Lance and Becky's Sagwagon

[Oldragbaggers]

Thanks everyone. Excited isn't the word. I can hardly sleep at night thinking about the next steps. I am taking off work early this Friday afternoon to go to Annapolis and get the 1/8" 5x5 Baltic Birch for my roof. Good Lord willing I will get some good progress on that this weekend. I also did a tiny bit of framing in my galley, but it was more thinking than framing.

It seems like it's moving a lot faster now that the walls are up. I have a feeling it's going to slow right down again though when I get to the hatch.

[txcamper]

That is looking incredible, read through some of your blog as well, the attention to detail is impressive!!!

Don't be afraid of the hatch, I haven't read through your entire build yet so if you have this planned or if you have the feedback already, my apologies: I ended up adding all new (additional) cross braces for every seam on the hatch, it seems that my seams didn't line up.

Main reason for this for me - I was too time crunched for the 2+ hour round trip for me for another sheet of 1/8" birch on mine so I had to use 'what I had left' from the headliner and outer skin. If you can, try to get a full single sheet for the hatch skin, outer at least. I think that would've made my hatch assembly much easier.

All in all though, it wasn't bad. I can't imagine you'll have any issues after the job you did on those walls!

[Oldragbaggers]

Thanks TXcamper. And your advice is well taken. I am getting my 1/8" ply on Friday for my roof and hatch skins and I am planning on getting 6 full sheets of 5x5 to make sure I have plenty to avoid any unnecessary seams. I'd rather have leftovers than have to have to piece it together.

My blog hasn't been updated for awhile. I need to do that. Hopefully after this weekend when my roof it (hopefully) on. But I appreciate you taking the time to read it and your comments mean a lot.

[Oldragbaggers]

This weekend we finally got a "roof over our head." This was the hardest part of the build for me so far and I couldn't have accomplished this part of it without Lance's help. Getting the interior overhead into place, and trying to keep it lined up (not too sucessfully on one piece of it) and in place up over our head while trying to bend and staple....a bit of a challenge I will say. I wisely invested in a pneumatic stapler before I started the job and I am extremely happy that I did. So, after what seemed like hours of Lance and I scrambling around in there like maniacal contortionist monkeys, the headliner was up.



We have a tiny bit of variance in the width of our tear from one end to the other, it's only about 1/2" overall, but that made it a little bit harder to get it cut to fit right. I didn't want big gaps at the edges. So I got my edges okay, but ended up with a big gap across the top (Doesn't it just figure?). It will be hidden under a piece of trim if I can't fill it and fair it to my satisfaction. Routing the edges of the vent opening holding the router up over my head was definitely a different feeling!!



On to the insulation. Cutting that stuff is a horrible mess. It looked like it was snowing in my yard, pink, then white, then pink again. I prefer the rigid pink stuff made by Dow because I think it gives more support, and I started out trying to cut kerfs to go around the curves, but the mess was just too much for me, not to mention the time factor. I finally gave up and decided to use that only in the flat areas and the more flexible white Polyshield in the curved areas. With the curved areas I also used 2 pieces of 3/4" thick insulation in each space instead of 1 piece of 1-1/2" like I did for the flat areas. This made it possible to cut the piece laying next to the headliner just a tad narrower for a better fit. I will say it is much easier to fill the space completely with the Polyshield because you can cut it a little oversize and it will compress into the space leaving no gaps.





The front piece of the exterior roofing was a bugger. Just because it was the biggest piece, had to curve the most and one person had to hold the bend in it and keep it down against the spars while the other person got staples in it. If you just left it flapping in the wind your glue (I am using Loctite PL Premium adhesive) would undoubtedly start to dry out while you're getting it fastened down from one end to the other. Before putting the glue down or laying the skin on I had to figure and mark on the outside of it where all the spars were located underneath so that I would know exactly where to put my staples. I didn't do a really great job of that on the interior and missed my spars completely in a few spots. (Some of you "smarter than me, plan everything" guys are probably laughing at me right now, because I am sure there is a smarter simpler way that I just didn't see.) We went a little nuts with the staples, but It will be glassed over with 12 oz. fiberglass cloth so no one will ever know they are there.



After all the exterior skin was on did some plunge cuts into the vent opening with my circular saw, cut the opening out rough with the jig saw then cleaned up that and all the rest of my edges with the router and the flush trim bit.





I will say, if this Loctite sticks half as good to the teardrop as it is to my hands and clothes, then we're in good shape!!

If any of you are wondering if I forgot about the wiring in the ceiling, no I didn't forget. This is something we have been tossing back and forth for the longest time. (And the biggest source of stress for me in this build.) After no small amount of consideration and discussion we decided to forego the DC power. I am going to do Mike S. and Casey Dog's simple electrical wireup plan for AC and the rest will be primitive, gas stove and lanterns, battery operated lights and flashlights, solar walk lights. When we have AC available we'll use it, and when we don't we'll do things the old fashioned way. After we went over all the reasons we didn't need power I said to Lance that my only remaining concern was that it would so decrease the resale value. He said that would be the grandkids problem because he didn't ever plan on selling it. That clinched it for me.

Can't wait for next weekend, my favorite, fiberglass work!!

[KCStudly]

Nice progress, Becky. As usual, your work is neat and tidy.

