by ddemasie on Thu Mar 17, 2016 9:45 am
I built mine inside a 2 car garage - with Pocketship on one side. I placed it about 4 feet from the back wall - and about 3 feet from the side wall. The bow fit into the garage comfortably (maybe 2 feet of clearance) - though I I did not have any room to add the Bowsprit without opening the garage door. I could walk all the way around the boat with the garage door closed.
I keep all my small/hand tools in 2 different rolling storage units that I fit in the space behind Pocketship when I was not building. I was also very 'intentionally organized' and was willing to do a short cleanup and reorganization after each building session - that allowed me to park one car in the other bay almost every night (Pocketship on the right, car on the left so I was not bumping it with the driver side door every time I got in or out of the car). The exception was when I was building or curing large parts (spars, mast, etc) and needed to leave them out for a long period of time. I think throughout my build I had to leave my car outside maybe 10-15 nights total.
I also used a electric leaf blower after each session to blow the epoxy dust, sawdust, etc out of the garage. It only took about 90 seconds for a quick dust-off but it was well worth it to keep that stuff from accumulating inside the garage.
One more comment on sharing the building space with a car - I kept the car outside (parked on the street) whenever I was sanding, building or painting. And I washed the car frequently - with all the sanding of hardened epoxy, the whole space gets covered in epoxy dust even if you take care to try to clean it up every time like I did. I wanted to keep the epoxy dust off of the car finish as much as I could.
The only large tool I used was a 10 inch bandsaw - that found a corner in the garage for storage when not in use.
Most of the plywood, or not yet used milled lumber was stored along the garage walls, or inside my townhouse in a storage room.
When I embarked on building sessions, I would move my car out, roll the tools to where I could easily access them, and set up 2 B&D Workmates as my working areas. I would usually use some scrap plywood to fashion quick working tables that were temporary, but very stable for doing the bench projects. I had a full car garage space as my work area.
During the winter, most of the stuff just stayed in the garage, though I always brought the epoxy resin and hardener inside as soon as the garage temp fell below a constant 60 degrees.
In retrospect, I would suggest reinforcing the base of the building cradle, and putting casters on the bottom of the cradle to allow you to move Pocketship around a little inside the garage in the cradle - I wish I had done that.
Dennis DeMasie,
Aurora, IL