(Dis) Organization by Bob Collins

(Feb. 24, 2007) -- A few months ago, I took notice of an article Scott Spangler wrote in the EAA magazine, Sport Aviation, in which he visited an engine manufactuter for a weekend assembly workshop.

The article was interesting and well encompassed the trials and tributions of building an airplane engine, but the one element I took away was this tidbit: the workers put away each tool immediately after using it. How you organize your workshop and how you organize your tools, it suggested, indicates the quality of work you do.

Great. Just what I needed: another chance to feel like an inferior builder.

I am not a slob. I am not disorganized. I am somewhat methodical now. And yet, there are times when I've got stuff scattered all over the place. Don't get me wrong, I try to have my workshop look like that beautiful workshop/hangar the EAA used in the From the Ground Up series. Every file put back, not only where it belongs, but in descending order of size. But it just doesn't work out that way.

Maybe it would be different if I had one of those spiffy workshops -- airplanes only -- like you see exhibited at AirVenture, but, alas, I have a garage in suburbia -- a two-car garage. And I have two cars; one of which hasn't seen a roof over it since the day it left the assembly line.

From time to time I clean and organize the garage, but life gets in the way. Just last weekend I was working on the canopy release mechanism in the workshop that I distinctly recall cleaning a month or so ago. But before I could get to the bandsaw and drill, I had to clean up all wood and crud off the workbench from when I repaired my mailbox -- expertly destroyed by some kids driving by with a baseball bat recently. As I recall, it was 10 below zero and the garage door was open when I was making a part and then running across the street to fit it, and when I was done with the fix-it job, I was more interested in getting inside to restore circulation in my hands then putting things away. Plus I also might've been frazzled when I used my mitre saw to cut a piece of wood and did a fine job slicing the power cable. Suffice it to say, the workshop was messy.

When the finishing kit arrived, I created a spreadsheet (which you can find here, by the way) of where every part was located in my house and garage and I needed to find the spacer blocks for the mechanism. It was in Section 3 (I name each section of every shelf), which was a section of a shelf high up on the garage wall. First, I had to climb over, several boxes of toys my wife collected for some children's mental health centers in the Twin Cities, around my son's motorcycle, which showed up a month ago to spend the winter -- apparently he didn't have room in his garage, then climb around the tail of the 7A, and -- since there's no room for a ladder -- I had to step on the snowblower with one foot, while placing another foot on the rear deck... well, after moving the tarp that covered my compost pile last summer, and tossing all the cushions that were on the deck furniture. But eventually I got it and started making the various parts.

There was no room to work on the workbench, though, as the last bag of stuff I bought from Home Depot was on it, so was the little contraption I made at the EAA wiring workshop in Oshkosh last month, some soda bottles with frozen substance in it that came out of my wife's car, my socket wrench was strewn about -- along with that darned 11 mm socket that keeps falling out -- a broken bandsaw blade, and a big pot of stew that my wife put out in the garage (the refrigerator was full) a few weeks ago.

There was no room to work, so I retreated to the sanctity of the old family room in the basement, which now houses wings, control surfaces, and lots of boxes of various avionics, seats, and other stuff that I've purchased over the last few years. It also doubles as the place we dump the laundry when it comes out of the dryer.

OK, so you got me, I'm not as well organized as I could be. But I want to be. I'm rather like Monk when it comes to cleaning, but I just can't keep things where I put them.

Every now and again, when there's nothing else to do, I'll start trying to recreate the perfect workshop and start putting stuff away, but it doesn't last.

A couple of years ago, I must've posted a picture of something I was doing in the workshop because I got an e-mail from somebody who said, basically, "your workshop is a mess. How can you get anything done?" He was right of course, and I remember his words of wisdom every time I head out to get something done.

And vow again, to be better organized, or stop reading my e-mail someday.

Note: This week's issue is a bit sparse. I realize that and I'm sorry. I've been in Boston for most of the week, doing a couple of seminars at the Integrated Media Association convention. Between that, and the work required at this time of the year covering the Minnesota Legislature, there hasn't been much time left for patrolling Planet RV. This is where I need your help -- and may I say, desperately. I need you to send me links of bulltin board postings are aviation articles that you find interesting. This includes building tips, calendar items -- anything posted anywhere you think other people might like to read. I sure appreciate your help in keeping the Hotline coming.