The Poet Creek Express - Foamie Hybrid

[KCStudly]

Thanks GPW, Bonnie and Grant.

Last night I planed the top of the bulkhead flush to the tops of the walls. It wasn't difficult, but there are some more details to tell when I get to the pic's, so I will leave it at that for now.

Also sat and studied the electrical diagram some more, making notes on what order I will need to pull the wires so that they train well and don't get crossed or bunched up at the critical junctions (it will be tricky enough as it is without making it harder as the passageways get crowded).

In doing that I realized that the case fan and red night light wires need to be pulled up thru the bulkhead first, so I will need to set the ledger for the lower rear cabinet first so that I can make the final hole thru the front face of the bulkhead for the red light location (I want to get this tucked up as high as I can under the cabinet floor, perhaps even cover it with a small channel shaped slat of wood that matches the rest of the under cabinet structure).

So tonight I stayed after work and added another sheet to the build drawing showing where all of the cabinet and shelf frame ends need to be located on the profile. Also shows where the roof spars will be, and the butt joints in the front wall and ceiling panels.

I'm thinking that I might move the roof vent fan forward so that the spars are more evenly spaced between the cabinet frames. I think I had it further to the rear so that it would be closer to the crest of the roof; looked better that way to my eye and made sense for getting hot air out. Maybe I'll just add another roof spar. Either way, I think I need to bore or dig some foam out of the tops of the walls and glue in some more blocks to give the ceiling skin and spars something to screw to (I had thought I would just glue the ceiling down, then glue the spars to that, but now I don't think that will be that easy. Not a hard fix, but would have been nice to have done it in the flat before the skins went on.

Seeing the reports from Walk The Winds inspired me to do some route planning for the big trip and I came across this gold mine of info on the Magruder Road that I plan to traverse: Elk City, Idaho to Darby, Montana.

If we time it so that we can do an overnight at WTW3 2014; head into the Magruder from the Elk City side; exit the Magruder at Darby; then beeline it home it's something like 100 hrs of driving time (not counting stops) and about 5700 miles.

If we skip WTW it knocks about 10 hrs driving and 200 miles (according to Map Quest).

We get 16 days off on 2 wks vacation, so that's at least 10 days on the road, probably 11 counting the trip out of Poet Creek to Darby.

So in the end it will be: 3 years building ($6k), 11 days driving/sleeping/eating ($2500), 5 days camping and reliving childhood memories with my dad (priceless!!!).

[Wolffarmer]

KC, That is a great road. I never been on it. Been hearing about it most of my life. Probably not as bad as the right up makes it sound. As long as you have the correct gear on your head screwed on tight.

Randy

[Mary C]

Glad you had a great time and a good birthday.

Mary C.

[KCStudly]

Thanks again, Mary!

Randy, Yeah, I'm not sure what to think of the road. I don't remember it being that bad as far as Poet Creek from Elk City. They claim that the Burnt Knob spur is the worst of it, and that does look narrow and rocky, but it is only 6 miles from camp, and another 1.5 miles up it. I seem to recall scouting that area with dad in his full size Jimmy so the Jeep should have no problem w/o the trailer on a day trip away from camp.

They didn't really show anything too scary in the section of the main road that they said was the worst part, other than that hairpin switch back, but it didn't look that tight, nor steep, so I'm left wondering if they were exaggerating or too white knuckled to take pics!

The Jeff Head Trip Report advised 10 ply tires (he had a flat). My Toyo's only have 5 plys in the tread (2 polyester, 2 steel and 1 Nylon) and 2 in the sidewall.

Like you said, take it easy and don't attempt anything stupid; but then again, sharp stone is sharp stone.

Also, the ranger that I spoke with last year said it can turn really slick in places if it rains, so I will bring some basic recovery gear for sure.

[KCStudly]

My laptop is giving me some trouble, so I will try to keep this concise... as if!

Mostly just catching up on some pics and today's work.

The dismount, folding up the metal saw horse legs and setting the work frame down so the cabin is at a better work height.




Looking down on the street side bulkhead joint (wall along the bottom, bulkhead in the middle). Note the blue tape pinched in the corner lap on the cabin side (left in pic).


This is standing in the same location looking along the top of the bulkhead with the street side wall in the foreground. You can see how the front of the bulkhead is about 1/16 higher than the wall, and the rear is higher still due to the curve of the roof/ceiling. The front of the bulkhead ran down to flush on the curb side.


This is looking down on the curb side joint between the bulkhead and wall. Note that I managed to keep the tape out of the front of the joint (right side in pic) on this side.


