Tooling Up – Shop Admin Kiosk

This blog post is a multi-day wrap-up on my Workshop Admin Kiosk desktop build (yes, I make up eccentric names for stuff out of boredom!).

I started off with a quite heavy 4′ x 8′ sheet of Melamine for the desktop. The desktop will measure about 65″ wide by the proverbial 30″ deep. They don’t sell any smaller Melamine pieces large enough to meet these dimensions, and plywood is just as expensive… and softer. So I picked up this beast.

[Note the blue-green foam on the doors. Within the next day or so all that should be covered with the thinner foil looking foam]

I measured and marked my 65-1/8″ x 30″ and cut away, testing my ability to follow a line… note my 2 cut lines are along the back and side that are not that critical. Mama didn’t raise no dummy. Ha!

If you saw how much wood I have on hand, the few prospects for decent trim wood is laughable. The darker 1×2 was some misused (I’m sure…) piece that existed in the workshop when I arrived. The lighter piece? Dunnage from an Aircraft Spruce shipment.

Moving on… the ACS piece was narrower than the other, and oh, crowned as well. So a few rounds on the table saw got them both within acceptable close widths. Or actually heights.

I then mitered the corners. Both ends for the long piece since it came up a couple inches short so I borrowed a short cutoff length from the ACS stock.

After a quick –albeit comical– round on the router table I got some acceptable rounded corners [I wanted a smooth rounded edge, but in my haste left a fancy edge with a minute square edge on the first piece… did the second one to match. Ugh.].

I then grabbed a tube of biscuits and my biscuit joiner and made quick work of getting my football (American!) shaped holes ready for some major gluing action.

Since I didn’t have long enough clamps to go from one end to the other, I did the short side piece last and then . . .

simply set the desktop up on end on top of the biscuit-glued side edge and let it cure overnight.

Since the weather was dryer, I did a good round of painting (in pic below: remaining spots on the left and right showing poles, as well as the area around the breaker panel).

Yes, the area around the circuit panel was cosmetic and took all of 10 min. As a reminder I’m painting the poles to get rid of every last remnant of tar/pitch smell… which was super strong when I first bought the house. Now? You can barely smell it. But leaving areas unpainted definitely lets the odor hang around a bit. Understandably, it’s worse in really hot weather.

I grabbed the blue Kobalt stool (and assembled it) from Lowe’s yesterday so I’d have a good reference for the height I needed to build the desktop support structure, which I completed this evening.

Besides painting, I also did a fair bit of electrical. You can see I swapped out the 1-gang receptacle above the desk to a 2-gang (4 plugs) and also pigtailed power to a light switch that will power a 48″ 1-bar light under the overhang for good lighting in the Admin Kiosk.

In addition, I added a 15A circuit to the power panel (the last available slot) to add a 2-gang box just below the power panel. This powers the mini-fridge and microwave. Coming soon on top of the microwave will be a Kurig for the COFFEE!

I also RE-connected an electrical line extension on the back side of the right wall near the lathe. I had removed an electrical outlet with both plugs filled with what looked like solid mud that was totally inop. I have since replaced that plug and, again, rejoined the line that continues on to the back wall, ending with a 1-gang plug just below the window (behind where the milling machine will be located).

Tomorrow I’ll spend a good hour finishing up the power receptacle mounting at the back of the shop for both 120 and 240 volt power (240 for the mill).

I will then do a quick sanding on the desktop edge before mounting it permanently in place.

I will then turn my sights on finishing up the top foam inserts for the middle double doors before moving on to the last front section of wall left to do on the shop (#9 of 10 wall segment).

Chapter 26 – Seat Cores, Round 2

Today I got the seat cores back from Oregon Aero, which was a bit of a surprise since I knew they were on their way, but they arrived a couple days earlier than the tracking originally stated.

The seat cores 2.0 are a HUGE improvement over the initial versions. All the cushions fit MUCH better —darn near final state— and even the look of them in place is vastly improved.

Alice and Lisa at Oregon Aero worked every tweak I asked them to… here the thinned and “ridgidized” front seat leading edge, the back filled area (yellow) around the fuel selector valve, and simply eliminating the small indentation we were trying to create to allow for the cup holder (not needed).

The front seat upper cushion actually makes visual sense now and looks 10x better as well. It follows the angles of the front seat bulkhead and looks like it belongs. Huge, huge improvement.

