A Brit builds a cedar stripped teardrop

[MikeG2]

In particular, I wanted to look at the cable and plug, and see how this was going to work with the wood covering the chassis:

That's not very revealing to you, but it shows that although things are tight, they're going to fit. I also gave me the thickness of the pieces of wood needed to cover the steel. Now, if all of the nuts had just spun off the bolts, then fitting the cover pieces, and gluing, bolting and fitting all of the rest of the floor build-up, would have been a doddle. Unfortunately, one of the nuts wouldn't come off, and with it being a sunken dome-headed coach bolt, I had a problem. Here you can see the results of me trying everything I knew to undo the nut:

Butchery!!

In the end, I took an angle grinder to it:

That was an hour wasted, and caused me to deepen the hole for the coach screw head by 3mm...which will knock-on to a 3mm reduction in drawer width. That's fine, but annoying. Space is at a premium in these little things. Anyway, I eventually got the cover pieces made, and everything glued, bolted, pinned, screwed, and sealed:

 

[MikeG2]

I spent half a day doing a series of mundane and un-photographable tasks, such as changing all the temporary nuts with Nyloc nuts (and gunking up under the washers with a sealant). I also bolted up the well for the first time. One of the more exciting elements of this was being unable to access two of the holes in the frame from the frame side, and having to drill into the ply and hope to hit the holes! Add to this that marking on phenolic ply is all but impossible, and it turned into quite a good game. It makes an awful photo:

.......but I succeeded perfectly with one, and with a slightly oversized hole for the other.That's something else I would change were I ever to go through this process again.

I ply-ed the kitchen side of the bulkhead between the kitchen and the sleeping area:

At just about that precise moment I received a delivery. It was the camping table which is going to live aboard the teardrop. It's a nasty piece of cheap Chinese crappery, but it's the right size, and very light. It's arrival meant I could do a quick check as to whether everything would fit in place:

.........because that's where it will live. And yes, it all works. Having been burnt too often, I've come to distrust dimensions given on the internet, so that was something of a relief.

I am now spending the evening trying to find the right hob and sink, because their dimensions also have consequences for stuff I want to be building soon.

Who here likes Gaudi?

 

[MikeG2]

Right, now where was I?

Ah yes. Building a kitchen. Obviously you start with a couple of hollow core sapele doors from Facebook Marketplace:

....and you make a little tray with a hole in it. You'll get a chance to see me hand-cut dovetails later on:

You then put some battens in the galley area, and cut the door down to suit. This involves clearing back the internal stuff from the 2 cut edges, and inserting some carefully sized trim pieces to edge the door/ worktop:

Then you go off and build an 8 seater oak dining table:

The chairs will have to wait until the teardrop is finished. The maquette is at the far end of the table.

With the workshop just about unuseable due to the drying varnish of the table, I fiddled about in the garage with scraps of ply, and off cuts of pine, to make the centre panel:

The horizontal pieces are there to take the ends of screws from drawer sliders on the other side. There's only one on this side:

This is what that sliding tray is for:

Without access to the workshop, I had a few days off.

The hole in the tray is just below the drain-off bung in the bottom of the fridge, and the old door will be covered in laminate in due course. It's amazingly light for its strength, which is why I bought it.

 

[MikeG2]

I thought I might do the cabinetry next. I decided to do it in sapele, because that's the closest I have to mahogany, and this is my boat-substitute, remember. I ripped up some stock and thickness-planed it to 18mm:

I then started squaring up one of the edges, but, I don't know, it didn't quite go right. It must be the plane:

That's a bit wonky, but it'll have to do. I ran a 6mm groove in the back, but because the edge wasn't quite dead straight, I had to use a straight-edge as a guide:

I took it out to the teardrop to check it fits (the groove engages on the overhanging lip of the ply shelf of the upper kitchen cupboards):

No-one will notice that it's not straight.

I had to clean up an end. Planing end-grain sapele is an absolute joy:

I had to glue some bits back on in an effort to straighten things up a bit:

In hindsight, maybe trying to rip it straight with a coping saw wasn't the best idea:

I best try it for fit again:

That'll do for the bottom member of the face frame.

 

[MikeG2]

The top is a bit more awkward, because it meets a curved ceiling. My pet octopus was otherwise engaged, so I hot-melt glued some scrap to hold the top piece in place:

Note the additional bit of extra sapele glued in place. I will get this thing straight!!

Anyway, now that I have my pattern secured, it was back to the warmth of the workshop, and the fitting of the verticals (stiles and muntins [are they muntins?]):

That'll have to do, roughly. I marked the shoulders with a knife, chiselled out to the line, and cut some shoulders:

I'm just half-lapping this set of joints rather than using mortice and tenons, as the back won't be seen.

The first set of temporary braces were in the way, so I glued on another set before removing the first:

I could then flip everything over and work on the back of the frame, starting with marking around the tenons for their housing joints:

I then chopped out the housings:

........and glued everything up:

Note the temporary cross-pieces bulging up. This is because both knife marks were inside the rails, and this meant the stiles were short by two knife kerfs. Ho hum:

Let's see if I can do a bit better next time, hey?

