The Adventure Begins: 6x12 V-Nose Conversion

[hankaye]

kirkupnorth, Howddy;

Looks like a tri-color Border collie to me. When I first got Rascal, he was all legs but grew into them.
Heads-up they are aka, "Fur dispersal units", and it (fur), screws itself into cloth materials.

hank

[kirkupnorth]

kirkupnorth, Howddy;

Looks like a tri-color Border collie to me. When I first got Rascal, he was all legs but grew into them.
Heads-up they are aka, "Fur dispersal units", and it (fur), screws itself into cloth materials.

hank

Hey, Hank-

I did not know that there are tri-color Border Collies. This guy has bounced from TX shelter to MN shelter to foster care, and finally to us. His paperwork from these places all list different breed/mix guesses. He certainly has the smarts and athleticism of a Border Collie, but he doesn't have the usual herder "I'm the boss" personality. That might be because of his background, I suppose.

He's a real sweetie, though, and that's all that really matters!

[hankaye]

kirkupnorth, Howdy;

kirkupnorth, Howddy;

Looks like a tri-color Border collie to me. When I first got Rascal, he was all legs but grew into them.
Heads-up they are aka, "Fur dispersal units", and it (fur), screws itself into cloth materials.

hank

Hey, Hank-

I did not know that there are tri-color Border Collies. This guy has bounced from TX shelter to MN shelter to foster care, and finally to us. His paperwork from these places all list different breed/mix guesses. He certainly has the smarts and athleticism of a Border Collie, but he doesn't have the usual herder "I'm the boss" personality. That might be because of his background, I suppose.

He's a real sweetie, though, and that's all that really matters!

Kirk, Rascal was "gun-shy" at first then after he got the idea he wasn't going to be moving on to
some place else he settled right in. Do some research and see how well he "eyes" when you play ball.
One of the best things a critter's human can do is research the breed(s), so the human can better
understand the breed. Works out better for both ...

hank

[Padilen]

Living with a herding dog "amazing experience". That's the nice way of saying it.
I think he'll adjust to those legs, gets use to having a permanent home and family. That the herding will come out.
Danny is a good name for him. I knew a Danny, a Border Collie good dog!

Sent from my XT1635-01 using Tapatalk

[kirkupnorth]

Living with a herding dog "amazing experience". That's the nice way of saying it.
I think he'll adjust to those legs, gets use to having a permanent home and family. That the herding will come out.
Danny is a good name for him. I knew a Danny, a Border Collie good dog!

Sent from my XT1635-01 using Tapatalk

Hey, Padilen-

I think you're right that he'll grow into his long legs -- he's very skinny right now, but he'll fill out. He's gaining confidence each day. We've been introducing him to our four horses VERY slowly! He's interested, but so far he seems content to sit calmly and watch them. Now, the chickens.....that's another story. Luckily they're inside of a dog-proof fence!

[kirkupnorth]

I know this isn't the most fascinating update, but I thought there might be others interested in the little gas struts that are used to hold cabinet doors open.

After camping with the CTC for about a year now, we continue to find little things we'd like to improve, tweak, etc. One of these things was the overhead cabinet doors in the kitchen. At the time of initial construction, we didn't put anything on the doors to hold them open. I figured it was no big deal to hold the cabinet door open with one hand while reaching in with the other hand to get out whatever was needed. Wrong! While not Earth shattering, it was a small annoyance that really started to bug me. It was especially irritating on the uppers in the front V. They're so deep that we store a lot of stuff up there. So, we decided to get some of those gas struts to solve the problem. We went with these from Amazon, since they looked nice and were reasonably priced:



The Amazon link is here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0156P6YVC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

They seem to be very nice quality. Installing the first one was a bit of a challenge, though, because figuring out where to place it required some tricky math. Well, the math clearly kicked our butts! As you can see here, we needed a second attempt to be successful.



We finally figured it out, though, and we got the other two doors right on the first try.



I'm so happy that we put these in. This will make getting stuff out of the cabinets a lot easier.

