Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

Thanks for the advice--That is the decision that I was coming to as well. The side walls just seem too tall not to have the support of wooden spars. I will probably use 6-8 1x3s placed on end.

Well over the weekend we got the walls sanded and seams taped with drywall tape and gripper. Looking good but forgot to take pictures until we got things stacked away again in the garage. We are also marking the floor for walls, bed, benches and front shelving and planning for hard contact needs, door and windows. Our plan is to canvas walls horizontally and add overlapping strips of canvas to seams where sections are joined.

While my pictures posted, twice I tried to submit my thoughts and it keeps saying I have to be logged in. Once I tried to post directly and once I saved it as draft. they were not saved or posted and I was logged in. What am I doing wrong?

Try deleting your tnttt cookie and logging in again …

Well, here is my third attempt to document progress. Hope it goes through this time!

It has been an important planning feature that we canvas the foamie sides flat and glue them together with canvas strips at the end. We did rabbit ear cuts along the roof line so the roof edges would not be visible from the sides. Also, our fenders are notched pretty close to the actual fenders and it would be easier if we didn’t need to take the fenders off again. After committing ourselves to this process I found extensive discussion about canvas shrinking and foam boards warping if the foamie isn’t put together before the walls are canvassed. I pretty much read everything I could find about the subject and made some observations that informed my choice.
First, some people’s canvas shrank and some people’s didn’t. Some people pre-shrunk the canvas and others thought it took away from the overall tightness of the skin. While I am not an engineer, I do know a thing or 2 about fabric having sewn for years. Purchased garments that could shrink or lose shape have labels that read DRY CLEAN ONLY. The amount of water used seemed to be a determining factor for the amount of shrinkage. The less water used, the less the canvas shrank. Interesting! If someone was going to avoid shrinkage there were good suggestions, including skinning the inside before skinning the outside, weighing down the foam or doing things to provide structural support, and not gluing all the way to the edges.
After factoring in all this information, I took a deep breath and we dove in.
Here is what I decided to do:
1. Skin the inside walls with fiberglass screening and gripper. (we plan to finish the walls with cork later). The skinning really strengthened the inside walls so we decided to screen the outside walls too. (we did not want to deal with warped walls!)
2. I planned to stop gluing 3 inches from edges due to our rabbit ear cuts. I didn’t want those messed up.
3. We added ½ cup of water to the gallon of TBII. When we applied the TBII with a roller, we noticed the glue went on easily and pooled in the spaces in the screening. The canvas readily grabbed the texture of the screening. The canvas was applied with no air bubbles except around the metal contact pieces for the door that was somewhat raised. A putty knife took care of this. Canvassing took less than 2 hours a wall. Also, notable, the only place we didn’t have screening was under the wheel wells. When the glue was applied here, the canvas skated across the slick glue and I had to paint glue on top of the canvas to get it to stick. If that is what smooth foam is like to work with, I am so glad we happened upon using screening under the canvas. It was so much easier to work with!
4. Since we had no shrinkage, we went ahead and glued all the way to the edges with no shrinking, warping, or distortion of any kind. This process for applying canvas horizontally was simple and easy!
5. If all goes according to plan, the canvas parts will not get wet until it is all painted after the final assembly. Then hopefully we will achieve that tight like a drum skin all the way around.

If you compose a long post and it fails on the "submit", use the back button and it should bring you back to the composition page without losing your text.

For longer posts I tend to use a separate text editing app (word or similar) and then cut and paste to the forum. That way I can also keep a backup log of my project, and don't lose anything to timeouts.

I also find by using Firefox web browser I do not get as many timeouts.

Well it has been awhile since I have posted. We have been busy working on the foamie. Weather for foamie-building is interesting in Albuquerque. During the spring there are the winds which require sheltered areas for working. The summer has been hot, hot often 90's-100's. Now it is cooling down at night but the monsoon rains are here in the afternoons or evenings. The side walls are canvased and stored in the spare bedroom. We are finishing up bed and benches and front shelves in preparation for attaching the sidewalls. We have also kerfed the roof pieces but are waiting to fit and glue them until sidewalls are up. We are almost ready for the sidewalls and am hoping for dry weather next week so we can take that on. Pictures to follow.

One thing I love about foamies is that there are so many ways to build them. I am sure the build would go faster if we had more experience--but there is something lovely about figuring it out as we go along. This is such a creative process and a nice break from the type of work I do at my job. We are learning patience and trusting the process. With each part we add, the structure becomes more solid. Our project has peaked interest in the neighborhood and we are getting to know the neighbors.

Nice work Jana! I too am building my first foamie, and I applied the inside skin horizontally. I used a Warner 250 wall paper removal tool to pockmark the foam surface, making hundreds of little dents for the undiluted TB2 to seep into. Then I applied the pre-washed bedsheet, smoothing out creases and air bubbles with a credit card (best use of a credit card imho). Worked out great.

I didn't skin the outer sides of the walls because I was under the impression that I would want to assemble the structure first, so that I could overlap the wall skin onto the roof about 6 inches to really clamp and seal the unit together. But if just reinforcing strips will work, I'm all for it.

Good luck!

The thing to do is have FUN while you’re building it , and while you’re using it . Take your time and enjoy the journey …

At long last I have photos of our build.

The forum has been so helpful in this build. We got the exterior lights finally wired today. It was very helpful to read the trouble shooting info linking lights from tow vehicle to trailer. We didn't realize that a trailer kit with pre-painted parts needs each individual light grounded to the trailer. Once we did this the lights worked beautifully. We are still working on the inside and some of the inside wiring. It has been many months but the end is in sight. Thanks so much for this forum!!!