 

[MikeG2]

De-clamping was a pleasant experience, as the joints were all spot on. I roughed off some of the waste with my second-most-rarely used tool:

Then took it out for a trial fit:

....and with flash:

Blimey, it took forever to clean up, and included an outing for my most rarely used tool, a B&D Power File:

Everything, including the edges and the tight curves, was finished with a cabinet scraper, which is just such a brilliant tool on sapele:

I told you the joints turned out well:

This next trial fit was just for the camera:

 

[MikeG2]

The design of the cabinetry in the galley is in homage to my favourite architect, Antoni Gaudi, and it references a screen he designed for a house in Barcelona (Caasa Mila):

 

[MikeG2]

Right, best get on with the doors. They'll just be standard stile and rail panelled doors. I thought I'd start with one of the muntins for the big door in the middle. There's a lot of hot-melt glue being used on this job:

I had to keep the mortice and tenons back from the edge of the final shape so that they aren't exposed when everything is cut to final size:

Good enough. Let's glue that up:

The following day I marked up the shoulders, and cut them in the usual way, but with an unusual variation for me in that I sawed the tenon faces with a handsaw (I usually chisel them, or, if the shoulders are square, might do them on the bandsaw. Somehow, some of these shoulders had just slipped a gnats off square):

The mortices were chopped out with a 1/4" pig-sticker, and it all went quite nicely:

Having learnt my lesson with the enormous amount of clean-up on the face-frame, I decided to use Forstner bits for the equivalent junction on the doors. This typically meant hot-melt-gluing in a bit of scrap to located the centre-point:

That probably saved me half an hour per junction:

 

[MikeG2]

Let's move on to the stiles. These will be joined at the corners with bridle joints, so, as always, carefully mark out and cut the shoulders. This time I used a bandsaw for the tenon cheeks:

I then chopped out the mortices in the same way as before. Here is a dry fit for marking out the outer edge.Nothing is glued at this point:

At that point, I decided to experiment. I decided to glue up the simplest door. Now, this was a big decision, and something of a gamble, because it meant feeding the panelling into position AFTER the frame was finished, and that's not how you usually do a panel door! The right hand door of these two was the easy door:

So, I glued up the bridles, and the following day cut out the shape, rounded-over the inside edges, and ran a 2mm groove around:

Because my panelling, as you've seen, is rattan, and it's flexible. I took a pattern, cut the rattan, and injected some glue into one section, then started the frustrating job of feeding the rattan into the slot. It was a bit of a chore, with bits sticking up here and there, and then whole sections pulling out of the slot where they'd been left previously. In the heat of battle, working against the open time of the glue, I just fiddled away with a scraper, a couple of knives, bits of cardboard, and whatever else worked, and eventually, I got the whole thing in:

 

[MikeG2]

In the calm light of day, I think I can be a bit more efficient next time, and I also realised that trying to glue the rattan into place at the same time as gluing up the panel frame would be an utter nightmare. So, I glued up the next door:

Whilst that was drying, I adjusted the bridles for the remaining door, and did the M&Ts for the diagonal;

I cheated. I had help:

The following day, the other frame was de-clamped, cleaned up, fitted into the opening, and then offered up to a couple of cutters on the router table:

It took ages to sand out the burn marks:

Woops, sorry!

Hindsight...........I'd have preferred if the "Y" in the middle had been a smidgeon to the right. Off camera, I had glued up the other frame earlier in the day, and was able to de-clamp at close of play to get this photo:

It all looks a bit flat in a photo, but in reality the big round-over around the panel makes it feel very 3D and contoured.

 

[MikeG2]

I finished the other couple of doors, ready for the rattan:

With the experience of the first door behind me, I cut some really thin (0.5mm) aluminium sheet, which I could insert in the slot and which then guided the edge of the rattan into place:

I had to be careful to keep the rattan properly aligned. There is only one reference edge on the whole screen, so that's what I used:

Here's the job done:

I've ordered the hinges, and I'll turn some knobs, but in the meantime, I better find something else to do.

 

[MikeG2]

I'm doing the internals of the kitchen cupboards, the roof of which is curved. So, time for some spiling! I decided to use a tick stick:

You stick a bit of scrap in the location, and mark up the position of the tick stick with its end egainst the curve....then transfer those markings to your work-piece. There might be a piccie of that later.

Here's a fiddle being made for the edge of a shelf (stops stuff falling off when in transit):

.......and just to show that I know how to make mitres:

I'm not sure why there isn't an in situ photo of that lot.......but there will be shortly.