I suppose you could have put some low tack masking tape on the side walls adjacent to your spars and marked the centerlines on the tape. Then after stapling in a line with the tape marks just peel off the tape. Not sure if that would be accurate enough for stapling, but it would get you close enough to drop a straight edge across and transfer the marks. Dunno if that would be feasible in the heat of battle, but it was a thought.

If that "smarter than me, plan everything" thought was directed at me, I hope you realize that you are an inspiration in your carpentry and finishing skills. It is also quite apparent that you have done a great deal of mental planning and contemplating that some other builders don't seem to bother with. Your story and results show this to be true. You are one smart cookie; don't sell yourself short.

p.s. Planning everything out to the nth degree can be a curse. The planning is never done and it holds up production. My friend Dale with the boat would build something 3 times to get it the way he wanted it, while I was still planning and getting nothing built. He went through 3 times the material and 3 times the effort, but he was done and I had not started. Planning is just another word for procrastinating!

[Forrest747]

Let me say its looking great. Wish I had the foresight to use lighter materials. And your fiberglass will no doubt be supeior. Like you I had huge gaps and you wonder why my trim is so wide.

Additional thought. IF you still want to do some dc light you could go like Zack and do some rope LED with switches in the bulkhead cabinets. just a thought

[PSBreen]

All I can say is WOW! You guys are doing an awesome job on your trailer. Keep at it you are almost there.

[mezmo]

Hi Becky & Lance,

Nice peaked roof you have on the TD!



Your work is lookin' good!

Cheers,
Norm/mezmo

[Oldragbaggers]

Thanks everyone for the nice comments. Your opinions mean a lot to me because you are the folks that "get it."

KC, my comment wasn't directed at anyone in particular. I just know there are so many of you out there that have true building skills and experience and I am just muddling my way through. I'm sure sometimes there must be folks who really know how to build wondering why I do things the way I do, but it's just that I don't have the knowledge or experience to know any other way. And believe me, there are many times I wish I had some of that. But mostly I find figuring things out on my own a fun challenge.

And Norm, I thought that roof would come in handy for shedding snow in the winter.

[aggie79]

Becky,

Your teardrop looks fantastic. You're in the home stretch now! What's next - doors or hatch?

Take care,
Tom

[Oldragbaggers]

Becky,

Your teardrop looks fantastic. You're in the home stretch now! What's next - doors or hatch?

Take care,
Tom

Thanks Tom!! I have factory doors so the hatch will be next. But I am going to work on the interior of the main cabin first after I get the fiberglass done. After that I'll move back to the galley and the hatch.

[txcamper]

Your roof looks awesome! Congratulations on that major milestone.

[parnold]

You're doing awesome Becky! I'm planning my roof installation, and will be marking my spars with masking tape, I figured I could then snap a line across the paneling to mark the spars. Sounds good in principal, but I don't know how it will work in practice.

[Oldragbaggers]

I ended up scooting my paneling to the side in one direction and marking the spar locations, and then scooting it to the side in the other direction and marking the other side, then using a straight edge to connect the dots. Probably more time consuming than snapping a line, but it got the job done.

You'll feel really good getting that roof up Paul. And thanks for the kind compliments.

[Oldragbaggers]

This was a much better weekend than last. The fiberglass disaster has been corrected. (I wrote about that last weekend in a separate thread http://www.tnttt.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=50586). Here's the update.

Last weekend the goal was to get the 12 oz. fiberglass cloth on my roof. The wind always blows at the most inopportune times here, so I secured both ends of the cloth to keep in in place.

I put a board across the back end and clamped in in place.



The front end I left a little extra cloth and secured it by laying a scrap of ply across it.



Everything is nice and straight. (I actually thought this umbrella would help in the 90 degree heat.)



The edges of the roof was routed with a 1/2" roundover bit. Then the cloth was wrapped over, clipped so it would lay down around the curves and taped tightly into place.





Now, this is where the fiberglass disaster came in.

I never should have tried glassing in the heat of the day, umbrella or not. The resin was kicking too fast and I didn't realize it until I noticed on the front end that it wasn't penetrating the cloth because it had gotten too thick. No matter how hard I squeegeed, it just lay on top of the cloth, so not only was the cloth not saturated, but it was not adhered to the wood at all. I had quite a few of these spots around the front end of the roof, but this was the largest area.





The next day I cut away all the spots where the cloth hadn't been penetrated and faired all of the edges smooth. It was easy enough to remove the affected areas. All I had to do was get a razor knife into them and cut them back until I reached an edge that was firmly adhered to the wood. Because there were so many of these areas all over the place I didn't want to make a bad situation worse by trying to patch it up, so I decided to lay another layer of cloth over the whole roof. This is more weight than I would have liked, but it was the only way I could feel satisfied with the surface. The overlap on the edges was troublesome as well (mainly because of the heavy cloth and the overlaps where it was cut to take the curves) and took several sandings, fairings and fillings to get it smooth enough for me to be happy with it.





So now we're up to this weekend.

Yesterday most of the day was spent sanding everything fair. My shoulder was killing me by the end of the day. My neighbors probably wanted to kill me as well.



Final fill coats and she's looking good and will get primer next weekend.





A llttle progress made on the galley also, but I'll get a little bit into that as it gets further along next weekend.



Have a great week all!!