Grant it, these are my initial visual observations of course. I will definitely need to do an extended butt-in-seat test again to assess the new mods.

I have to say, my biggest disappointment is the front seat headrest. They thinned it down by a good inch like I asked, and also lopped it in two horizontally at about the midway point, but it’s a mess as far as having any faint semblance of symmetry. It’s just all wonky! Luckily it’s a small piece and should be a quick fix.

Not to be negative, because I am really happy with the results of this last round of tweaks… but I can see that the angle of the uppermost front seat top will have to be tweaked so that the top back edge is reset about 1/2″ aft of where it is now.

That being said, it just all looks SO much better than it did before!

I had them split the pilot’s headrest pad for practical reasons when on the ground. I think this headrest pad will provide me just as much comfort –when I use it– as would one that’s a solid piece.

I plan to mount the lower headrest pad so that it’s fixed in place pretty much permanently. The upper headrest pad will most likely just be velcro’d in place to allow for easy removal.

This configuration will allow me access into the headrest storage without having to remove the entire headrest pad (as before) and, moreover, it gives me a padded stop for the upper part of the headrest to rest on when open.

Ok, so where the front seat improvements were definitely significant, the back seat updates are night-n-day from the state these cores were in before.

The lower seat cushion is significantly wider and fills in the area between the two armrests very nicely now sans the huge gaps on each side that were present before. The added padding material is even visible along each edge.

The freshly tweaked back seat upper cushion is a phenomenal improvement over the first one. It’s significantly wider, which hides the spar storage access opening, and the height is perfect now. Previously it was so short on the top side that the cushion simply fell into the spar storage opening.

I’m very pleased with the job Oregon Aero did on both front and back upper seat cushions. They really made these seat cores look like the custom fit cores that they are!

I also had Alice & Lisa tweak the back seat headrest as well from it’s prior distinct flat spots and angles to a simple curved shaped.

BTW, any slight misshapes or minor alignment issues typically get wrangled in when these cores are crammed into their respective upholstered covers.

Here we have another couple shots of the back seat headrest and the top portion of the back seat upper cushion. Note the height of the back seat cushion… they nailed it!

In the next few days I’ll try to get my keister back in the saddle for a good hour to test fit these cores out.

Now I just have to decide the color(s) for my upholstery!

. . . and of course get the shop in shape for building.

Tooling Up – 8 of 10

Tonight I finished the 8th wall section out of 10 for the workshop.

I had of course been working on this over the past few days, and finished up the insulating part by midday.

As is quite often the case, I needed more supplies so I made a trip to Lowe’s.

Upon returning I finished paneling the wall with OSB that I just bought.

Tomorrow I’ll work on finish re-securing all the power cables, cutting and building the admin kiosk desktop, and finally finish insulating the middle double doors (to the right of this pic).

Getting much closer!

Tooling Up – With extras

The efforts on the shop continue… to borrow a term my Long-EZ building buddy Dave Berenholtz used recently, this pre-plane-building project of getting the shop in shape with the requisite myriad of tasks feels like a form of death by a thousand paper cuts.

But I have turned a corner –literally– and am on the front wall of the shop. Yes, there have been some delays, some self-induced with household/life chores that really needed tending to, but mostly due to spring rainstorms.

Yesterday I insulated nearly the last of the shop ceiling along the finished right hand wall, leaving about a 1 ft x 14 ft strip left to do at the top of the front far left wall.

I wanted to get the shop entry door insulated along with the rest of the walls but couldn’t find the required 1.5″ thick foam. What I did find was 3/4″ thick foam so I ended up doing a double cut for the 3 panels that existed on the door. This added a bit to the time, but I got ‘er done.

I then covered the door insulation with 1/4″ white paneling since I had an extra panel on hand that didn’t get used in the “machining corner.” I also added a handle to aid in closing the door from the inside.

I then moved on to the next section of wall that surrounds the entry door. From the outside this is the front right third of the shop. The only section on the front of the shop that does not have big barn doors.

When I bought the house there was a myriad of junk that was left on these ginormous shelves that inhabit this area of the shop. While I do love storage, 3-1/2′ deep shelves x over 5′ wide was just a bit too much space being scarfed up with non-optimized storage.

I had long ago decided that I was going to convert this to a small office nook, or kiosk, which would have a taller built-in computer table, space for a small microwave, Kurig coffee maker and mini-fridge. It will also be where I house my binders, books, papers, etc.

