Tom & Shelly's build

[tony.latham]

I wet sanded all of the epoxy surfaces which, according to West Systems, is an acceptable way to remove any amine blush.

What grit sandpaper? If the surface had some "tooth" it should stick fine.



Tony

I used 120 to bring the high spots down, then 220.

Tom

I wouldn't think that was the problem then.



Tony

[KTM_Guy]

You know you have blush if you sand and the paper loads up very fast. I had where 1 minute on the disc sander and the paper was useless. And I live near Phoenix. It was one of those rare days when we had some rain that I put down the epoxy. I thought maybe I didn’t put in enough hardener or didn’t mix well it well. Gave it a few more days to harden. Same thing then it dawned on me.

Todd

[Tom&Shelly]

You know you have blush if you sand and the paper loads up very fast. I had where 1 minute on the disc sander and the paper was useless. And I live near Phoenix. It was one of those rare days when we had some rain that I put down the epoxy. I thought maybe I didn’t put in enough hardener or didn’t mix well it well. Gave it a few more days to harden. Same thing then it dawned on me.

Todd

Hard to tell how fast it loads with wet sanding, since I'm habitually dipping the paper in the bowl of water. I wet sand (by hand) and it doesn't raise dust, so I don't need the mask. And I've been pleased with the results as far as achieving a smooth uniformly flat surface. I googled on amine blush and wet sanding and found a West Systems pdf that specifically says (after saying to use warm soapy water and a scotch pad, as do all the other sites) that wet sanding also works to remove amine blush. So I'm figuring if I had it, it's gone.

We tested some corners on our shelves tonight and they all seem to have the same problem with that 2 in 1 primer not adhering to the epoxy surface. So if it is amine blush, we have it everywhere. Thing is, we also tried Rustoluem's Universal Bonding Primer, which says explicitly it works on two part epoxies. We had tried it on a test piece before priming the camper parts and it does seem a lot better, but we went with the first one because it is gray and matched the paint better. Think we should have slowed down and tested a little more thoroughly; now we'll pay!

Tomorrow on my way home from work I'll stop by Home Depot and pick up some plastic scrapers. Except for my step son's graduation, I expect we'll be spending this weekend scraping away last weekend's progress.

Shelly's now talking about using a different paint too, since the Multicolor textured paint does not have good coverage. Either way, we'll need more...

Tom

[Tom&Shelly]

Hmm, may be our imaginations, but I attempted to scrape a few discrete spots with the plastic scraper, and it seems to be harder tonight. Maybe we'll give it a few days and see if we just needed some more cure time. Anyway, scraping it with those plastic scrapers would have left an awful mess to finish by sanding--which is not the sense we had two nights ago, when it seemed ready to peel off. Waiting can't hurt...

Tom

[KCStudly]

I'm in the northeast where we get average humidity from 14 to 54 /ct though the warmer months; sometimes much higher... 100/ct with no rain happens at least a couple of times a year!

You will know amine blush by the waxy feel it leaves on the surface. I don't even think about not washing it off.

[Tom&Shelly]

I'm in the northeast where we get average humidity from 14 to 54 /ct though the warmer months; sometimes much higher... 100/ct with no rain happens at least a couple of times a year!

You will know amine blush by the waxy feel it leaves on the surface. I don't even think about not washing it off.

Well, from here on out we will wash the cured epoxy with warm soapy water before sanding. The epoxy projects left to go are mainly the roof and hatch.

Shelly was feeling under the weather last weekend, and painting the teardrop is her part of our project, so I took advantage of the good weather outside, and cut some firewood, taking a weekend off from building. This weekend, Shelly is over the weather, the trees are under the weather (rain mixed with snow at 7000 ft, in mid-May!), and so we'll plug the electric shop heater back in and go back to building!

I think the paint job actually came out better than we initially thought, and it took more time for the primer and paint to harden sufficiently than we'd anticipated. As I said above, I'm not at all sure we had amine blush, but I wet sanded all of the epoxy after it cured, which West Systems says is another way to remove it, even if we did have it initially.

Shelly plans to finish the cabin floor (already primed with the gray primer that we initially thought caused our problems), and we'll prime and paint the utility compartment mid-deck, this time using a different primer.

I might try and do a few other things, but taking care not to raise or create dust.

