Moving along on the trailer!
I was doing the thinned out polyurethane for waterproofing, don't know if it made a difference. In the end I decided to do the paint/canvas covering on the trailer. I am no good at bodywork and filling all the screw and nail holes and gaps seemed over my head. I decided that just as the thick vinyl flooring hid any imperfections in the plywood a good thick canvas with paint would make the exterior pretty sharp looking!
Anyway, here's the pictures:
I got a full roll of "outdoor cotton duck" fabric from the fabric store, normally $110 for 10 yards x 60 inches, but 50% off plus a coupon got it down to $44!
The fabric is a light gray, I draped it so the fold in the center went along the top rail.
I painted with Kilz Oil Based Primer
Kilz Oil-based primer is nasty stuff, but I wanted the nastiest waterproof coating I could get without spending a ton. I suppose the Latex-based Kilz would have worked very well also.
The technique I worked out toward the end was applying the paint real thick on the wood, smoothing the fabric over the wood with my hand, then painting the paint REAL thick over the fabric and finally rolling with a dry-ish roller to even everything out. If you don't get a lot of paint underneath the fabric it won't stick. Ideally the fabric is heavy and soaked with paint.
Looks pretty darn good, I'll see what it looks like dry, then decide whether to sand, paint more primer, or something else. Also I like this picture showing the radius I put on with my new 1/2" router round over bit.
I'm hoping that the fabric tightens up and sticks to the wood real nice. Part of the deciding factor was seeing Mike's test videos on applying fabric to foam and wood with different adhesives and seeing how well the fabric stuck to wood with paint. Hopefully I get the same results. He was using latex and I used oil-based, but I would imagine both would adhere well. Also the oil-based primer seemed marketed to resist mildew and moisture even better than the water-based latex. (However, the fumes make me wish I got the latex!)