Tom & Shelly's build

[Tom&Shelly]

We now have pictures of the trailer chassies we're having built, so guess this is a good time to start our build thread. We're in the middle of our design, hopefully with construction to begin in early June, as I take a practice retirement this Summer.

Our plan (after much helpful advice from the folks on this forum--thank you!) is for 5 x 10 Benroy design, built using techniques from Steve Fredrick's manual. We'll have a 74" long sleeping compartment, storage in the front for our Eazey-up (sp?), folding chairs, camp table, and privacy tent, as well as a Climate-Right air conditioner/heater. We'll probably buy Challenger doors for people (one on each side) as well as cargo doors for the front (one on each side). We plan to build our hatch using Fredrick's method. Shelly is still working out the details for the galley.

After a preliminary weight and balance estimate, we decided to locate our spare tire on the rear side. We'll locate the battery(ies) in, or below, the galley as well, with the PD 4045 converter in the galley. I wanted to have the AC cord for shore power on a spool near the converter, but that'll probably take up too much room, so we'll likely go with the more traditional approach, just coiling the cord and keeping it in the front storage area when not in use, plugging it into the side when in use. (As we get serious about different aspects of the design, we tend to converge on ideas used by those before. Which I suppose is natural, and suggests we are at least thinking along the correct lines.)

Still planning on finishing it with fiberglass (something new for me). Originally, I wanted to use automotive paint, but I'm beginning to like the idea of a bed liner like Monstaliner. I once painted a car with Rustoleum Hammer Finish, and the texture hides a lot of minor imperfections.

So, here is our trailer. It is 10 feet long by 56 inches wide. The width should allow us 1 1/8" walls, and still let us use 5 x 5 Baltic birch for the ceiling and roof, with 3/4" overlap on each side to clamp the two pieces of the roof (ala Fredrick). The frame is made of 2 inch x 3 inch tube, with angle iron cross-pieces. The builder convinced us a 2 x 3 inch tube A frame hitch is enough (I originally wanted a composite hitch). There are 2 inches of clearance between the sides of the frame and fenders (as well as spare) for the walls to overlap and cover the frame.

These pictures were taken by the builder yesterday. Perhaps not coincidentally, his company's name and phone number happen to show up in the color pic. Carl gave us a good quote, not much more than a stock trailer, good advice, and is good to work with. If we hadn't found a company to build for us, we would have talked with friends who's welding skills I trust. Carl's quote included painting, which wasn't started when these were taken.

 

[KCStudly]

Even included the two speed wrenches for the stabilizers. Nice.

 

[Tom&Shelly]

Been taking the Summer off, starting Memorial Day, to build our tear drop. First order of business was to build a 5' by 10' lay-out table, add some lights, and get the wood shop in shape.

This is a "borrowed" table saw, a Craftsman benchtop. We borrowed it from a friend about four years ago, and are now storing it for him. We mutually figured the storage fee and rental fee just cancel. I spent a day last week trying to tune it up. Found that by shimming the cast aluminum table I removed a saddle, but there's still a hump in the table to the left of the blade. Also found the fence was concave, so added a wood auxiliary fence. I built the table about a quarter inch lower than the saw so we can use it as an out feed table. If I decide I enjoy woodworking into full retirement, and can find the room, we'll probably upgrade to a cabinet table saw.

I consider myself a beginning/moderate wood worker. Been building rustic furniture for the past ten years, and rustic describes both the material and my skills. Started with some hand saws, a draw knife, and some vigas and lattias (New Mexican for logs and sticks) that my house builder gave me. We now own a 14 inch Grizzly band saw, Floor standing Harbor Fright drill press (but with a Jacobs chuck), a Ryobi mitre saw, and several powered hand tools.

We also own a nice router, which I need to learn to use. I plan to build the teardrop slowly, acquire necessary tools as we go along, and take my time to learn to use them.

Tom

 

[Billinoregon]

Good luck on this, Tom. That's really good thinking to clean up the shop and build the layout table first. I'll need to do the same if I decide to try my hand at a TT down here in Alamogordo.

 

[Tom&Shelly]

After getting the shop in shape, I started on the tear drop floor. Was planning on a sandwich, with 1/4" plywood on each face, with skeletonized 3/4" ply and foam in the middle. However, I found some flat poplar at Lowes, and decided to use that for the skeleton instead. we recently purchased a biscuit joiner, so that's how these are joined.

We don't own a jointer, but found the straightest edges and used those for the sides. (Wonder if we could have used the router mounted on a table as a jointer, and straightened a 10' long edge?)