Here's the wine rack under construction, starting with the face (What do you mean? Surely every teardrop has a wine rack?):

That's a number 78 rebate plane followed by a number 79 side rebate plane to trim to the exact depth to take the 6mm ply. The next bit was something of a pig. I didn't have a hole cutter of the right size, so I worked out that with a smaller one and a rebate cutter in the router, I could achieve the diameter I wanted. I sharpened the hole cutter, and attempted to cut a hole:

It burnt, and then seized up completely (despite being newly-sharpened, and waxed), and didn't achieve more than about 4 or 5mm depth of cut. I patiently did this on both sides all around, to mark the holes and give me a reference. I then roughly cut out the bulk of the waste with first, a coping saw, and then with a jig saw:

Given that I had 4 or 5mm to play with, I used a trimming bit to take this all the way through:

 

[MikeG2]

I could then move to the other router table (yes, Mike, who hates using a router, has TWO router tables!), and use the bearing-guided rebate cutter to enlarge the hole by 20mm:

Obviously, with the bearing being at the top, I couldn't go all the way through........so back to the other table to finish off:

Then, a guided chamfer bit put a little chamfer on both the inside and out:

That's enough routing for a while. Like, until August.....

There are some internet points at stake to anyone who can work out what this little cut out is for. It's the real reason for the wine rack, being as it holds approximately my annual consumption:

The following is another product of spiling. It is the side of the wine rack, and here I am starting to work out the layout and construction:

Transferring markings from one side to the other:

........and then (another missing photo) after gluing and pinning some bottle-bearers into place I did a trial dry fit:

.....before moving to the teardrop:

 

[Peachmaster]

I was willing to overlook your use of child labour but an annual consumption of 3 bottles of wine...?
Is the mystery cut out to aid back lighting of rattan?

 

[MikeG2]

I was willing to overlook your use of child labour but an annual consumption of 3 bottles of wine...?
Is the mystery cut out to aid back lighting of rattan?

Child labour.......guilty as charged. The wine thing......well, maybe a bit of an exaggeration. But not much. You're sort of right with the cut out, in that it's electrical. The real reason for the existence of the wine rack is to cover a whole lot of wires coming up from below (where the battery and controllers are) to the inside of the sleeping area, and to the galley hatch where they go to the lights.

 

[gearsoup]

You're using a hand planer to cut miters? That's about 100% more effort than I would put in, my hats off to you

 

[MikeG2]

You're using a hand planer to cut miters? That's about 100% more effort than I would put in, my hats off to you

I saw them first with a tenon saw, then plane them on a shooting board. It's far and away the most accurate way of doing mitres. Remember, this project isn't on any sort of timetable, and I'm doing it mainly to keep myself amused.

 

[MikeG2]

A sink I had ordered was delivered:

Installing this allowed me to located the drawers, which was an upcoming task:

I also received a delivery of brass hinges and screws. They're both pretty small. I did a test on some scrap:

....and quickly realised that the screw holes are going to have to be drilled extremely precisely. Two drills per screw (1.5mm and 2mm). Here's why:

It took quite a while, chopping out and paring for 6 hinges:

One of the issues was lack of space:

Now imagine a mallet and chisel in there.

One of the other issues was that in blending in the curves, the straight stiles weren't completely straight, which meant that scribing for depth wasn't always possible, and a straight edge had to be substituted:

Ho hum. The doors were eventually all hung in their frame.

Next.........drawers.

First, I made a side panel for the back of the teardrop, with reinforcement behind to take the screws for fixing the drawer runner:

I glued up some 15mm pine I'd had for a while, because the drawer configuration I wanted called for a 220mm deep bottom drawer. I let this dry overnight:

 

[MikeG2]

I cut this to slightly-over-long, and flattened:

.....and brought them to precise length and squareness on the shooting board:

I'm going to run through dovetails in detail, so if this sort of thing bores you, skip ahead to the next post.

After knifing all the shoulder depths, (knifing, note.....I don't use a gauge) I marked out the tail boards in pairs:

I don't mark the sloped cuts, nor use a guide. I just pick an angle, cut it by eye all across the board, and then cut the other slope back across the board, again, by eye. Precision of the angle is somewhere between unnecessary and silly:

.....and then hog out the waste with a (broken) coping saw:

The shoulders get a little dip chiseled up to the knife line, before being sawn off with a tenon saw:

The one concession I make to my new-ish bench is to chisel down onto a piece of scrap ply:

The next job is fundamental and critical: laying out the pieces in position, marking the outside, and marking each joint:

 

[MikeG2]

Now, on to the pin board. I've used a guide for the last few years, and it makes the next stage very quick and precise:

Always keeping the reference edge of the boards against a fence, laying out and clamping with the vice takes seconds. Then mark with a knife:

I don't mark all the verticals. One mark covers two cuts:

Then sawing as before, staying on the waste side of the knife line, just:

Finally, a bit of chiselling back to the knifed line:

That's all the tails and pins done. Ordinarily, I would run a groove for the bottom of the drawer, but height (depth) is critical here, and in order to maximise I did a rebate instead. The only sensible approach for stopped rebates is a router table, I reckon:

On to gluing up:

This will be a tricky little detail to finish off. The short grain is very short indeed: