14 ft of Poor Man's Fiberglass Goodness....

[ardan]

Hi Everyone,

About 6 years ago my wife and I build a 5x9 small trailer, With age and bad knees we I needed something a little bigger and easier to get around in. We sold our little gem to a younger family and moved on, till now. This Journal will track the building of this new trailer, not a teardrop, but I thought some man be interested in it. The most interesting thing is it will be a 14 foot camper with seamless piece of canvas (poor man's fiberglass on the sides) and 2 pieces covering the entire top. Hopefully the experience we gained building the first trailer will aid us in this even larger project. I will post here regularly, if anyone is interested, and a more detailed blog is posted at https://spiralelm.wixsite.com/mysite. As always I would like to thank all the posters on this site as I have gained much knowledge from reading their posts.

I am a little late getting started so posts will come quickly until I catch up where I am on this project.

--- The Goals ----
1. Less than 2500 pounds
2. Budget of 6k
3. Queen Size Bed
4. Bathroom with Shower
5. FGC - Fat Guy Compliant (I am somewhat jumbo size)
6. Completely covered with Canvas (Poor Man's Fiberglass)
7. Cabin area will be 6'6" by 14'
7. Other ideas that will be implemented as budget and size allow.
8. Built to outlast us...hopefully to last long after we are gone.

Thanks for any comments or criticisms, we can learn from both.

 

[ardan]

First a Good Trailer to build the camper on, I had this one built for me. All Tube steel. I will also be having electric brakes, break away switch, Jacks on each corner, spare tire etc.

 

[Redneck Packrat]

Your images are breaking. I'm eager to see them. I'll be following this build!

 

[ardan]

Thanks, Let me try posting images another way....

 

[Redneck Packrat]

Thanks, Let me try posting images another way....

I see them now. That trailer looks sturdy enough. [/understatement]

 

[ardan]

Starting with the floor. In out effort to stay Fat guy compliant we are using 3/4 Plywood, treating on all sides and with Flashing Tape on the edges. Cut a Hole for the access to the spare tire and Undercoated the Plywood with Roofing Tar.

I am already a few weeks into this project, so I will post some more pictures tomorrow..

Thanks

Ardan..

 

[QueticoBill]

How close to roadway is the spare? Looks like it will get dinged going over a small rise. I looked at it on my NT and decided too low.

 

[ardan]

Hi,

Picture is deceptive, the clearance is 9 Inches, should be more than enough, unless I go mudding...

Ardan

 

[ardan]

Hi All,

Floor is completed, small hole in the front is access to lower the spare tire (if needed), larger opening in the back is for the black water tank which will be installed later.

Thanks,

Ardan

 

[ardan]

Time for the walls, We ripped 2 x 6 to give up a true 2 inch wall. The plywood for the nose is glued and screwed to the proper angle (also 2 inches thick), this angle will offer a 5 inch overhang so the camper will really be 14' 5" overall. Skin is 5 mm plywood, very thin but also light and should be more than strong enough to hold the canvas and provide the shear strength the camper will need.

Last posting till next week sometime.

Thanks,

Ardan

 

[IndyTom-TNT]

That is a great looking trailer to build on, and the build looks great so far. I will be following this build closely, since you are only slightly larger than I am building. And thank you for letting me know that I am building FGC. I just thought I was building everything "my sized". I can't wait to see the walls going up!


Tom

 

[ardan]

Preparing the Walls and the Canvas.

First we roughed up the Plywood a Bit to help the Glue adhere to the walls..

Then we soaked the Canvas with water and let it dry, this would keep down to much shrinkage once covered with glue.

Sorry for no good pictures on this part, we were to busy and covered with glue to take any, each wall took about 20 very active mintues to finish. Cut the canvas to make sure it would fit easily on the wall. We allowed overhang on top and bottom of about 8 inches, this will be used to overlap the roof and come underneath the wall to prevent leakage. There are 100 different ways of doing Poor Man's Fiberglass, this is what we did and it worked well for us.

Here is our guide (based on zero experience) for applying canvas to plywood walls. I have read lots of different ways but this worked great for us, This is also the biggest single piece I have found anyone trying (I know other people have I just didn't find them).. So our walls have NO seams...

1. Rough the surface of the wall
2. Buy lots of Titebond III glue (Titebond II will work but III gives better water protection and a little longer working time)
3. Quickly Roll (with paint roller) a generous coating of glue on the wood, in our case the entire wall.
4. Have four people each holding one corner, holding the canvas above the wall then navigate into position.
5. Lower the canvas onto the wall, this thing was big about 16ft x 8ft.
6. Having someone on each side of the wall stretch the canvas to remove any large wrinkles, small wrinkle should come out as the canvas shrinks even a little more.
7. Press the canvas into the glue, we tried everything but nothing worked better than just our gloved hands.
8. Reapply glue where glue doesn't penetrate the canvas (look for the color change)
9. Work out the smaller wrinkles as best you can with your hands or some other flat object.
10. We then finished up with a rolling pin and rolled down all the edges.
11. Walk away and let it dry. 72 hours is good.
note: We used about one and half gallons of glue on each wall.

 

[IndyTom-TNT]

Ok, I have to ask, where did you find a piece of canvas that large? Five feet seems ro be the widest I can find locally.

 

[ardan]

Hi,

Got it from www.bigduckcanvas.com, I ordered a Roll 75 feet x 8 feet. One continuous piece. Really good deal when I compared to other ways to put siding on the camper...

Thanks,

Ardan

 

[IndyTom-TNT]

Thanks!

Tom

 

[ardan]

Sanding the Glue.

When you saturate the canvas with glue when the glue dries there are little tidbits or tiny bumps of glue from the drying process. We sanded them off, this makes a much smoother surface, NOT smooth, the texture of the canvas is still there. We didn't want non uniform bumps on our paint job.

 

[ardan]

After the glue is dried and the walls are all sanded down we painted the walls with a good quality exterior latex paint. We USED NO primer just the good quality exterior latex paint. Since we will be putting a total of about 5 coats we used the "Oops" Paint from Lowes ($9.00 a gallon) for the first 3 coats. (that is why the color is so strange). We will get the real color for the final 2 coats.

 

[ardan]

Just covered the first wall with a tarp and build the second one right on top of it.

 

[ardan]

The fenders will be on the outside of our camper therefore we had to come up with a way to waterproof this section. Cut the plywood back along the top of the fender and put aluminum flashing on the back side. Then silicon around the edges.

 

[ardan]

Now come the time to raise the walls. They are about 150 pounds a piece so it was quite a load to lift and place them on the trailer. They ended up fitting perfectly. The plywood was cut to allow about a 1 inch lip on the bottom to help waterproof water coming up from the road. We placed some temporary braces to hold the walls in place till we were ready to put in the final bracing. To make it easier we build the walls on one trailer and rolled it up to the other so we didn't have to carry the walls far.