The sides are 5 inches wide and the cross braces are 3 inches wide. The rectangular frame will be an opening in the floor of the galley to access the batteries. I plan to build a battery box and mount it to the trailer frame behind the axle. (Thank you Half Dome Danny for the idea, and Tony Latham for pointing me to it!)

Found that the wood at the frame joints sometimes stands as much as 1/32" proud, so I guess that's about the tolerance for biscuit joints. Figure I'll sand them flush once the glue dries.

Next step will be to use a router to make really precise seams between the plywood, and build the skins. Shelly is trying to talk me into switching to 1/2" ply for the floor. May do that, since weight is no longer an issue: we bought a Tacoma last month and will use that as our tow vehicle.

As an aside, I'm really enjoying the first few weeks of my Summer, "practice retirement"! Looking forward to revisiting skills I'd learned years ago. I took a wood shop class in 8th grade, and it is interesting to see that table saws now come with blade guards and riving knives. And I haven't had a formal class in taking naps since 1967, but found I was able to pick up that skill better than ever. (Although I understand here in New Mexico, they are referred to as siestas.)

Tom

 

[Tom&Shelly]

Good luck on this, Tom. That's really good thinking to clean up the shop and build the layout table first. I'll need to do the same if I decide to try my hand at a TT down here in Alamogordo.

Welcome to New Mexico Bill!

Decided the layout table is a necessity, although it takes up significant room in the shop (garage). If we later buy a cabinet table saw, I may modify the table to be a combination out-feed side-feed table.

Another decision related to retirement--No firm and hard dead lines! I'm going to take the time necessary to build jigs, tooling, etc. for the shop to make the work go easier.

 

[lincolnlerner]

Love the whole plan! If taking your time and building jigs... Yep you might think of building several at the same time. Each step prototypes the three. Build each as you go so the step is fresh in your skill-set mind. And in addition to the ones you built you will still have all the jigs to easily build more. Get those naps in between. You will be pumping them out with ease.

Beautiful New Mexico

 

[Billinoregon]

Tom, this business of jigs is the heart of boatbuilding these days. Makes a lot of sense.

 

[Homebrewer25]

Back in the early 80's I was a custom cabinetmaker. My boss (a good ol' boy dairy farmer with lots of charisma and a love of fine woodworking, but no talent for doing) would get commissions to reproduce a copy of an antique for a client. I would make 3 of them, selling the other two to make up for the loss of making one. I don't know if any others here have every tried to make a living doing one-off woodworking, but it is dang hard if you aren't a renowned artist. I am certainly not that type. Making 3 is nearly as easy as making 1, which brings the production cost down considerably.

 

[KTM_Guy]

This looks like it will be a fun build, I'll be following along.

Building a 5X10 table was one of the best things I did, I put it on casters so I could move it round the garage and driveway. I also built a frame out of 2X4's with 4" casters that I am building on. Puts everything at a good height. Thanks Tony for that idea.

A router table works as a joiner but it needs and offset fence. I like building things like the router table but I needed one and bought the Kreg and really like it. It has the offset fence.

You might want to look into a good blade for the table saw that can make a huge difference. I switched to Forest Woodworker II on my table saw years ago and couldn't be happier. Kinda spendy but well worth it and if you do get a better saw later you have the blade.

Todd

 

[Carl01234]

Im in the middle of building a 5x10 benroy as well. Will be following closely.

 

[Tom&Shelly]

We glued the floor frame to the bottom skin yesterday.

The skin is made of three sheets of 1/4" ACX plywood. To make the edges of the plywood fit together better, I used an idea from Steve Fredrick's manual, and clamped the plywood with a gap of about a quarter inch, then ran a router with a half inch trim bit down the gap. (My first time using a router, as it happens.) After two Mulligans, I got the process down and the edge joints look wonderful! Not necessarily important for the bottom of the floor, but I used the same technique for the top skins, (1/2" plywood). We don't plan to cover that with anything else, we will just varnish the plywood and put a mattress on top, so the quality of the edge joints is important there.

We glued the frame to the skin using Titebond III. Previously, when doing similar things, I'd had the pieces slide around, so this time I made some corner guides from scrap ply. Shelly reminded me of a woodworking tutorial we'd watched where the instructor used packing tape to prevent a jig from sticking to the glue--worked great.

When I built the frame, there were a few joints that I'd messed up by not paying attention to vertical movement of the two pieces relative to each other. I'd incorrectly assumed the biscuits were thick enough to minimize this. Anyway, I corrected the problem by using a jamb saw to cut the joints, and used these pieces of scrap to hold the whole thing together while we glue the frame to the skin. Now the skin should hold the frame so there is no need for the original joint.