Here’s a shot of the shelves after a major clean up of all the stuff that was populating them.

A few hours later it looked like this… not only does this give me access to insulate the walls, but it gives me a spot to build a desktop and put every I listed above in place (Uh, yeah, I forgot the stereo!).

The current top shelf will remain and serve as both a very large storage shelf and also the “ceiling” of the office nook. I’m currently undecided but may end up splitting the large top shelf by adding another shelf midway up to the ceiling.

It was getting a bit late so I called it a night in the shop and went back to a Long-EZ related project I had started messing about with last night and a bit this morning:

“J” hinges.

I have a set of these hinges that I picked up from the Cozy Girrrls and they are very nicely made. The pair I have will work fine for securing the front of the aft nose cover, allowing me to open up the back half of the nose like an MG sports car.

However, I need a pair of these “J” hinges (what I call them for my lack of knowing their true nomenclature!) for the front nose hatch, just a heck of a lot smaller than the ones I currently have on hand.

Having recently re-covered some instructional info on how to import a diagram into Fusion 360 CAD, I decided since it was fresh in my mind to finally get to using the Cozy Girrrl J hinges as a template in creating smaller versions for the front nose hatch.

As you can see below, after I modeled up the J hinge I decided to simply print one out on my 3D printer.

Here’s the new full size 3D printed hinge next to the real aluminum one. Below that are 40% versions of the larger standard sized hinges. I’ll use the small ones as a starting point to find the best size hinges to use on the front nose hatch (the small hinge on the right had some clear issues during the 3D printing process, but it will work fine as a size template).

I took this pic below to show my size comparison between the CAD model hinge and the real one, which is underneath this 3D printed hinge.

Tomorrow I’ll be back to work on the shop.

Cleary I’ve busted my “mid-April” estimated completion timeline, but I will trudge on nonetheless!

Tooling Up – Another Wall Done!

Today started out as quite another rainy and blustery day. As was yesterday. I will admit I was able to cobble together enough work sessions to actually finish the right front workshop wall segment yesterday.

Today I finished putting the power back in place on this segment of wall. I still have to run it back to the aft side wall and very aft wall for this circuit.

I also got busy rebuilding the workbench that –although quite strong– was in bad shape both alignment and configuration wise. First of all, just like the narrower workbench I put back into business to the left of this one, I added a lower shelf.

However, once I framed the shelf in –and with a seemingly good break in the weather– I ran to Lowe’s for some more supplies. Mainly 7/16″ thick OSB sheeting so I could cut and install the lower shelf top.

I then pulled all the rusty nails out of the old workbench top boards, trimmed the board ends a bit and installed them back into place. They may not be things of beauty, but these 2″ thick boards are heavy and strong! Since I stole a couple of rows of 2×4 (real ones) from the back of this workbench top to use for framing in the window and the back workbench legs, I replaced them with a section of the original middle roof beam that I took out when I installed the massive middle beams… that allowed me to remove the middle pole.

Since they are bit uneven on top, my plan is to at some point cover all these boards with a nice thick piece of plywood.

Here is the new look of the right end of my shop, with covered walls, new windows, and both freshly refurbished workbenches ready for action!

With this wall segment complete, that leaves the right front wall (where the small entrance door is), the left front wall (the middle is complete), and the front half of the left sidewall to complete: 3 sections total. Of those, the one I’ll be tackling next (tomorrow) will be the most entailed since it involves modifying a large shelf structure that I’ll convert into a work kiosk complete with a desk surface for a computer, binders, papers, etc.

Tooling Up – Lathe Upgrade

We’ve had stormy weather all along the Atlantic Coast, and even as far inland as Tennessee… where sadly a couple of airports got hit pretty hard. This of course makes it difficult to pull all my saws outside to cut wood and foam, without everything getting drenched. What’s worse is that it’s been a bit sporadic, so I’ve had some false starts where I get set up, a few things cut and then come the downpours! …. ugh.

Part of getting the workshop up to speed is to get all the respective capabilities up to speed as well. I have a fair amount of machining and lathe work to do on a bunch of components to finish up the plane. I’m new to machining, and CNC, so there is a steep learning curve that I’m trying to stay out in front of as best possible to get this stuff up and running as soon as the shop is work ready.

