Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

I was planning to buy a couple 2x8's and rip them down to 1" wide strips for the wall and roof framing. That should be wide enough to screw into through the walls. I will also add some glue as well..... Is the 1" x 1 1/2" standard or something else?

The Cubby plans don't even give a width for the wall framing--just a thickness. 3/4, to accommodate 3/4 insulation, I guess.

So 3/4 by 1 1/2 wide sounds about right. (But what the hell do I know?)

But they make a point of telling you to add extra strips where you think you're gonna want to attach something down the road, even something light and simple, because an interior 1/8 skin won't hold a screw. And once that skin is on, forget it.

I'm not sure that I understand exactly what you're planning because you didn't mention the type of wood - I know that the plans that I have looked at and a few of the conversations that I've had with people here all seem to indicate that pine is fine for the walls but that a hardwood is definitely better for the roof.

I'm using 1"x 1.5" oak for my roof "ribs" (cross-pieces?). The oak is REALLY rugged and can easily withstand the highway speeds and should be OK with a snow load on the top or if a medium-sized branch falls on the trailer. I also don't want the screws to loosen over time and for the trailer to become wobbly. With all of the vibration, torsion, odd wind directions, etc associated with flying down the highway at breakneck speeds - I just figured that a really tough wood will help me to sleep better at night.

I would like to hear about other people's experiences I'm just getting started with my trailer. It would be really interesting to hear from people who have used pine.

I'm also curious about what other people are doing for spacing on their roof supports. I am going with 1 foot between each.

lmh222,

Wow you made some excellent points! I was going to use pine for both the sides and to support the top. But now that you brought up strength issues I may change to a harder wood for the top supoorts. I am planning to encapsulate the entire cabin with fiberglass and that should add some strength.

We have a local sawmill near us and the price of the oak cross-pieces ended up being about 1/4 of the price that Home Depot had them for. I'm not sure that I would be using quite such strong hardwood if it hand't been so cheap. I was so excited about the great value that I just bought the strongest stuff that they had.

I thought I'd pass on the info so that maybe other people could save money too - and support a local "mom and pop" operation rather than the big orange box.

Lindsey

lmh222 wrote:We have a local sawmill near us and the price of the oak cross-pieces ended up being about 1/4 of the price that Home Depot had them for.

Ash is very simular to oak and is cheaper still. Have a bunch of it that I got at a local saw mill and planned it myself a while back when I was making some blanket/toy chests for a guy's grandchildren. If you can find it at a wood supply place, it should be cheaper than most other hardwoods.

Kerry

...we have several small mills in our area. At one we get cypress at another we get pine and cypress and we get "drops" of red cedar and oak from a cabinet shop that is half a block behind us. We rarely haveta buy "real" wood from Bloews or Home Despot
madjack

The only wood we have in South Florida is PALM.

There are a few cypress left, but they're not long for the world.

I don't know of any saw mills locally. There is a Windsor plywood in the area and they pretty much charge what they want for "specialty woods" because they seem to be the only supplier around. So what do you all think? Pine should be strong enough considering the fiberglass right? Or should I spring for something harder?

You may want to glue them up double with Gorilla glue or something simular just add a bit of strength. Two 3/4" pieces glued together are stronger than a single 1 1/2" piece.

Just my opinion on this!

Kerry

Toy Pusher....that's what I did. I used up a whole bunch of pine 3/4 material, ripped it into the height I wanted and laminated them together. I thought about oak, but since I've built an "armored tear" I thought I could get by with less weight. I also used 1/4" luan on the exterior of mine. On top of that will be .040 aluminum. I don't know if this is important for any builders, but on boats, you don't want to use red oak for structural stuff, white is preferred. I think that is mostly for marine environments though. Either way I think both methods would work. I used the pine as I had it and wanted to cut costs, if you can get cheap oak go for it......doug hodder

Doug is quite correct about using white oak and NOT red oak. The reason, in either the marine or teardrop environments, is that red oak expands much more than white oak, therefore if you use red oak as a substructure you can count on leaks after a few season changes.

Red oak is diffinitly more porous. If you take a small piece and put it up to your mouth, you can actually blow air trough it! This is not good in a wet or potentially wet environment.

Kerry

Thanks everyone!

I think just doubling up the pine should be plenty strong.. It is much more cost effective for sure and it will give me more wood to screw into as well.

As for attaching them to the sides my plan is to anchor them to the wall framing using screws from the outside of the ply. I noticed that some people attach them to the ply walls and build the frame around them. Is one way better than the other? Doing the latter seems like much more work. Any thoughts?

Not according to the Cubby plans:

What you do is notch out your interior 1/8 skin, with a knife/blade, to pass the ends of the spars through. Those ends then butt flush against the exterior walls--where you screw from the outside of the exterior wall into the end of the spar. (I think you glue toom but I don't remember.)

Those spars don't touch the framing at all--and thank God I'm using a paneling skin and not aluminum, so I DON'T have to countersink all of those screw holes.

I don't have the plans in front of me right now, but I'm 99% sure this is the way, that they're not stucturally attached to the wall framing at all.