Tom

[Tom&Shelly]

Shelly painted the cabin floor this weekend with Rustoleum silver hammer finish. It is practice for what we might do with the exterior. Looks bad right now, but I think she just needs to put it on thicker, so we'll try again after letting it cure. Where it is thin, it looks like unhammered silver, but where she got it thick it looks okay. I was surprised at how the thin parts brought out every ripple and other imperfection in my sanding of the epoxy coated floor, but she thinks more time sanding and recoating with primer will solve that for the exterior. (Her ex used to do that sort of thing.)

In the mean time, I worked on the forward utility compartment. Cut some lines in the foam in the front for wiring, and drilled holes to meet them



The left channel (in the picture; toward the right side of the foam from the trailer's viewpoint) is for the AC power for the air conditioner, coming from the electrical box in the galley, over the ceiling. The hole through the front is for the cable from the tow vehicle to a junction box in the utility compartment, while the other three channels are for brakes, brake lights, turn signals, etc. I will use a 10 ga cable for the battery charging cable from the tow vehicle j-box, and 14 ga speaker cable for most everything else. I have an extra 10 ga cable I'll put in as a spare. All will run over the ceiling to that electrical box in the galley. I'll build the box out of scrap 1/4 and 1/8" Baltic Birch and it will hold the outlets (both 120 and 12 v) for the galley and at the foot of the cabin, as well as the PD4045. I'll run the brake cables through the box down to the axle, and the battery charge cable down through the box to the battery box under the galley.

If I'd really planned this teardrop thing out thoroughly, I would have used separate pieces of foam instead of having to cut it out, but this works. I'll run the wiring after the ceiling is on, before putting the insulation and roof on. The roof will run down over the front, and before we install it I'll stuff little scraps of foam in the channels to fill any voids after the wires are in.

I also installed the air conditioner



Easier to see in the second picture than the first, but I deliberately installed it a little cattywhompus. (Hmm, the spell checker wants to change that to "computations" ) Anyway, I had drilled a 3/4" hole in the floor right where I wanted the drain for the AC to go, but a few weeks later, discovered the left gas strut on the front cargo door sticks back too far, and would run right into the air conditioner. The first thought was to glue a dowel in the drain hole, then cut another about a half inch back. Decided twisting the air conditioner a little was a better solution. Again, planning ahead a little better would have helped.

The aluminum angle in the second air conditioner picture, above, is there to hold the corner of the second level shelf (which we haven't painted yet)



Should give us plenty of room for the Easy-Up, some folding chairs, folding table, Shelly's changing/shower tent, possibly a guest room (my old two man tent), and the two hoses for the air conditioner. The cut out in the middle is to run the hoses through, but we often won't need them, and it's easier to store stuff with them out of the way. We will also have the 3/4" by 3/4" pine strips to try and keep the equipment from banging against the cargo doors.

The last picture also shows the outlet box for the air conditioner (it will be on its own circuit breaker and is a GCI outlet), and the junction box for the cable from the tow vehicle.

Next I test fitted the cargo doors, and installed the front marker lights



With the doors there, I knew the lights wouldn't interfere with them, but I'd forgotten that we'll likely be putting a 1/2" round over radius between the roof and walls, and the first light was too close to the edge. So, I moved it back a quarter inch and will have three holes to fill with our next batch of epoxy. (Did I mention I wished I'd planned all this out a bit better? If there is ever a #2, it will be.) I drilled 3/16 inch holes for the 22 ga speaker wire I am using from the TV j-box to these two lights. Tested with the power supply and they still work.

Tom

[Tom&Shelly]

So I'm trying to decide which species to build my spars with:



If I could get several pieces of pine with the same bend, I'd have a pretty good way to build a teardrop right there!

Of course, I picked the most interesting pieces of pine for these pictures; I'd thought maybe I could get enough straight, sort of knot free, pieces from my junk pile that I could straighten with the router (used in a table like a jointer), to make the hatch spars. But when I saw how straight the poplar is, I figured that's the ticket! I'll have to buy several more boards to do the entire teardrop, but the price (and slight increase in weight) beats the hassle.

The oak comes from my old futon. I'm thinking of using a piece for the exposed spar on the teardrop side of the galley to attach the hurricane hinge, to be doubled (after I put the ceiling on) with a poplar spar.

Tom

[tony.latham]

I’ve been quite pleased using poplar for spars—except for the hatch hinge spar. I use a laminated 2” oak for that.

You want something stiff with good screw holding capabilities there.



T


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Tom&Shelly]

I’ve been quite pleased using poplar for spars—except for the hatch hinge spar. I use a laminated 2” oak for that.

