CapeBuild Build Journal

[Capebuild]

Wow John! You are taking this build to a new level. Very impressive to say the least.

Thank you!! As I look at everyone on this site who undertakes building one of these I keep thinking, "WOW"... this is really quite the commitment we all make.
I'm really inspired as I keep looking at other's builds. Personally, I feel through my career's work and my personal interests, I've accumulated a certain skill set
and this project has really given me the opportunity to put it all together. It's all very rewarding. In addition, I don't think I would have had the "enjoyable time"
I'm having without the help and inspiration coming from the members of this forum.

Quite the process. Thanks for sharing this.

Tony, I've learned so much from you and your book. Believe me, I'm happy to give back, where I can....so .... you are welcome!

This morning I opened up the molds. The image on the left shows the parts still in the mold and the picture on the right shows the parts removed from the molds
with the remains of the vents and sprues still intact. The castings did wind up with tiny air bubble depressions on the back sides, but that part of the castings will be hidden
or up against the aluminum and out of sight. So the way the patterns are set up is important to try and pour from what will be the back sides of the parts.

molded.jpg (520.71 KiB) Viewed 525 times

Here the parts are cleaned up with the sprues and vent posts removed. Thought I'd mention, the reason I even made the bezel for the T handle is if I just installed the handle without
the bezel it would be facing angled down at the ground. The bezel positions the handle so, with the hatch closed, it is parallel with the ground.

final castings.jpg (448.3 KiB) Viewed 525 times

Thanks for looking.

John

[Tom&Shelly]

They look great John!

With the quality of your build, yours will be an eye turner!

Tom

[lfhoward]

Those castings came out fantastic! Beautiful work (and engineering).

[western traveler]

Good morning John,
Wow, what the commitment. I didn’t expect anything less knowing your background and the research you put in. Your build is impressive. Can’t wait to see the end result of all your hard work.

[Capebuild]

Thanks a lot LFHoward and Ralph for the nice "kudos"....appreciate it!... LF, I've been trying to get through your Victron RaspberryPi escapades.... I keep going back and rereading it to try and understand what you're doing with all that. I've got Victron devices in my set up so I'm sure your work will be applicable to what I've got going. I've not used Rpi before but have played around with arduinos a bit... but I think the Rpi would come in handy for this kind of set up. I'll let you know of any questions that may come up, but I'll keep looking at your set up so thanks for posting all that. Ralph, hope you made it back home safely after your wheel mishap.... I had seen a grouping of photos you posted. Looks like you had (or maybe are still having) a great adventure.


I'm working "inside" as the weather is not friendly to work in the garage (although yesterday was warmer, in the higher 30s and was able to get the interior hatch sheathing installed). Working in the shop sill molding up parts..... working on the window hinges and the 3rd brake light fixture (big mold).
John

[Capebuild]

1.16.22

Cleaned up the edges of the hatch (after gluing on the interior panel and rough fit it on the galley area..... just to get an idea of how it fits and looks.... from the exterior and from the interior (what will be our view out the back window).

[halfdome, Danny]

Very nice work John your build is getting closer to camping .

Don't think we would like to sacrifice that much interior space for a view out back, but it must be a requirement for you.
We put our heater in the center of the headboard and the TV in the center of the footboard.
Keep up the great work
Danny

[Capebuild]

your build is getting closer to camping .

Thanks a lot for the comments, Danny. I'm kind of hoping we'll be able to take the trailer out for a test run in May or June. It won't be "done" but maybe campable. I just realized the other day I still have all the galley drawers to build. Also I won't be able to start applying the aluminum since I'm doing that with contact adhesive and that needs a temperature of 65 degrees (F) to use..... There's a lot of things that have to wait till warmer weather since I'm unable to move forward without having that aluminum applied.

One thing I wanted to mention (but forgot) in my last post..... I weighed the hatch. As it is now it weighed 46.4 pounds. I was pretty happy with that. Still have to apply the exterior aluminum, moldings, lights, window.... etc........ but hopefully all that won't be more than another 10 or 15 pounds, maybe 20 at the most. So if the hatch door winds up at 65 pounds (a bit more or less), I'd be happy with that.

John

[Capebuild]

1.18.22

Thought I'd share a photo of the finished molded parts. For the 3rd brake light I wound up printing out an inner core (in hard plastic) and molding the rubber around that which provided a more sure way of screwing the unit down to the hatch cover and provided a way to embed two threaded lugs into that hard core to attach the light fixture. Once the unit is mounted to the hatch I'll insert some turned black ABS pieces to fill the screw hole openings. Still have to mold up another set of hinges for the other side (for the side window) and 4 more sets of hinges for the door windows, which will also swing open. The resin used for the hinges is a higher durometer than that of the other molded parts. I've never used this resin before but it's pretty nice.... very tough. Being that the hinges will be "moving parts" (where the axle joins the hinge halves) I thought it good to have something pretty durable in that area. I put some Proflex RV around the seam where the brake light meets the rubber and will do the same when I mount the tail lights into their fixtures. I had to pull some of the Proflex out from the tube that had cured since last use. That stuff is really very tough!
John

[tony.latham]

Thought I'd share a...

That's amazing. It's not only your molding process but being able to do the CAD part. This is so far beyond what I can do in Sketchup, it's like a flat earther trying to see what's on the bottom of the earth.

Tony

[Tom&Shelly]

it's like a flat earther trying to see what's on the bottom of the earth.

Tony

Why it's turtles all the way down. (But I should avoid discussing religious beliefs on this forum!)

Neat work John! Shelly's looking at using plastics for her doll house furniture making, and I suggested she review this thread.

Tom

[Capebuild]

Thanks Tony and Tom!

[Capebuild]

Hello....today I finished building the galley drawers and thought I'd share some progress photos. I wanted to try and avoid flat faced drawer fronts both for aesthetics and for more room. They're not all that deep so I thought best to try and maximize the space. So all the fronts on the drawers follow the curve of the galley hatch door/trailer profile. I was kind of fretting about curving the wood but it wasn't too bad. They're far from perfect, but came out okay. I followed Tony L's design on the stove drawer set up by kind of having a drawer within a drawer and the stove on top. Planning on getting (at some point) one of those Partner stoves. The black box is a foam core mock up of that stove. The stove needed to pull out a bit more (like 5 inches more so the wind screen could open) than the drawer's max pull out so I put a shelf on there on a simple track to extend it out a bit more. It just slides out another 5 or so inches.
When the weather warms up (at some point) I'll sand the drawers, finish them up and urethane them.

Thanks for looking.

John

[TimC]

Wow John. Just WOW!

She's gonna be a looker for sure...

[Tom&Shelly]

Gee John, you should shop at Home Depot: all of their plywood is curved!

Seriously, +1 on what Tim says. Great job!

Tom