main part of the panel. The center section stays the same height.

Dennis Passey's IP and front seat mods. This provides easier egree in and out of the cockpit as well as more leg room. I've already cut my IP to reflect this mod as well as the Cozy Girrrls height increase.

We've sat in a Cozy and while I knew it was supposed to live up to it's name in terms of tight comfort I wasn't prepared for just how cozy the Cozy was. Jan and I were able to sit in Lloyd Gimple's beautiful Cozy, poke around, ask questions, etc. After what was probably a very long four hours for Lloyd we were impressed and pumped. The only down side I saw to the stock Cozy was the width of the cockpit, though Lloyd did mention a need to keep your head cocked to the side with headsets on when flying. He had an original canopy.

It wasn't elbow room or hip room that was a problem. My left shoulder was pushed into the canopy latch rod and then into the longeron. Jan was a little scrunched up as well. It wasn't uncomfortable I just thought more room would be more comfortable. Our plan is to do a lot of x-country in this bird so comfort was imperative. You should know that there has been a very intense discussion on the forum about widening the cockpit. This was not an easy decision to make and certainly nothing to take lightly. By making the cockpit wider I truly am a test pilot. I may be affecting the aerodynamics in an untested manner. There have been others that are flying or close to flying with widened cockpits (3 inches to 6 inches) but this is one of those decisions you make on your own and stand alone. I decided to make the seatback 3 inches wider. Another mod I'll be doing may help to offset the widened fuselage effects discussed in the forum. For now however, this is my decision and I'm hanging out there doing it. DO NOT take this to mean this is in any way an approved mod by anyone - but it's what I'm doing. The easiest and safest way to get a Cozy in the air is to follow the plans!

What's the other mod? A Creative Cozy builder by the name of Chris Esslstyn has developed a 'stretched' Cozy that incorporates an O-540. You can see the results and part of his build site on Marc's web site under Oshkosh Forum Presentations. Anyway, living at an airport altitude of ~6,500 ft in the high mountain deserts of northern New Mexico (Santa Fe) means I'll need some omph to get off of the ground in the summer and make it over those 12,000 ft peaks. I've considered a turbo rotary ala John Slade and the Cozy Girrrls as well as subie turbo. However, Chris's approach meets the criteria for me better than auto-engineering a new auto-engine-conversion installation.

I'll be shopping for an IO540. Add to that the mods done by an Eracer builder which include a Ford Mustang super-charger and things just look better and better.

Retracts? Well if they're built by the Cozy Girrrls and I have any money left (NOT) then maybe be right now I'm thinking fixed gear.

Part 2a - The F22 Bulkhead

bhassel — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 18:22:00 GMT

With the seatback out of the way (just needing a few touch ups) and our technique approved by our local guru LLoyd it was time to move onto F22. F22 is the light green bulkhead at the front of the aircraft shown in the picture below. It actually is built with little ears on the top of each side. These will end up helping to hold the longerons in place during the build in a later chapter. Once set up the ears get whacked off! You'll see the ears during the build below.

This bulkhead was going to be the standard size so it's just a matter of easily tracing out the figure on the plans. Once that is done then it's on to the foam. Here Jan is taking my tracing of the doubler and using a sewing tracing wheel to transfer the lines from the pattern onto the foam.

The curve will need to be done without the use of the ruler. Actually, when I tried this technique I found that the ruler made me a little too confident. Eventually, the tracing wheel would perform an beautiful unplanned/unwanted curve across the pattern and foam. If I did it without the ruler I was slower and didn't have that problem. Jan of course worked without those problems.

We drew over or colored over the traced line with a sharpie. This was to make the puncture marks on the foam easier to see.

Here you can see some of the puncture marks in the tracing paper in the curve before it's colored over by the sharpie.

This is what the marks on the foam look like after coloring in the trace with the sharpie.

Now Jan connects the dots to make the lines easier to see for cutting. She's using a pencil to connect the dots!

Here's the result of the tracings.

The plans page that actually shows the foam cutouts (Chapter 2, Page 5 of the second edition of the plans) shows the F-22 doubler upside down from the way we cut it. We figured why not use the long edge of the foam as the long edge of the doubler? Less cutting! Also even if the foam edge isn't square with the edge I can position the tracing so that the cut edges are square when done.

Time to move on to tracing out the rest of F22. Hey wait a minute...what's with that Van's Aircraft RV9A t-shirt??? Left over from teh old project no doubt! It must be time to start looking for a Cozy t-shirt. Of course I'm not sure we'd want to get them messed up with building. Maybe it's not a bad idea to use the RV9 shirt for building the Cozy...hmmm...

Ok, I can do something besides take pictures! It helps to press hard when you're running the tracing wheel. This will allow you to see the holes from the tracing wheel in the foam.

Here Jan is back to penciling in the tracing line.

We skip ahead to putting together the cut out pieces of foam that will make the F22 bulkhead. Here we've laid the cutouts on the tracing paper to make sure we end up with a properly sized F22 bulkhead. Jan is marking a spare piece of foam for the middle pieces that tie the top and bottom of F22 together. This is done simple because the foam sheets that came in the kit aren't big enough to make the bulkhead out of one or two peices of foam.

We're using the Wayne Hick's hinge method of putting the foam pieces together. This requires that you put a piece of Duck tape fully across the back of the split between the two pieces. When you lift up the pice of foam, the two pieces are hinged together with the tape to open like a book.

Then lay two pieces of Duck tape one on each piece of foam along the edge line on the other side. Notice the ears on each pices of tape to allow you to easily pull the tape off of the foam when done.

Darn another spot where I could use another picture. Oh well, check out the link to Wayne's page above. You prop up the pieces of foam so that they form a teepee exposing the two edges. Lay a small line of 5 minute epoxy (man this stuff will smell up your work area quick - worse than a Texan eating beans and boiled eggs at a beer party). Lay the foam back down and wipe any excess off that creeps out between the two peices of tape. Then remove the two pieces of tape (leaving the back piece on).

Wait 5 minutes (hence the name Smelly 5 minute epoxy). They should be epoxied together!

Now remove the tape off of the back for the foam. Notice now that the two larger pieces of foam and the three smaller pieces are together.

Here's the whole part waiting the last 5 minutes.

We aligned the doubler up on the bulkhead and then drew on the doubler the places we needed to sand down. This will allow us to match up the two surfaces and have one smooth surface with the two pieces.

on to Part 2b!

Part 1 - The Seatback

bhassel — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 15:50:00 GMT

After doing the first practice lay-up in Chapter 3 we decided to just move forward and start Chapter 4. We skipped the confidence builder and the bookend. Ok, it's called a bookend but really!

Oh yeah, the seatback. The seat back is the red part in the picture below.

The first challenge is learning what tools to use and when. At this point we've 5 minute epoxied the two pieces of foam together to make the seatback. The 3" added width wasn't an issue but the height was, hence two pieces of foam. It doesn't really matter whether you glue the foam to the top or bottom, in the end you won't be able to tell.

In order to get the cut correct for the top of the seatback I tried several different approaches; tilting the head on my jig saw, hacksaw, etc. The picture below shows the basic setup. I use the masonite board on top to align the top line of the foam cut. The backside or bottom line is already cut to the prescribed length. The idea is to angle cut between the top line or masontite board and the bottom of the foam. I rough cut with the jig saw and will trim cut with another tool.

In the end Jan's idea worked the best. She went into the kitchen a grabbed her ceramic knife. This is about $80 at a good kitchen store but worth it. Of course I've promised to replace it...soon...honest! You can also see where my rough cut went off a little in the picture below. This was later patched.

The knife gives an amazing amount of control over the cut. While it has a sharp cutting edge you can actually grab the edge and use it as a guide without leaving red stains all over the foam.

Here's another shot showing my rough cut goof. Also notice the extremely fine slice of cut foam you can see on the blade of the knife. To say you can make paper thin cuts would not be accurate, cut paper thin in half and you'd get closer.

A close up of the fineness of the cut and the knife. Also notice the difference between my rough cut and Jan's knife cut.

After a careful handed knife cut you end up with something like this!

Ok, I'm really impressed with the knife cut!

Here we are back to my goof edge. I wish I had more pictures of the repair. Jan used the knife to cut a thin sliver of foam to attach into the goof spot. It worked great!

My first batch of micro. I forgot to do a 1:1 ratio of mixed epoxy to micro so out it went and I made another. I probably could have used it and just mixed more of one solution but since I had never made it before I had no idea what a good batch should look like. Better to be safe than sorry!

We've finished the cut and are getting ready to do our first real lay-up! Since we are going to use the Cozy Girrrls Lo-Vac system we lay down our plastic on the table first. We overlap the plastic rows by a couple of inches to ensure a good seal. Again, this is plastic on a roll we had left over from a move. We bought it at the U-Haul store.

After the plastic comes the foam. On the top, the fiberglass needs to hang over the edge of the foam. That's why the foam appears to hang over the edge of the table; because it does.

We've positioned the first layer of uni and are starting to spread the epoxy. We like to pour it on and squeege it out. (Rememeber this is our first crack at doing this - there may be better ways to do everything!) The squeeges we picked up at the auto parts store. There were 2 each of 3 sizes in the package for a couple of bucks. SOLD!

Another layer of UNI & epoxy. Then add a layer of peel ply, 3 layers of cheap paper towels, add the Lo-Vac hose and plastic on top. Make sure the top plastic forms a seal with the bottom plastic, turn on the vacuum pump, weigh it down and watch the clock.

Eventually I hope to get the garage better organized. At this point I'm searching for everything and almost nothing has it's place. However, I want to get started. I hope to organize as I go. Here's a picture of the Lo-Vac pump with the all important fan blowing up its...ah...open ended chassis.

The scratch test the next morning proved the layup should be done. We had peel-plyed the entire surface and when we took off the peel-ply and looked at the first side I saw some things I wasn't sure about. Some places in the surface looked like this.

Here's another shot. Was it too dry? Did I do something wrong?

I posted a question on the forum to see if I goofed and if I did how could I repair it. http://canardaviationforum.dmt.net/showthread.php?t=3074 It turns out and was later confirmed by Lloyd Gimple (my local down in Albq, guru, Cozy builder/flyer) that the area shown above was alright. Normally if you don't peel-ply the entire surface what doesn't get peel-plied ends up looking like that. Ok, I forgot to wet out the peel-ply. Next time I won't forget.

Here's Jan cutting away the excess fiberglass.

Now it was time to create a trough and fill it with flox for the glass to glass bond. Again it was trial and error on what tool to use. There are probably hundreds of methods that we didn't stumble across that would have been better, but here is how we did the job. Yelp, that's my FienMaster to the rescue!

Here's the result. I probably should have taken out more foam, but everything is a learning curve in Chapter 4.

We sanded the top, mostly with scraps of the foam we had cut off and rounded the corners per plans.

We akso tried the box cutter to cut away the foam from the fiberglass.

We laid up the back side, peel-lied, Lo-Vac'd and cured. When we pulled off the peel-ply there were a couple of areas we didn't like. This shows some of the flox that had run underneath the panel and now needed to be sanded off.

Here's a shot of an area that will need repair. I gues it's called a delamination, the glass is pulled away from the foam.

I saw a few more small places where the foam and glass weren't meeting on the edge. A few more repairs coming.

I sanded up the excess flox and took the seatback to the EAA Land of Enchanment Airshow that weekend to show to Lloyd Gimple for a master inspection.

Lloyd agreed that the side needed some repair but the seatback sides actually end up being taped into the fuse sides in a later chapter. I've seen comments on the forums that some folks feel the seatback side covering is nothing more than a training excercise.&nbs��

The Practice Piece - Chapter 3

admin — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 09:47:00 GMT

I went back and forth. Do we start with the practice piece and use some of my Chapter 4 & 5 supplies for Chapter 3 or do we just dive in and do Chapter 4 right off the bat?

We decided to start with Chapter 3 and see what happens. Jan set out to cut out our the glass for the first Chapter 3 piece - the glass panel. First she cut out a pattern the correct size out of newspaper and proceeded to cut the required number of glass squares for the layups.

Of course she did have some help from Gumbo...

I wonder what this tastes like and who is that coming in to help Gumbo?

Why it's his sister Beignet! This is fun!

We had a roll of plastic wrap left over from our move (man did this come in handy). You can find this at U-Haul and other self move centers. We're using the Cozy Girrrls LoVac system. This requires a layer of plastic wrap on the bottom.

Plastic on the bottom, do the layup, add a layer of peel-ply, about three layers of paper towels and add plastic on the top. The black hose snaking down is the coming from the vacuum pump. This is now ready to cure. NOTE: This was our first time at doing anything. The lay-up, Lo-Vac, etc are all new to us. We probably should have weighed this down.

Additionally, while we were able to document each step along the way of our RV build process this will be somewhat more challenging. You get the gloves on start slapping epoxy on the glass and before you know it the layup is complete. I'd really need to take off the gloves to use the camera (I can't see getting the camera covered in epoxy). This picture taking and documenting will take some practice. This is another angle of the layup.

Here's a little bit better picture of the Lo-Vac pump. I eventually had to rearrage it so that I could use a fan to blow on it to keep it cool. Of course this being our first attempt at it I actually left the pump on for 4 hours. One would have done it.

I decided to bulid a heat tent over the part. Nothing fancy but this worked really well. There's a heater under the table. The temp on top of the table stayed at over 100 degrees. You can see that this isn't sealed by any means but heat rises so the temps stayed up. I actually left vent holes on the side so it wouldn't get too hot.

The Beginning or why we're building a Cozy MKIV Model B

admin — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 08:13:00 GMT

When we finally decided to build an airplane we went through the normal back and forth of looking at the hundreds of possiblities. I had flown the normal bottom end Cessna stable of 150's, 152's, 172's and a 175. After all at one time my dad was in charge of production on several of those models in Wichita. But still I wanted more.

Jan and I love to travel and we tend to pack heavy. We had also discovered the joy of being humbled by playing golf, so the ability to carry our golf clubs was important. Over time I ended up looking at the Cozy design. I joined the email list once I found Marc Zeitland's 'Unofficial Cozy Builders' web site. I studied the FAQ on Nat Puffer's (the designer) web sitel CozyAircraft.com.

At the time the designer Nat Puffer was embroiled in a legal fight ... I really wasn't sure if at any point in time the fabeled plans for the Cozy would go off of the market. So even though I really wasn't ready to start building I bought the plans. My plans number is:

I was living in a north Dallas suburf at the time called Plano. I was already an EAA member so I hooked up with one of the local EAA chapters, Chapter 1246 just up teh road in McKinney, Tx. It was there that I met a great guy by the name of Mike Pollock. Mike had built a Velocity that he flew while he was building a Cozy. Mike invited me over to his shop and proceeded to show me how to do a tape layup in his fuse. He even told Jan which Epoxy pump to get me for a Christmas present. What an exciting Christmas - this was incredibly exciting stuff As a matter of fact - one of my email posts actually made it onto Nat Puffer's CozyAircraft web site on the 'Why build a Cozy' page. Of course the topic of my post was recommending that you just get started building. Well I've long since forgotten how long ago it was that I wrote that post but here we are now - opps I'm skipping ahead.

A few weeks later Mike called up one afternoon to see if Jan and I wanted to go out for a $100 hamburger ride. 'Hell Yes!" So we met up at Mike's hanger at McKinney (TKI). We flew over to east Texas and the ride was incredible. Smooth flying, no stall, beautiful unique flying aircraft - what more could you want? Jan and I both fell in love!

It was off to Oskosh! We met Jan's folks there and proceeded to have fun! We hit the Velocity tent every day and tried not to drool too much. We looked at Van's, Lancair's, Glasairs, met Nat and saw his Cozy. It was a great time!

When we got back home, the magic of Oshkosh dimmed a little and reality started swimming into my mind we realised as much as we wanted a Velocity the kit price was just out of our reach (for this lifetime anyway). Then we made an immediate left hand turn, switched to the darks side and bought the empannage kit of an RV9.

This was fun! Tab A into Slot B everything fit. If it didn't - you goofed! While this was fun the sub-kits were still somewhat expensive (then around $5,000 a kit after the emp). I was still in love with the canard and four passenger, load hauling just seemed to fit with what we wanted to do better. Van's was coming out with a four passenger kit called the RV10. At the time even Van didn't know what the kit price was going to be. As the emp started nearing it's completion I decided to stall, hoping I'd be able to afford the RV10 kit. Eventually, the prices were firmed up and this like the Velocity was out of my reach.

Meanwhile the plans for the Cozy sat on the top of a book shelf. Life rolled on and soon we found ourselves moving to Santa Fe, NM. We love the high mountain desert. Jan was born and raised here. It was coming home for her. Her folks still lived here so we had visited many times. Each time we headed back to Dallas we'd spend the first hour of the trip wondering how we could move back to New Mexico. Then one day it just happened. Anyway, Santa Fe is considerably more expensive than Dallas was so even finishing the RV9 seemed unlikly.