[aggie79]

[hankaye]

kirkupnorth, Howdy;

Looks good enough for a second .

hank

[kirkupnorth]

We finally got out camping again. The new pooch has had some serious health issues, so we had to get him on the road to recovery before we could introduce him to camping.

We wanted to stay pretty close to home, so we went to one of the campgrounds in the Paul Bunyan State Forest. Minnesota state parks have nice big campgrounds with all the amenities. Our state forest campgrounds like this one are all "primitive", with no electric or water hookups, and only outhouses for bathrooms. This campground was very nice -- the sites are large and very private, with lots of trees. Each site also has a picnic table and a fire ring.



There are only six sites at this campground, and we were the only people not in a tent. I have never been in such a quiet campground! This place is right on a massive trail system that goes all through the forest. We had a nice day of riding, and the weather really cooperated.



The camper worked great -- it's nice to have all your own self-contained amenities and conveniences while boondocking! We are really enjoying having the awning -- it's such a nice addition to the camp site. In a primitive camping situation, though, we really wish we had more battery power. That is something we hope to upgrade before too long. We got to teach Danny the pooch about camping, which went well. He had a lot of fun and his behavior was really good.

[NotJammer]

Wow, kirkupnorth!

Just read all 8 pages and copied many of your product links.

I am very slow with my build.

Thank you for an easy to read and follow build thread!

I was born MN, folks from Sandstone, now almost 750 miles south for the warmer weather.

[onehoser]

subscribed! i'm planning on starting a 6x12 v-nose conversion in the spring and i like your floor plan. great build thread! keep up the good work!

tony

[kirkupnorth]

Well, it's that time of year again in northern Minnesota (Winter!), that we make a few changes to the CTC camper. Whoever said that it's never done was so right!

We thought it might be nice to have a window in the door -- let in some more light and have another outdoor view. We'd seen this RV window on Amazon, and thought it looked really nice for a reasonable price of $75, so we went ahead and ordered it.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MRRNQNP/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I must say, this one did not disappoint. The glass has a nice deep tint which matches the tint on the existing camper windows, and the built-in shade on the interior works really well. Installing it wasn't too bad, after we got the hole cut. You know how nerve-wracking that can be. We knew from watching youtube videos that the tolerances on this window were pretty unforgiving, so we were VERY careful making the cut. It comes with a template on the box, which helped.

Here's how the finished install looks.


The outdoor view on the first picture is the barn siding right next to the camper -- not a flaw of the window.

We were happy that it does not interfere with the screen.


The entire install from start to finish took less than an hour, and we're pleased with how it turned out.

[hankaye]

kirkupnorth, Howdy;

... yup, !!

hank

[theicebear]

The big project we finished were the beds. Those were quite a long time in the making from start to finish. I can't count how many different ideas/plans we considered with before we settled on the final plan. We wanted to preserve enough room to haul two dirt bikes, so we decided to go with a fold up bed on each side. You can see here that we covered them in black vinyl, and then installed the support leg with piano hinges. The support legs run the whole length of the bed, and then they just fold down when the bed is up. I got some ultrasuede on sale for $6.99 per yard, and made covers for the mattresses.


When the beds are in the up position, we have 53" of clear space. When the beds are down, we have 10" of space to walk between the beds.


We hold them up with latches we got at the farm and fleet store in town.


So, that's where we are as of today. We're planning to do a test run to a three day music festival next weekend that's about an hour from home. We might have to do a little "urban camping" before then, since our dog needs to see some specialists at the University of Minnesota Veterinary College. That's about a four hour trip each way, so it will be nice to be able to stay overnight if we need to. Wherever we end up, I'll post some pictures of the camper in action.

I was wondering what the finished size was of each bed and if you found the 10 inches in between to be enough to shuffle out between the two beds in the middle of the night . Very nice build by the way. Thanks for sharing.

[kirkupnorth]

Hi, Icebear-
The mattress dimensions are 27" x 80". We bought a decent full-size foam mattress and cut it in half lengthwise. It worked out pretty great, and we both sleep very well! Yes, we have found that 10" between the beds is enough to shuffle in and out. The possibility of tripping on the dog while shuffling keeps things interesting!