I realize I haven't posted here in a month of Sundays; mostly because we haven't done much on the teardrop in the past month. (Been cutting firewood, chipping piles of dead twigs, that sort of thing.) But sometimes in the evenings, when I have an hour or so, I cut out a piece of foam or two and glue it to the teardrop ceiling
I'd noticed we had lots of scrap foam from earlier stages of the build. Also, I'm cheap, and decided we didn't need to buy new boards of foam if we simply piece enough of the scrap together. I also realized the downside of this is that it would take longer, since one has to clamp each piece down and that often interferes with clamping adjacent pieces. But, gluing one or two pieces in the evenings, plus one or two before going out cutting and chipping on weekends, it would work out.
Almost there. Once all are in place, we'll pull out our hot wire cutter, and trim the top.
Since we'd used the hot wire to cut one inch thick pieces to fit our 3/4" thick walls, we have lots of 1/4" scrap. These bend around the sharper front curve without cutting kerfs.
The secret is to not piece pieces together where the hot wire is going to cut, as it doesn't cut titebond that well. Here, I actually should have used a thicker piece for the last layer. I think we'll just use PL Premium to glue the roof to this part, however. We think it will expand to fill anyplace where the foam doesn't quite come to the bottom of the roof.
This also shows a wire channel, with the AC wire for the air conditioner in place. Parallel to that will be the cable for the trailer lights, heavier duty cables for the brakes and battery charging cable from the TV, and a few cables for the forward USB ports. Once in place, I'll glue more foam over the cables. I have so much 1/4" scrap foam, I decided to glue a little in under the cables. Probably getting silly, but it didn't cost anything.
Got a little creative with clamping/weighing the pieces down
That last one is a 1" piece glued on top of another 1" piece on the back, where there is a 48" radius. I did cut a few kerfs in the lower piece, but am counting on the 120 lbs of cat litter to bend the upper piece sufficiently. This also demonstrates, by the way, this construction technique is good enough to hold my weight...(um, when I was 20).
So here is what the scrap pile looks like now
It seems to have gotten bigger, rather than smaller, which should be impossible.
We'll add to it the stuff we cut off the ceiling with the hot wire. If it were wood, we'd just throw it in the kindling pile.
Don't anyone tell Shelly, but I think I'll put it all in a big bag and give it to her for a Christmas present. She can use it for her doll house hobby, or something. Then, for her birthday (four days later) I'll make her a vertical hot wire cutter. Yes, I am a romantic fool! (Pick one.)
Tom
