Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

I'm at that point, have the aluminum in the garage and ready to stick it on. I'm having a senior moment (actually all day). I've read so much it all fuses together. But I read somewhere that Henry's 663 adhesive is good to use so I went to HD and bought two containers. Already have the notched trowel. So now I have to prepare the alumimum -scour or sand/score it real good for the adhesive to take and after sanding it, use Acetone? to clean off the oils and such. Then it's stickum time. Should I push with my hands to insure adhesion? Some use rollers but I don't have one. What do you think? Any suggestions are appreciated. By the way, I priced aluminum 5X10 all over and the sellers said it was cost prohibitive to order out of state due to shipping. So I bought 4X10's and will have to get a machine shop to put locks/seams and they gave me a price of $10.00 to do the work which is very, very cheap. Also, the cost of the 4x10's went up about $11.00 the past two weeks. Thanks for the help. Juan

Juan,

I used the Henry's 663 and all I did was run my palm sander with 80 grit paper all over the inside surface of the sides and then stuck them in place and then used a smooth 2x4 about 18" long to press the aluminum in really good. Clamped it around the edges and used a couple of pieces of 1x3 s vertically with pipe clamps to hold them at the top and bottom. Let is set overnight and it stayed in place just fine. You may want to put something under the bottom edge to hold the wieght in place until the adhesive starts to really take hold. I built my tear on top of the frame with the frame showing, so I just drove a few nails between the bottom of the sidewall and the frame before putting the aluminum skin on.

BTW: I also attached both skins before putting any clamps on so that the clamps held both sides at the same time. You will have plenty of time to make any adjustments that you need without it getting to tacky. I just realized that forgot to say that the Henry's was applied to the wood sides of the tear only. The notched trowel I used is 1/16" square notch and was plenty.

Hope this helps

Thanks for the reply. I'll try as you suggested. I'm glad I don't need the Acetone. I live out from town and I'd have to drive 30 miles to pick it up.
I figure I'll put wedges periodically around the bottom of the "cabin" to hold the skin in place until the glue sets. I've learned a lot by building this thing. If I ever build another, I'll make different mistakes. thanks again, Juan