Steve & Cynthia's Teardrop

[S. Heisley]

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This one is the best:



Ahhhhh...The thrill of accomplishment and victory!

[PSBreen]

Thanks, Sharon. I'm just relieved I didn't mess something up.

Cynthia

[Oldragbaggers]

Steve, are you sure this wasn't just a plot to get Cynthia to finish the trailer for you????

[PSBreen]

Becky,

Shhhhh! She hasn't caught on to my evil plan yet.

Seriously I've wanted to get her a little more involved and boy is she ever involved now. Plus she's having fun learning new skills. We've got a few little things to finish on the interior, mostly trim. I want to get her started on a tongue/battery box and see how that goes before we tackle the galley hatch.

[Oldragbaggers]

Ugh.....the galley hatch. I'm in the midst of that particular misery right now myself. This has undoubtedly been the most difficult part of the build. The hatch is now built and is "okay" but I cut too much off of the walls and have to build it back up again. Anything to slow down the process, right???

[PSBreen]

Ok! My evil plan to have Cynthia finish the trailer while I was recovering didn't work The Dr has cleared me to start doing a little more lifting and my motivation has improved. This past week I managed to get the galley hatch frame parts cut and assembled. So far things are looking pretty good. I placed a steel beam across it to see if it was flat and found that I do have a slight 1/8" rise in the center of the hatch. It's where the center rib and stringers meet. At this point I'm not sure if that is worth spending time to try sanding out, but we'll see how it looks when we put the skin on. Hoping to get the hatch skinned this weekend.

[Oldragbaggers]

Your hatch frame looks very nice. Good luck with the skinning. My experience with that was absolutely comical.

[PSBreen]

Well skinning the hatch is no where near the fun everyone has made it out to be. It's been a real pain. It's not as close to perfect as I'd like but as long as it doesn't leak I'll deal with it.
One thing they got right is that you can't have enough clamps. We could have easily used another 20-30.

[PSBreen]

We ran into a little trouble while sealing the edges of the doors and the wall edges under the hatch. Apparently our tape wasn't very good as the epoxy managed to bleed under and made a mess.



Goo Gone didn't work so we had to resort to scraping with a razor blade.


Just a little dab of stain and things were looking good. Touch up with a little varnish tomorrow and it should be as good as when we started.


Lesson learned don't use cheap tape.

[Ron Dickey]

You are offering a 101 in trailer building good job with photo's and grins.

nice job although I will not be using center wood on mine it adds to the weight it does keep with the layout of the trailer at all times.

what are you pulling it with?

[PSBreen]

I don't know about it being Trailer 101, but there are some good examples of what can go wrong and how we fixed them. As for towing, it'll be the old F-150 pickup. If we are even close to our target weight, it won't be noticable while towing

[Oldragbaggers]

WHO was making hatch building out to be fun?!?!? It sure as heck wasn't me. That thing has been a thorn in my side. And it isn't over yet.

[donnan]

I can imagine the drama's that could happen while trying to just put the skin in the right place to start with then the fun of get it to stay in shape and you fold it over it's frame.

Do you think if you had put some masking tape on the outside before putting the goo on that it would have stopped the bleed? Perhaps the goo would just bleed under the tape too. This is something I am sure I will need to look out for.

Cheers
Paul

[PSBreen]

@ Becky...I'm sorry I was being just a little sarcastic and couldn't find a good smiley to fit my mood. Skinning the hatch has definitely been the worst part of the build so far I should have bought a lot more clamps. I'm still not crazy about the way the hatch has turned out, but I want to go camping this year. I can always build another hatch over the winter if we need to.

@ Paul.... We used painters tape and had applied it to the inside and outside of the walls so we could seal the edges. I think a lot of the problem is that there is still a slightly rough texture to the finish of our walls. The tape sticks best to a smooth surface, plus being on an edge the grain is exposed. It all worked out good though. Since the walls already had varnish on them, the epoxy didn't bond to it very well and was fairly easy to scrape off.

[PSBreen]

Didn't get as much done as I'd hoped but a little more progress is better than none. We finished up the hatch and got 4 coats of varnish on it. Actually 5 if you count the one I had to sand off because it ran. It looks much better now. Now to get it installed and see if it's water tight.


While waiting on the varnish to dry I managed to accomplish a little more on the main part of the trailer. The windows are in the doors and the doors are on the trailer but still need weather stripping. The fan and the outside & inside lights are all installed. The trim is bent and ready for installation. We still need a countertop in the galley and a battery box.