As I noted a few days ago, I 3D-printed some PETG parts for the spindle encoder installation on the lathe. This will be an integral part of allowing the Acorn CNC software to control both the speed (RPMs) and direction of the lathe.

Well, with the weather acting as it is today was perfect to engage in indoor activities. So I dusted off my epoxy skills and mixed a few grams of epoxy to then further whip into some wet flox. I used the flox to mount the 45-tooth gear (bottom gear in pic below) and slathered it on to ensure my stringy (fairly normal) PETG encoder spindle-to-gear attachment nub was as strong as possible.

One common issue with adding these spindle encoders to smaller hobby lathes is that once installed, the left side lathe gear & spindle cover can’t be remounted without some modification.

The modification is quite simple actually and only requires drilling a hole a bit bigger than the spindle encoder so it can peek through the cover. Depending on the configuration, the spindle encoder cable exiting the side of the spindle encoder must be contended with… as was the case with my install.

Here is the unmodified left side lathe cover [Note the bottom sticker regarding manual gear switching for threading ops will no longer be needed when CNC is used].

I applied some blue painters’ tape to protect the cover and the hole. I then measured and make my bullseye mark for drilling.

I was very pleased with the way the hole came out, although I was aiming for a certain position to optimize clearance for the cable that I just didn’t quite get.

I wanted the area of the hole closest to the spindle encoder to be around the 2 O’Clock position while the area farthest from the spindle encoder (aka the biggest gap) to be around the 7-8 O’Clock position. Again, to allow the best clearance possible for the cable.

As you can see below, my hole ended up being offset straight up and down: closest at the 12 position and farthest at the 6 position… which is much better than the opposite.

BTW, I used a 1-3/4″ hole saw to make the spindle encoder hole.

Here you can see that I had to make another little notch off the big hole with the Dremel Tool to allow the cover to be reattached without pinching the spindle encoder cable.

One more thing I did that I didn’t get a shot of was trimming the individual wires at the far end of the spindle encoder cable and crimping on D-Sub connector pins.

Overall I’m very happy with this install. It came out nice and clean and the configuration looks like it should work well.

Tooling Up – ACDC Welder (& Wall)

About a month ago Marco and I had lengthy phone discussion in part regarding his current panel upgrade on his flying Long-EZ. One thing that he learned on his latest panel-creating endeavor that was a big wake up call for me: that if using 6061 Aluminum you can go back and fill in any errant holes with a welder and then recut/drill the panel. Marco did an excellent job capturing this new method (new to me anyway…) on his phenomenal blog.

Obviously this allows you to tweak a panel, or any other weldable aluminum component (sadly 2024 doesn’t weld well), almost endlessly to create what you want without wasting entire panels of costly aluminum!  Clearly not having to spend $30-40 + shipping on extra aluminum panel(s) for each subsequent panel version is VERY attractive.  In fact, out of curiosity I just checked Aircraft Spruce for the cost of obtaining one (1) sheet of 0.090″ 6061T6 2’x2′ –the specific panel stock I’m using– which alone is just over $30. However, add tax + shipping and I’m now literally pennies shy of $50. You can clearly see that the cost of each extra panel version in the recut-the-whole-thing method starts adding up very quickly.

The issue I had is that welding aluminum requires a welder with AC TIG capability, typically found on more expensive machines.  I only have a cheap DC machine that does great on steel, but can’t weld aluminum. Well, after a good bit of research I found a really nice and comparatively inexpensive AC/DC TIG welder that I had to wait a few weeks to pull the trigger on until they were back in stock. 

And here she is: the PrimeWeld 225X.

Of the many reviews I read or watched a few ancillary things stood out beyond just the performance of the machine. A) the security in packing is off the charts with a thick foam sarcophagus surrounding the unit itself, while the very thick cardboard box has steel corner reinforcement plates… all totally to a much reduced chance of damage during shipping.

B) the 3 year warranty including the covered cost of shipping on PrimeWeld’s dime if for any reason it must be shipped back for repairs… that’s both ways by the way. Associated with the warranty is 7-day a week LIVE customer service, quite often with the owner himself: Mike. I spoke with him a couple of times and he is extremely helpful.

C) For any TIG welders out there, you’ll recognize right off the bat that these guys are not messing around when it comes to their choice on the TIG torch. CK Worldwide is arguably the best TIG torch out there… clearly big cool points here for PrimeWeld.