I'd made the skin about an inch wider than the frame so we could clamp it to the table. Next step will be to flip the whole thing over and trim the skin to size, using a bearing guided router bit.

Then we will flip it back and glue in the foam. We couldn't find 3/4" thick foam, so we plan to use 1" thick foam (which I've already trimmed to the frame before gluing on the skin). I've ordered the parts to make a 6 foot long hot wire foam cutter, which I hope will work to trim the extra thickness from the foam. My Dad used to make model airplane wings with a hot wire cutter, and so I was familiar with the concept. Googled on the subject and found a lot, including a site that sells the wire, transformer, etc. I guess you foamistas probably know all about it.

I knew we'd need weight to hold the frame to the skin during glue-up, so I'd asked Shelly to pick up about ten 20 lb containers of cat litter. She tells me several folks asked how many cats she has. I told her she should have said "just one, but you should see what she did to the burglar last week!".

Tom

 

[Feen-TNT]

Great looking build, and a nice approach. Oh to be semi-retired.

What’s your plan for the fibreglass?

I had intended to resin the ply as a primer for Raptor bedliner however I’d also like to add some graphics afterwords which might prove difficult on Raptor’s textured finish.

So now I’m also looking to lay up chopped strand mat and reading up on flow coats versus gel coats etc.


I’ve also started a build, and a journal. Will be good to compare techniques and progress as we go.

Good luck

James

 

[KTM_Guy]

Great looking build, and a nice approach. Oh to be semi-retired.

What’s your plan for the fibreglass?

I had intended to resin the ply as a primer for Raptor bedliner however I’d also like to add some graphics afterwords which might prove difficult on Raptor’s textured finish.

So now I’m also looking to lay up chopped strand mat and reading up on flow coats versus gel coats etc.


I’ve also started a build, and a journal. Will be good to compare techniques and progress as we go.

Good luck

James

I am hoping to be ready to spray Raptor next weekend. I have seen videos that if you use a LPHV spray gun you can get a much less texture finish which is what I'm after. Rolling or Schutz gun is a much rougher texture. I'm going to try some practice runs this week.

Todd

 

[Tom&Shelly]

Great looking build, and a nice approach. Oh to be semi-retired.

What’s your plan for the fibreglass?

I had intended to resin the ply as a primer for Raptor bedliner however I’d also like to add some graphics afterwords which might prove difficult on Raptor’s textured finish.

So now I’m also looking to lay up chopped strand mat and reading up on flow coats versus gel coats etc.


I’ve also started a build, and a journal. Will be good to compare techniques and progress as we go.

Good luck

James

Thank you James. Have to say, semi-retired is as much fun (so far) as I'd anticipated! I wake up every morning thinking about what part of the camper I'll work on that day. As much fun as my favorite jobs, only without a boss (Shelly excepted, of course.)

My plans for fiberglass and epoxy right now are to study the products and options further in a week or so when I get to that step. I don't plan to fiberglass anything on the floor, but want to coat at least the underside with epoxy. We may do the top with epoxy as well. We were going to use varnish, but it occurred to us that the AC and stuff in the galley may occasionally drip, and the extra waterproofing won't hurt.

We were thinking of using Monstaliner over the fiberglass, but on another thread someone said the company told them they couldn't put it directly over marine epoxy. There seems to be a product they make that would work as an intermediate coating, but we will probably have to call them and discuss. In the meantime, I did read up on Raka's and West Marine's products and tips on their web sites a year ago, but need to review. We have a friend who made a canoe using fiberglass and a Raka product, and offered us the left over to experiment, so I'm leaning that way right now. But I'm willing to slow down and study the options.

I'll be looking forward to see what you decide with your build.

Like your mock-up!

Tom

 

[Tom&Shelly]

A router table works as a joiner but it needs and offset fence. I like building things like the router table but I needed one and bought the Kreg and really like it. It has the offset fence.

Todd

Hi Todd,

Several years ago, when I bought the router (for Shelly as a Christmas present) I also bought an inexpensive router table from Grizzly (as a birthday present--Shelly's birthday is Dec 29).

Now that I'm getting experience with the router, I should try jointing with the table. It does have an offset fence.

So, anybody, which anniversary is Woodworking Tools?

Tom

 

[Esteban-TNT]

A 23 gauge pin nailer could be a good birthday, anniversary, or pre-retirement present for Tom and/or Shelly. It'll $ave on cat litter. Home Depot sells one by NuMax that's more affordable. A pin nailer is a good alternate to using lots of clamps or weights to secure wood parts together while glue sets up. It's a quick and fun tool to use, too.

