Well there is a lot of work to do with the kits once they arrive. The first thing is opening the crate carefully as to not damage anything, remove the packing list, and then start to dig through the packing material. Van's does an exceptional job of packaging so much stuff into these crates very carefully. They use lots of tape and paper to secure everything so there is little to no movement of the parts during transit. As long as the crate stays intact (thats the big part), there seems to be a small chance of damage. A few things I've noted:
- Look out for the shipper to mis-orient the crate. My one crate arrived on its side despite clear markings for which side up..... and the truck was empty otherwise so there was no reason for it.
- Look for damage on the bottom and sides, the forklifts can do some good damage if they aren't careful.
- Open and unroll all the packing paper, they wrap things up and you don't want to throw away a part by accident.
- When inventorying the larger parts, you will come across a few items that are not labeled. These are mostly angle iron, tubes, and some other odd parts. Set them aside and finish the rest of the inventory. Once this is done, then compare the remaining few pieces to the inventory list. It will be pretty easy to identify them at this point. Then take painters tape and label the item with the appropriate part number for later.
- Another item I found helpful was to mark out where you put things. Depending on your workspace, you should have bins or shelves that are labeled. Then mark on the inventory where these items are for easy location later.
- I had one part which was "warped" but its due to how the part is pressed in the punch at production. Since I am doing the wing kit first, I have not received the first part of the manual and need to download the details for straightening in section 5.
I spent about 5 hours or so doing the small hardware alone and probably two hours doing the main kit pieces and subkits. This took up the majority of the inventory time overall separating out the mixed bags and putting everything into storage bins. I found the Harbor Freight bins really helpful for this. I think the small bins are probably the most useful but I had purchased a few of the medium ones. They are a bit big for some items, but I'd rather have the space for later when we get into bigger items like fuselage parts. As well, my tail kit is expected next month so I will be hopefully combining some of the rivets and bolts into one bin for easy storage.
I'll update this later with some pictures of the bins and how I marked things for reference. Until next time.