Moreover, this biggest negative on this welding rig in the reviews was the pedal, being that it was the standard cheap pedal that comes with TIG welders like my green eBay special. Well, PrimeWeld has corrected that oversight and now ships these guys with a high-end pedal (not shown).

Here’s a shot of the rig as I fired ‘er up for the first time. Hard to tell but the amperage is set on 226.

Since I’ve been spending a bit of coin on both upgrading and outfitting the shop over the past 6 months, I decided to go a bit cheaper on the cart. With a 20% off coupon I walked out of the store with this Vulcan welding cart for about $80 (I also got 10% off the welder too).

I’ll have to check the amount of Argon in my tank, and may need to swap it out for a full one sooner vs later, but I have a bit of time before I really start laying down any serious welds with this machine… as per my nature I just wanted to have everything on hand and prepped when that time comes.

A nice albeit simple feature that this cart comes with is a small “tool” box that I’m using for the consumables.

I modified it a bit by snipping off the right end of the center divider to allow for longer components to be stored in it as well.

The tool/consumables box tucks away into a holder underneath the welder for neat, clean and simple storage.

After spending about an hour getting the welder squared away and test-powered (not including the hour+ I spent assembling the cart last night), I got back to work for a few hours on the workshop walls.

The lower part of the wall presented some challenges near the front shop support pole (which I painted part of, and recoated the center one) with the irregular framing that existed, as well as having to contend with a number of electrical cables that were secured to the existing framing.

I did what I could until later into the evening and then called it a night. I expect another 3-4 hours of work and I should be done with this segment of wall… which will put me at over 70% finished on the walls.

Pressing forward!

Tooling Up – 3D printing for Lathe

We’ve had some real rainy weather here for the last day and a half, which put the kibosh on cutting foam insulation or wall paneling for the workshop wall.

I decided in the same vein as my MIG welder that I would get my 3D printer back online and perhaps it could be productive while I necessarily wasn’t so much.

I needed to print out a mounting bracket for my lathe’s spindle RPM encoder which will be a part of a lathe upgrade that should allow the Acorn CNC software to auto-control both spindle speed and direction. This encoder mounting bracket was designed and drawn up in CAD by a guy named Franco who has a phenomenal YouTube channel on both lathe and mill CNC machining.

For higher strength than the standard/common PLA filament I used some gray PETG. This stuff is on par strength-wise with ABS, so it’s pretty darn tough.

As with my decade+ old MIG welder, I was quite pleased that after fiddling about with the 3D printer for over half an hour to get it online and all associated software programs updated, that it gave me a very decent PETG print (3.5 hours after it started).

At one point Franco was selling kits for these lathe spindle encoder brackets, but has long since stopped doing so. While he had designed, modeled and shared his mounting bracket above, unfortunately he didn’t share the CAD drawing of a required key component that was included previously in his kit: the little nub that mounts to the rotating shaft of the spindle encoder and allows for attaching a 45-tooth gear to it, thus providing RPM data via a 1:1 gear setup.

So…. I then knocked off even some more rust and jumped into Fusion 360 to draw up this spindle encoder’s shaft-to-gear adapter. Here’s a rendered look at this part:

I then picked up some hardware to mount the spindle encoder to the 3D-printed mount.

And then later on this evening I pulled the left side cover off the lathe to reveal the forward/reverse lever and associated gears that would need to be removed before mounting the spindle encoder.

Here the forward/reverse lever and gears have been removed…

And I test-fitted the spindle encoder affixed to its mount, as well as the nub and 45-tooth gear.

Below you can see a bit of the gear mounting bracket, with a M5 set screw on the side of it. PETG is notoriously stringy, and my gear mounting nub popped out of the printer with a fair amount stringiness. But it appears to be super strong.

The only negative I encountered during my test fit was that with the spindle encoder mounted I don’t have enough clearance to mount the left side headstock end cover. Essentially I’ll have to do what Franco did with his Grizzly lathe and that’s drill a hole in the cover large enough for the spindle encoder body to protrude through.

With my test fit a big thumbs up, tomorrow I’ll glue the 45-tooth gear to the mounting nub and install this thing into the lathe permanently.

Tooling Up – Climbing the walls!

I’ll start off by regaling you all with a tale that was quite a startling event . . .

