Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

We've been doing lots of work enhancing our tear, and are now into completing the package by improving our 'accessories'.

It has bugged me from day one having a light blue canoe (see my avatar), which definately does not go with our tear... So for the last few days my wife and I have been working on repainting our canoe as an ADK (adirondack) red which should match better with our PT/PJ combo.

Not bad!

Hey Dave! Want a true Adirondack boat? I have forms for a 14 to 16 foot long cedar strip canoe. Maybe you'd like a cedar strip guide boat? (sales pitch):twisted:
The next project for me is another wooden boat. Could be your's..heh..heh (sales pitch) I know that it will go with the Tear too! Go's with mine!



Blessings, Steve

Hee hee.. good pitch Steve, but not necessary.

Thats a beaut! We LOVE the guide boats and cedar strip boats. Unfortunately we can only haul something like our 15ft canoe due to weight/size. Also we need it to fit two.

Someday though, if we ever get our dream property on the water, we will certainly be looking into some options!

Steve, we had heard of someone building guide boats down your way... had stopped in a place near Blue Mountain last summer and saw one outside an outdoors shop (forget the name). Could this be you? Not sure how many guide boat builders there are, I'm sure its only a few.

Lots of patients to build your tear with cedar strips. Gonna be nice though. When do you think you'll be done?

Steve Frederick wrote:Maybe you'd like a cedar strip guide boat?

I know I would! Please contact me off list at [email protected]

Joseph

Dave, That's not me! I am in the Great Sacandaga Lake area, about an hour and a half south of Blue Mountain Lake.
As for cedar boats, I have done two kayaks, and would love to make one or two a year. I can't use all those boats, so I was toying with the idea of the sale of my surplus, or, maybe a commission? Hunny wouldn't complain if they weren't piling up!
The boats are generally about half to 75% the weight of a comparable plastic,or aluminim boat. I've always wanted to do a guide boat. I fell in love with them when I first saw one at the museum at Blue Mountain Lake back when I was a kid.
About the Tear, I took the day off today, I spent the earlier part of the week in Champlain N.Y. , 40 minutes south of Montreal, on a business trip. Put lot's of hours in, de-bugging a building automation program. So, with the day today, I sealed up the last of the open wood with thin epoxy in preparation for varnish. The varnishing starts tommorrow in the galley! The plan is to finish up by the Forth of July. I plan to take it to the gathering in Mystic Ct. on July 17-18. I have reservations that I don't want to cancel, and folks I want to meet, so, I gotta get it done!
Take care, Steve

I bet you could make a beautiful wooden trailer with this design.

Click on the picture for a larger view.



Nick.

Hey Nick, That design lends itself well to stitch-n-glue boat building methods.

The panels are cut from thin 1/4" or 1/8" marine ply, stitched together with copper wires, glued and faired with epoxy, wire stitches removed, covered in 'glass and ta-da! A camper! (except for interior work)
Cool idea! Kinda looks like a flat iron! Hmmmmm, Next project!!????
Steve

Steve,

Are your boats covered with fiberglas on the outside? Is that how you are going to do your tear as well?

I thought about doing a trailer with the glas/foam sandwich construction method even though I've never done anything like that but the wood strips are so great looking.

Nick.

By the way...

That trailer I posted is supposed to have a boat that fits on top of it. There were some later trailers that were made of fiberglass that had boats on top but they don't look as good as that one.

Nick.

Nick,
The boats are covered in fiberglass and then with several coats of spar varnish for u-v protection...the shine is nice too!
The Tear is done in the same way. The roof and all exterior surfaces are 'glass covered. The varnishing starts tomorrow. :thumbup: Once done, the shell should be as water proof as any boat. Thanx for the nice comment.
Blessings, Steve

Steve,

How long does the spar varnish protect the wood from decoloring?

Between you a Roly Nelson the bar has been raised for anyone doing a woody.

Your TD is beautiful and has inspired me to switch from frp to wood.

Mike

Mike,
On a boat, the finish gets touched up every couple of years, sooner if a deep scratch is found. On the tear, I expect to refinish every two or three years, or longer. I don't expect to store the camper in the sun, which will help in durability.
Thanx for the nice comment about raising the bar...Check out Ross Wade's Tear, really nice work!
Just ask if you have questions, glad to help!

This idea has been brewing for a while...

I designed and built a scow some years ago, loosely based on a Chesapeake Bay design, and put the plans on my web site. Since then there have been a continual trickle of people all over the world telling me they're building themselves one.

The Scow

I'm also very tempted by the beautiful plan-form aero trailers (eg, Bowlus) so here is my combination of the Scow for sailing and rowing and a teardrop-ish underneath.



As the Scow is 12ft long, that's quite a big trailer, but hey, the space will come in handy sometime...

By the way, anyone thinking about downsizing cars might like to check out the tiny Daewoo on which I used to transport the Scow - 800cc of throbbing 3-cylinder power.

Andrew

Andrew,

How heavy is that boat? Easy enough to get off the roof with 1 or 2 people?

Here is an old Trailerboat that I photographed over the weekend. This is a wooden version of the one I posted earlier. As you can see with a pointed bow, you can have the trailer body come really close to the end of the trailer tongue. The outboard motor stores in the nose of the trailer behind the first door.

Click on the photos for larger views.





I didn't get a picture of the back but it's squared off to match the boat with a hatch for the kitchen.

Nick.

Nick wrote:How heavy is that boat? Easy enough to get off the roof with 1 or 2 people?

The scow is about 150 lbs - not possible for one person to lift alone, but no problem for two. If one built a dedicated trailer, it might be easy to design a self-loading feature so that one person could do it.

The scow isn't really the ideal boat for this purpose - something more 'pointed' would be lighter.

Nick wrote:Here is an old Trailerboat that I photographed over the weekend.

That is really lovely - I can feel my CAD program calling me...

Andrew