The workshop and stuff

It’s been a really long time since I posted here on FlyBoyJon. I have been posting sporadically on Facebook and at my new haunt LumberJocks and you may be thinking “what’s up?”

Here’d the deal, Aviation is my primary focus in career and for pure enjoyment. I am also a toolmaker who really wants to improve his skills. One of the ways I have made a living in the past was in tool repair. It is something I also enjoyed very much. Throughout my life I have always made or modified the tools I was using at work and at home, so it would be no surprise that this tradition continues in aviation. Building jigs and other job aids is very common in the experimental world as is making and modifying tools to meet the task at hand.

So what does all of this have to do with, well, anything? I have been in A&P school for a year and a half. I have earned my Airframe Mechanic certificate from the FAA and I am over half way through my powerplant program to add a Powerplant rating to my mechanic certificate.

That’s great but what happens when you get your Powerplant rating? That’s a good question. What I really want to do is restore aircraft that were made from 1915 to 1935, or there abouts. It is however not likely that I will just fall into a gig like this right out of school so I need to get something going while I work into what I really want to do. There are a number of components that I can overhaul like magnetos and carburetors, or a variety of things that  don’t require a hangar or large shop.

All this means I need to get the work and clean up the shop and get it set up to do some real work.