As I approached the shop yesterday to start work, not too far from the door I could distinctly hear the loud sound of rushing air. I could also hear the compressor running. I quickly opened up the shop to ascertain the problem and found right off that one of the connections on the compressed air line system’s upper “T” joint at the center pole had disconnected. After I found the leak, I then shut down the air compressor post haste and opened up the ports on the door to increase cooling air flow.

I don’t know how long the compressor was running —a negative aspect of having the workshop separate from the house— and it was quite hot, but there was no oil leaking. I reset and retightened the air compressor line connection and after a few hours of letting the compressor cool down I fired it back up to test my repair… all looked good after that (so far!). Of course my overarching lesson learned here was turn off the air compressor when departing the shop for the evening!

With the compressor and air lines back online, I then focused on finishing the bottom shelf on the workbench that I pulled from the “machining corner” wall. After finishing the shelf I then moved the workbench into its final position under the white pegboard, located on the left back wall of the workshop. I actually finished installing both this white pegboard and the other one at the right end of shop before setting the workbench in place.

I then got to work stringing up some CAT 5e ethernet cables, one line each from the mill and lathe locations, respectively, to the front of the shop where I’ll have a small admin kiosk with computer(s), printer, binders, etc. I also ran a speaker cable to have a speaker mounted in the back right corner and be able to feed and control it from a stereo receiver also located at the admin kiosk.

With the ethernet lines and speaker cable ran and tacked in place, I then got to work dismantling the workbench located under the window and along this segment of wall.

With the workbench out of the way, I then pulled the last of the old windows (4 in all) out. I framed out the window sill and then mounted the last replacement window in the workshop.

BTW, while constructing the window frame with my framing nailer I tested the air compressor lines by using one compressed air line coupler for a little bit, then switched to another coupler with the nail gun for a while before switching to yet another one. I tested half (3/6) of the couplers and all worked fine with NO leaks and good pressure.

Before it got too late I then cut a few pieces of the 2″ foam insulation and got them up on the wall.

Now, I have a non-airplane build welding project coming up soon and want to knock it out as fast as possible. So I brushed off (literally) my 12-year old MIG welder and cleaned it up. After some very minor maintenance here and there over the past few nights I was finally ready to lay down some metal for a quick ops check.

Out of curiosity I hooked up the Argon/CO2 tank and to my surprise there was still a small amount left. Crazy since the last time I welded with this MIG machine was 2010!

I shot a couple non-noteworthy tack welds on some 1/8″ steel which looked very passible. I’m tickled pink that the welder is operational –by all accounts so far– and I’ll be able to use it on my welding project: a steel framed shelf. Over the next week or so I’ll finish off this bottle of shielding gas and then pick up another one. In addition, I’ll be looking to assess the Argon bottle level as well for my TIG welder and be ready to swap that out if need be.

Tooling Up – Another wall done!

As I mentioned in my project overview post, I’m seeing that each wall section is taking about 2-3 days per section (between the large poles) to complete. That timeline held true with the back right sidewall as well, clocking in at about 2.5 days until finished.

This is wall section number 6 of 10, so in raw numbers I’m 60% complete on getting the walls knocked out. And not a bit too soon either since today was quite warm, but not unbearable without AC. I don’t believe that will be the case in another month, when AC will be pretty much mandatory for working in the shop.

To provide an idea of what section of wall I was working on, here’s before shot of it with the back wall I just finished shown as well.

I cleaned off the workbench since, although a nice robust fixture, it needs to go to make room for tools: specifically the roll-around tool cart with the lathe mounted atop of it.

I started by removing the old window and the “chain link security system” from over the window.

I then framed out and installed the new window.

Here we have the majority of the old workbench removed.

I then got busy filling in the area between the wood purlins with 2″ thick foam insulation. As per usual I then covered the wall with OSB flooring board.

Here is day 3 when I actually finished insulating and paneling the wall segment.

And later in the evening after outfitting this area with shelves, pegboard, a narrower workbench and the centerpiece: the roll-around tool cart that will have the lathe mounted on top of it.

I then assembled a tool cart I picked up a couple of months ago that will hold machining specific tools. I set it in the place in the corner where I had planned for it to go… I’m happy with how well it fits.

I then backed up just a bit to include a shot of the milling machine’s blue base to provide an idea of how the “machining corner” will be configured.

Tomorrow I’ll start on the right front sidewall that is adjacent to –and to the right of– the section of wall that I just completed.

Trudging forward…