You want something stiff with good screw holding capabilities there.



T


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Thanks Tony. Thinking now maybe we'll run out and look for a 3/4" inch oak board, rip it to width, and glue them together to get 1 1/2" x 1 1/2" spars for the hatch top and galley where the hinge attaches. The varnish on the scrap oak (even though I'd sand it down) might interfere with laminations.

Tom

[bdosborn]

I’ve been quite pleased using poplar for spars

x2.

Bruce

[Tom&Shelly]

Spent the past few days on the hatch. Started by ripping some oak for the galley side of the hinge spar:



It will be two 1 1/2" pieces glued together, but since we don't have our cabin ceiling on yet, I just screwed them together for now. The back piece will remain as is, but I'll rip the other piece to fit, after the 1/8" BB ceiling is installed. I'll use 2 1/2" deck screws to hold the ends of the spars into the wall ledge. (I also went out and bought a 23 gauge pneumatic nailer to hold the BB ceiling to the spars while the glue dries, but I digress.)

I then cut some 1/2" AC plywood scrap to make the gussets



Haven't decided yet whether we'll just varnish the exposed parts, or try and paint them to hide the AC nature of the surfaces; they really don't look too bad. We plan to use black epoxy on the edges, and will seal the hatch with rubber D ring.

I next ripped some oak for the hatch hinge attachment (2 pieces glued together) and ripped some poplar for the ribs, and more for the cabin spars (the wood chipper is standing by, faithfully, in case I need to hide boo boos! Seriously, I'm running out of room in the shop and, after moving stuff around, that's where it ended up.)



The riving knife and other safety features for the table saw are sitting safely out of harms way. Discovered the hard way these budget devices on the old Craftsman table saw are more dangerous than helpful. (Don't tell OSHA! )

I next glued together the ribs to make the base of the hatch. From bottom up: Oak for looks and strength, a half inch scrap of ply to support a rubber D ring seal to keep dust from entering the galley, a quarter inch scrap of ply to help protect the seal, and a poplar rib that will support the end of the hatch ceiling. A bit heavy perhaps, but I think it will get the job done. I later cut a notch in each of the gussets so the horizontal D ring will join with the two vertical D rings.



Then, fitting the spars, taking the thing apart, assembling it on the bench, test fitting, taking it back off, gluing it together, and re-fitting:



So far so good! I have just about a 1/8" gap between the 1/4" plywood protection and the edge of the floor that the D ring will seal



Not crazy about how well the sides align, but with the right paint job, no one will notice (I hope!)



Next step will be to cut some blocking out of scrap 1/2" ply to fit along the gussets and help support the ribs. Also some blocking for the brake/backup/turn signal lights, high center brake light strip, license plate holder/light, and galley dome light.

I plan to screw some scrap to the outside of the hatch skeleton, to keep it true, before taking it off and skinning the inside this week.

Now we're having fun!

Tom

[tony.latham]

Let me guess. You spent more time worrying about this step than it took to crank it out.

Am I right?

Tony

[Tom&Shelly]

Let me guess. You spent more time worrying about this step than it took to crank it out.

Am I right?

Tony

Well, in my own defense, worrying has been very good for me, in general.

Never worried too much about attaching the ribs; should I have?

Far as cutting the wall for the hatch sides, that I did worry about, due to my propensity to have the jig saw blade bend sideways, especially in a turn. I avoided that problem by drawing parallel lines in the template, cutting between them and then sanding. Then cutting the wall and using the two template pieces to "perfectly" match the wall and hatch sides with the router. We see how that turned out. The other side, by the way looks perfect. Think the problem must have been having one of the templates just slightly askew. Might have been better if I didn't over-think it and just went slowly with the jig saw, but thinking has been almost as useful for me, in my career, as worrying, and I don't see any reason to give up on either in retirement.

BTW, I'm also done worrying/thinking about the gas struts: Decided on "reverse struts" (attaching to the galley walls above the hatch attachment point) and cut the gussets so that there is enough of a hard point on the galley walls to attach to. That wasn't so much of a "worrying" type problem as an engineering challenge. Those become more interesting when I fail to think ahead and anticipate.

Anyway, my next worry is how to make sure I don't lose the wires for the lights inside the hatch after attaching the hatch ceiling and roof. Or is that an engineering challenge? I'll try not to worry about the difference.

Tom

[twisted lines]

retirement.

Tom

Ahh What