A 1/4" narrow crown stapler is useful too. It's clamping force is greater than a pin nailer. The 1/4" staple isn't as inconspicuous as 23 gauge pin nails.

 

[Tom&Shelly]

In the past several days, I added some blocking and the foam.

The blocking to the left is the left rear of the floor. We plan to mount the shore power outlet (inset male plug) under there. We will drill holes for that wire, the battery cables and the trailer brakes, all to run up the galley side of the bulkhead, with battery and AC power terminating in the PD 4045 box, and the trailer brakes running through the roof to the front of the camper, where they will go into a junction box with a junction to the TV cable.

The blocking in the lower right is for a drain hole for our (yet to be designed) cooler. We are thinking we may try and build a custom cooler using insulation foam sheathed with baltic birch. We'd like something where the food and ice have drawers, and with the entire unit removable for bear country. A difficult engineering problem that is so far down the pike, I refuse to think about it seriously for now. As it is, I'm guessing we may not get to the galley innards until after we use the teardrop a few times.

The blocking in the front right is for support for the Climate Right AC/heater, as well as for a drain hole.

I hadn't thought at all about these details until we were ready to cut the foam. Makes me wonder what else I'm not thinking about

It may be time to sit down for a few days with my (70 year old) drawing board, and make sure we've thought through the major design decisions. For sure, we need to do that before cutting the skeleton's for the sides.

 

[Tom&Shelly]

When we discovered we couldn't buy 3/4" thick foam from the big box stores here, but had to use 1", I decided to build a hot wire cutter that is long enough to trim the thickness. Place called Jacobs Online sells wire and transformers. This thing uses a light dimmer control and transformer to take 120 vac house power to something up to 48 vac.

Since our requirements are for a ~6 foot long wire (much longer than most of the home made units I've seen online) I used something called Rene 41 wire, rather than nichrome. Rene 41 is supposed to be stronger and stretches less when hot. It sure is springy! It's a good idea to wear safety glasses when working with it, in case it gets away from one. I made a bow out of scrap wood

(The smoke is from a recent cut. I have little doubt the smoke is carcinogenic. At my age, it'll probably kill me when I'm 135. We opened the garage doors when we realized our peril.)

The wire gets longer as it heats, so to keep tension, I cut some slippery washers out of an old plastic coffee creamer jar, and used rubber bands to keep tension on the bow.

Shelly and I each got on one side of the bow. I'd previously marked inches on the frame on each side of each foam panel and called them off, so we stayed more or less straight across. The wire did drag a bit, and next time I'll make a point of going much slower. However, it did create a flat cut (not concave, which would have been a disaster).

It did a pretty good job!

Unfortunately, our frame is not perfectly flat, and wire drug along the high points. I should have clamped it down to the bench before each cut. The result is that the foam was still slightly proud of the frame. I used 60 grit sand paper (finer clogs right up) to remove the difference. Hand sanding took it down faster than my palm sander; both made one heck of a mess!

Backing up a bit to when I'd cut the foam panels to fit in the frame in the first place, I wasn't satisfied that I could make a perpendicular cut with a knife, so I cut the foam large, and then trimmed it with a band saw. That works fine, so I'll continue to do it that way. An alternative would be to make another hot wire cutter, with the wire vertical and mounted on a table like a scroll saw. A short length of wire like that wouldn't need the big and pricey transformer, but could use a brick from some old electronics, or possibly a battery.

Next step is to try and find a place to store the hot wire cutter until it's next needed. Then to glue the frame and foam to the top of the floor skin. The less than perfectly flat frame worries me a little. We will have to weigh it down a lot to try and make it conform to the floor skin. We will also use Titebond III, which should be more forgiving of slight gaps than the PL product.

Steve Fredrick warns against leaving gaps in between the frame and foam, as condensation could get trapped in and cause rot. But how small of a gap is acceptable? I have a few on the order of 1/16" or so. No matter how well we did, there would be microscopic gaps. And then, there are knot holes missing from the C side of the plywood skins that leave gaps. Anyway, one thing I know about New Mexico is that it is less humid than the Adirondacks (where Steve built his teardrops). I'm hoping we'll get away with it.

Tom

 

[KTM_Guy]

I’m with you on the gaps and living in the desert. You could always use Great Stuff to fill in any voids, but if you’re under 1/8” why bother.

For me building the hatch I’m more concerned with dust not water. It’s crazy how much dust we get in the back of the Jeep even with all the windows were closed. If I can keep the dust out no problem keeping water out.

I had the same problem with finding any size foam other than 1”.