One day I was sitting around thinking about building and I went and grabbed the Cozy plans and started to revisit them. There seemed to be a lot more support on the web for the Cozy now. Marc's site was still up as was his email list but in addition there were a lot more builders web sites up as well. Along with forums and wiki's.

There were exciting new innovations being done by builders on the original design and people were supporting each other doing them.

Let's see, I could follow in the footsteps of others, I could have the same kind of support community that the Van's series was famous for and I could buy pieces parts as I can afford them. It's a four passenger (well as long as the two in teh back are small). Ok I don't really plan on flying four people all the time, but we do like to travel and we tend to pack heavy. It's fast so all of those places I want to go to and people I want to visit on both coasts are accessible. I don't have to take my shoes and belt off at the airport, I don't have to arrive two hours early, I don't get prodded with an electronic beeper, hmmm... This is a done deal.

We're finally Cozy builders!

The 'Shop'

admin — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 06:48:00 GMT

When we started building our RV9 our garage was bigger, I had installed 8 foot high-ouput florescent lights, had hung peg board on the walls, put in 30 amp service on each wall of the garage, ya-da, ya-da, ya-da.

Now our garage is smaller; the lighting at best is weak, the electircal service is normal. I'll have to up-grade as I go if I ever want to get started. Let's there's the lighting, paint the walls, put up peg board, add new electrical circuits...

The there are these florescents mounted on the wall - what's with that???

Of course Jan's Porsche still must have some room - I guess my bimmer will stay outside...

We got really lucky when it came to building the work table. First off, I was amazed at how many people build a three hundred pound gorilla table that takes a fork lift to move. My back just wasn't up to the task. I decided I was going to use aluminum framing with plywood on the top. It would still be heavy but it should allow me to move it around without putting my back on pain killers for a week.

But wait... Jan's dad, Bill had started a builders table for a project he was going to build. He decided not to pursue that project and this table was just sitting in his garage taking up space. We of course were really happy when he let us use it! Talk about a well built project table! Here I'm letting Jan rest up before we start tackling putting together the table.

Here's Jan counter-sinking some of the table top screws.

The Epoxy Hot Box Build

admin — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 22:54:00 GMT

Epoxy Cabinet

Anyone cruising the net of Cozy builder sites can see some great looking epoxy hot boxes. While I don't have extensive wood working skills I decided to build my own box like everyone else.

We went to the local Aircraft Parts Store/Depot/builders supply center to look for wood and parts to build the the epoxy hot box. I don't know if it's because we live in the high mountain desert and we're just far away from where the lumber is produced but OUCH! Figuring out the final bill for the epoxy hot box makes it look like I may need to shave off a chapter from my first parts order.

We wondered around the store for awhile and then stumbled upon this cabinet for sale for $49.99.

This looked like a viable solution without setting me back a Chapter in my order. Next we went back to the isle that holds all of the foam insulation, some wire, bulb socket; this can work!

Putting the cabinet together wasn't difficult so I strarted stuffing it with foam. 2 inch foam on the bottom and top. I put 1" foam on the sides. Since I had already mounted the light (not thinking about how far the 2" foam came out form the side wall, I figured 1" foam would be perfect!

I had to go to a different hardware store to pick up a thermostat that could handle AC. Most thermostats at the local Aircraft Supply store have DC thermostats. Naturally the DC thermostats do everything but fly a plane and are priced accordingly. However you can't wired them directly up to an AC line cord. I picked up this AC thermostat for $15.00. I mounted it on the side wall and wired it in.

Now it was time to install the shelf. With all that foam eveywhere I had to have some way for the heat to circulate in the epoxy cabinet. Time to pull out the drill. Jan drilled the holes in the shelf and this is what it looked like.

The front doors were hollow but it looked like I could slide in some 1" foam. - Yes it works!

Time to start putting it together!

Ok, this cabinet isn't exactly the marvel of modern engineering accuracy! The back has gaps in it where the center piece mets up with the back sides.

Here's a close up of the gaps.

Time to RTV all the holes!

Here's the end result. We'll see how well it works through the coming winter!