David P Williams

Hand swung many Austers, Tiger Moths, Stampes and Chipmunks. Scariest was the 450hp Pratt & Whitney engined Stearman with an 8ft plus prop.

There should be two joiners, one for the upper wing and one for the lower. They are aluminium bar about an inch by 1/8th of an inch and probably a couple of feet long.

Yes my wife asked “Why don’t you just put up a shed inside the garage?”. Not a totally mad idea, but height/headroom/garage door intrusion would be a problem.

Only 3m as only doing half the garage, but it will still be tricky

First flights at my new club after moving house. It’s actually the club I was with before I moved house the last time 16 years ago except that now I’m only a 5 minute drive from the patch. Perfect weather today too.

Ron - “joist” component of the trusses is 70 x 35. I think as suggested it’s going to have to be a reasonably substantial stud wall dividing the garage then one or two reasonably substantial cross timbers to support the trusses. I just need to try not to reduce headheight too much. Maybe put the cross timbers above the trusses and attach the trusses to them with joist hangers?

Thanks Ron. To be clear, I’m not intending to make a ceiling that I can walk on, just to board and insulate it so that I can slide models and kits on top from the open side of the garage.

Thanks again everyone for lots of useful information. I should declare that I'm not a complete newbie to workshop building as I converted an old single garage at my previous house. Single block walls but attached to the house on one side and with a flat roof, so it was just a matter of constructing frames inside three walls stuffed with 50mm Celotex and 100mm Celotex in the ceiling. It was plasterboard lined as I was being helped by a local builder who was happier using that and could plaster, so he skimmed out the whole thing. It ended up like this, I was really sorry to leave it - The main reason for my post was to seek info about dividing a double garage in two and dealing with the flimsy roof trusses which unhelpfully run front to back. The layout is like this - I only want to convert half the garage, as the other half will be as Nigel says - storage, messy work, DIY stuff etc and maybe even another kit car or old MG or something. I don't want to make the workshop on the right hand side as the wall is half full of electrics. I'm happy about insulating the side and back walls as I did for my previous workshop (but using ply or OSB), but I'm struggling to work out how to introduce sufficient strength into what will be the flat ceiling to support boarding and insulation. The roof trusses look really flimsy, it's an almost 6m span and the truss frames are 70mm x 35mm and all held together with those perforated joining strips. I'm not a builder or structural engineer but they look barely strong enough to support the roof. Am I being unnecessarily pessimistic?

Yes I will seal the floor or maybe just put some cheap vinyl down. I priced up epoxy floor coating but it’s a bit eye watering. Cant really do the diesel heater. The wall on that side of the garage and that half of the back wall is the boundary to the neighbour’s garden, and the other side of the back wall has my air source heat pump against it.

Thanks kc, that’s the sort of thing I was thinking of but maybe using ply or osb to line it so fixing things to the walls should be easier than having to hit studs.

I've just moved into a new build house that has a detached double garage. My artist wife has first dibs on a garden building for a studio so I'm allowed to convert half the garage to a workshop. Photos of the space below. I would like it to be comfortable for winter building, so need to insulate it as it's single brick thickness walls and will need to build a partition wall down the centre of the garage. It's an apex roof with those skinny pre-fabbed roof trusses with a near 6m span that come with dire warnings from the builders about not putting heavy items on them. It has very nice electric sectional doors which are insulated and seem to seal nicely but intrude into the space quite a lot. It has a nicely finished smooth concrete floor. It would be nice to be able to use the storage space in the roof for models/kits/materials etc. Has anyone done a similar conversion? How did you go about it? All ideas/suggestions/advice/warnings welcome. Thanks, David

Tried to build one, fuselage and tail OK, wing not so good. You’re supposed to glue the wing outline components together then soak and pin down over the supplied camber jigs. Unfortunately the “balsa” that the supplied wing frame components were cut from was more like oak, and the glue I used was not waterproof enough, so I gave up in frustration and eventually lost interest and sold it.

And spare parts are non-existent. I have an ME108, fibreglass and vac formed parts are very flimsy. When I enquired about spare parts the distributor, Macgregor, told me they didn’t stock spares as “there’s no call for them”

Well Steve the Evolution Models website has some clues

I'm in the process of buying a new build house with air source heat pump, underfloor heating, solar panels, storage battery and EV charger already built in, and the house has been designed around all that. After reading all this I'm hoping I'll be warm enough!