Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

Hi All,

Been a long winter, but I survived. No progress on the tear until lately. A question: Are there drawbacks to using the following set up to seal the hatch and align it when closed?



It seems like it would be easy to construct, durable, and weatherproofish.

Not shown:
Round-overs on the top of the spline to ease closing.
Rubber gasket inside the upper dado to make weather tight.


Thanks,
Brian

Rookie response here. For me, it doesn't leave enough room for error. I like the fact that if I am off a little bit, or the hatch moves a smidge, it will still close and seal. But that is taking into account my building skills, which are below many who are on this site.

Again, this answer is from a rookie.



Greg (and Laurie)

^+1

I'm certainly not saying it can't be done, but it'd be mighty difficult to get that to align on a curve, and align on both sides.

If you build it with enough tolerances I could see it working.... maybe a 1" wide dado, with a 3/4" wide rabbet, leaving 1/8" of tolerance on both sides of the rabbet.

I am doing something similar to that. But my bottom tongue will be 1/2" and the top groove will be 3/4" or maybe 7/8" giving an 1/8" or 3/16" play on each side. Mark with the "Little Switzerland" used something like that too. He has some pictures on his website.

http://littleswissteardrop.com/

John

Go out and pop the trunk on your car. Look at how much 'slop' there is but it still seals. Even Navy ships use a knife seal to achieve air tight seal

Got the same problem on my mind, but looking at Zach's URABUS build, there may be enough of a solution there.

jamwius wrote:I am doing something similar to that. But my bottom tongue will be 1/2" and the top groove will be 3/4" or maybe 7/8" giving an 1/8" or 3/16" play on each side. Mark with the "Little Switzerland" used something like that too. He has some pictures on his website.

http://littleswissteardrop.com/

John

Yep, I did mine similar to that. It is the way Steve Fredrick does it in his shop manual. My bottom tongue (the gray part in the pics below) was 1/2" and the top gap (yellow arrow) was 3/4". You need a little gap or it will be too tight. Any swelling of the tongue wood and you are screwed if you don't have it. It's a lot of work but it works great. And everyone that sees it loves it.