Europa Weekend Workshop

Setting up my workshop

March 2008

Having moved house following a change in my personal circumstances, I am now working in a single, albeit reasonably long, garage approximately 7m x 3m. It's going to be a bit of a squeeze, but should be OK as we also have a large shed at the bottom of the garden that I can use for storage. I am also fortunate that there is a large workshop available at the airport in Cambridge which is available for LAA builders, so I might be able to use that for anything that I can't handle at home. I have insulated and dry-lined the garage so I should be able to keep it warm without spending a fortune on heating.

March 2000

When we rebuilt our garage a few years ago, we added an area to use as a DIY workshop and when we decided to build a Europa, this was the obvious place to do it. However, having done some careful measuring, I decided that the workshop was not big enough. Consequently, I have had to knock through into the garden shed at the back and move all the garden stuff into the summer house. This has also meant that I have had to insulate that part of the building and put a decent floor down. But at the end of the process I will have a workshop approx 8m x 3.5m which should be plenty big enough.

Plan of the workshop (yellow areas).
Workshop during reconstruction.

July 2000

Well, it has taken much longer that I had anticipated to get the workshop into shape. It wasn't just getting the room ready, but building cupboards, the bench, etc. And then just when you think you have everything ready, you think of something you have forgotten, like the extractor fan. But I think I am now ready, apart from a metal bucket with a lid to keep the MEK in. Below is a picture of the workshop as it is now with pictures of the bench, the cloth cupboard and the resin cupboard.

The workshop as it is now.

The bench top is 18mm (3/4") MDF with a subframe of 90mm x 44mm (4" x 2") timber. The timber needed a bit of planing to get it flat so that it did not distort the top.

The Cloth Cupboard is a copy of the one that Europa have at the factory. The front folds down to form a cutting surface. The surface is marked with lines at 90° and 45° to make it easier to get the right angle on the cut.

I am very pleased with my resin cupboard. Many previous constructors have said that it is important to keep your resin at the correct temperature, so this is my variation on how to do it. The cupboard is lined with 50mm (2") polystyrene insulation material. The resin pump sits on a slatted shelf with a small heater underneath. The heater is actually a winemakers heating tray. You can get it from homebrewing shops, or Boots in the UK. It only produces about 20W of heat, but this is more than sufficient to keep the cupboard at the recommended 20°-25°. I started without a thermostat at first, but found that on hot days, the temperature got up to 30°, so I have installed an ordinary room thermostat that keeps the temperature below 25°.

	The workshop as it is now.
	The bench top is 18mm (3/4") MDF with a subframe of 90mm x 44mm (4" x 2") timber. The timber needed a bit of planing to get it flat so that it did not distort the top.
	The Cloth Cupboard is a copy of the one that Europa have at the factory. The front folds down to form a cutting surface. The surface is marked with lines at 90° and 45° to make it easier to get the right angle on the cut.
	I am very pleased with my resin cupboard. Many previous constructors have said that it is important to keep your resin at the correct temperature, so this is my variation on how to do it. The cupboard is lined with 50mm (2") polystyrene insulation material. The resin pump sits on a slatted shelf with a small heater underneath. The heater is actually a winemakers heating tray. You can get it from homebrewing shops, or Boots in the UK. It only produces about 20W of heat, but this is more than sufficient to keep the cupboard at the recommended 20°-25°. I started without a thermostat at first, but found that on hot days, the temperature got up to 30°, so I have installed an ordinary room thermostat that keeps the temperature below 25°.