Stand Anchored and Wings Hanging
Happy Labor Day! I love working in banking as I get a free week of extra vacation with all the Federal Holidays. I started the day by taking care of the lawn. That took most of the morning. I have to stay on top of the “Honey Do’s” and my son that usually mows the lawn spent the night with his cousin up north and likely would be gone all day. Once the lawn was looking better than the local golf courses ;-), I headed out to the shop.
Big day in the RV Factory. I finished prepping the stands and made the hard choice to just drill my floor and anchor the stands. Once the first hole was drilled, the rest seemed easier to do. I drilled the holes in the corners of the base plates, drilled the floor, dropped in and set the anchors, then bolted the stands down. Once secured, I set the skeletons on the stands. I think I made the right choice, the stands are VERY stiff and secure. These should make for very straight wings.
I set the stands in the middle of the shop and about three feet apart. I figure this should give me plenty of room to get around and between the wings as I work on them. Times like these make me glad I built my shop with good depth.
It was time for dinner so I needed to head off to the grill to burn some patties. Once dinner was complete, I set out to make the center support blocks to take the sag out of the wing structures. They are simply some 2″ x 4″ blocks with some all thread and nuts/washers that can be “micro” adjusted like the stands themselves. All in all, a good day! Now I can start the skin work.
No pictures. I simply attacked the now sandblasted, and painted wing stands that my neighbor generously helped me out with. Pays to know a custom auto body painter!
I will likely do a writeup on the stands as I have been asked by several people to describe them. Basically, I ripped off Rudi Greyling from South Africa. I used his design as a starting point and then made some enhancements I thought would make them a bit nicer. I am not sure if the enhancements made them better, but they seem to be sufficient to me.
I added the horizontal angle, all thread, brackets, and hardware. It took most of the day and a few trips to the Lowes Aviation to get the stands to where I needed prior to use. The one remaining question was how would I attach them to the floor?
I have not liked the idea of drilling my brand new shop floor, so I added what I thought would be a solid base so I could perhaps liquid nail the base to the floor and then cut them off and clean up the residue when done. I have seen where some have glued blocks to the floor with success, but not metal stands. I set up a test of some scrap steel and some concrete to see if it would hold. It did not. With little effort, I was able to separate the parts.
I also thought about all the temperature fluctuations my shop sees. I would hate to have my wings in the stands and then come into the shop and see that the cold had caused the adhesive to snap free of the base of the stands and my wing was on the floor.
In the end, I think anchoring the stands to the floors with concrete anchors is the best way to go with the least risks. I plan to finish the floor anyway and when I am filling the expansion joints with the self leveling filler (designed for allowing the flex) I will simply fill these holes too and then epoxy the floor. Once done, you will never know the holes were there. It got late so the anchoring will have to wait until Monday.
