This bench will be made from a 166 year old white oak tree that died in Mike Nill's neighbors yard.  Mike has a lot of white oak on his place as well and thought it might be nice to make something of it before it decayed.  See the completed projects for the first bench that we made.  Here are the raw materials that have already been milled and dried in the kiln.

Well there is a story here.  My brothers Phil and Gary, and I traveled to Vancouver to pick up a bunch of kits that were all Zenith 801 kits.  I bought all of them together.  I borrowed a trailer from Mike Janeski and I told him I wasn't sure if the kits would all fit in it but he said go ahead and take it.  If they are too long just cut a hole in the front of the trailer.  I ended up having to do that and it was a bit interesting when crossing the border from Canada.  The border guard was a little bit interested because the tail section was sticking out the front of the trailer.  There were 4 rudder kits, one wing kit, one fuselage kit, Three horizontal stabilizer kits, and the landing gear.   We had spent two days inventoring it and as I recall Lady Gaga was in town so there were no places to sleep.  The guy and his girlfriend that sold it to me let us stay at his house over night.  We left bright and early the next morning to get on the road back to Kansas City....about 5000 miles.   A couple of the kits  had been started but not much work done on them at all.  I started working on the rudders and the horizontal stabilizer and completed all of them.  Then some time passed and I purchased an engine for the plane and started to work on it again.  I got the engine at the Leavenworth airport (Sherman).  It is an IO-360 200hp lycoming engine freshly rebuilt.  I believe it came out of a Mooney.  Now I am retired so I have more time to work on it.  I now have the Fuselage almost completed.  Need to put windows in it.  Instrument panel will likely be last.  Wings are done except for attaching them.  Controls are plumbed in but need to finish the cabling as I attach the rudder and stabilizer.  The engine is mounted and I need to put the cowling on as well as the baffling to keep the air flowing well.  I ordered the propeller.  I decided to put a 3 bladed prop on because it is slightly shorter so better for ground clearance.  Should be the same performance as the two blade but there will be three compression waves instead of two so it won't be quieter but might be smoother.