A little edge glue fixing.


Made some notes on the wiring diagram.


Placed some scrap pieces of plywood on the floor in the cabin and galley so that I can walk around without fear of damaging the relatively thin top skins.


Brought a good step stool from home; a lot easier to maneuver and use than Karl's 6 ft ladder. All that I need for now.


Used the alum. straight edge clamped across the tops of the wall in front of and behind the bulkhead. Cut thru the blue tape and poly with a razor knife then pulled the little whisper of tape off the top.

The white rag was to help me remember not to walk face first into the extra part of the straight edge sticking out. Worked most of the time.


Next I used the bigger Buck plane and worked the top of the bulkhead down to the lines, front and rear. It worked good and easy on the soft cedar until I hit a couple of staples! The blade was only nicked minimally (I caught it pretty quickly), and I shouldn't have much work to hone the blade back.

Here is the result.



Added another sheet to the drawing showing the exact locations of the ends of the cabinet and shelf frames, the ledgers at the "backs" of the cabinet and shelf floors, as well as the roof spars and butt joints in the ceiling skins.


Today I milled up a bunch of maple trim and the ledger stock for the backs of the cabinet and shelf floors. Same technique as before: round over the corners on one of the narrow edges of a 1x2; groove between the rounded corners on the table saw; then rip the two corners off on the table saw. Here's the router set-up.


After I clamped the router table to the work/out feed table I had to cock the fence so that it was aiming into the doorway of the camper, else wise the 9 ft stock would run into the foam walls.


Borrowed this extended roller stand from Karl to match the height of the router table up on the bench. (Although I wiped the shop grime off of the roller, I still covered it with blue tape so that it would not soil the wood.)


I needed 4 lengths for the grooved ledgers, but probably won't need twice that many piece of the quarter round, especially since I already had 2 lengths from when I made the little front rib blanks. On the other hand, the ledger blanks are only 15/16 tall, so rather than have a bunch of drop strips that would be too small to run thru the saw later, I just made a bunch extra of the qtr rnd. I might want it in the end.
Here's the start of it.

It is actually 5/16 on a side with 1/4 round over.

After ripping off those, one more thin little rip in the table saw yielded the blanks for the ledgers.


Next I ran the slots for the shelf and floor bottoms.



Test fitting the 5mm.



After a pretty full day, it was time for some cleanup, including digging out the bottom of the table saw cabinet.



That was only about 1/3 of what I eventually pulled out!!!

And it was time to quit for the day... 80/ct humidity.

[grantstew8]

Enjoying this build. I thought the perfectly finished wood was for the outside. Now it makes sense: it's looking great!

[Silvrzuki77]

Just Awesome!!

[KCStudly]

Thanks guys.

Yesterday I had a family gathering upstate around midday, so that was pretty much a wash on building, and today is The Big Go, the US Nats, Indy baby. Pop, pop.

[KCStudly]

One of those, ‘got less done than I had hoped’ days, but still made progress. Stopped at the hardware store for some screws then on to Mecca.

Did a few mockups with a chunk of the ledger stock and the screws I had bought. Tried a few options for were to place the screws. The finish screws have small tight flat heads on them that could fit over, under, or down into the grooves in the ledgers. Down in the groove was the tidiest because the screw heads would be hidden, but they would be too long and would risk poking thru the other side. (Now that I think of it, there may be ledgers on opposing sides, so that might work okay!)

I ended up chatting with Karl for a bit while making up some temporary story poles to help set the cabinet frames and ledgers at the rear of the cabin. Fussed with that for a bit getting it right.

I taped some shims to the story poles to match the toe board spacing, and taped them to the walls to hold them in place while I dry fit the upper rear cabinet face frame. Some more tape on the walls for some marks to locate the lower front, and a couple of marks on top of the walls for the upper portion. In this pic it is just sitting on the poles and pinched in place between the walls, but later I ran 4 out of the 6 Kregg screws in just to hold it in place while I do some more dry fitting.


Here’s a closer look at the setup; used a few layers of the rosin paper as a shim to get the top of the frame perfectly flush to the top of the wall.


Due to the curve of the roof the rear edge of the frame was just a hair higher than the profile compared to the front. Just a slight shave with the matchbox plane and a little sanding, and I had it dialed into the profile. Curb side.


Street side.


Then I marked the outside of the walls so that later on when I put the ceiling skin on I can chalk a line across and screw down into the top of the frame like a spar.


And that took me right up almost to 8:00. Long day.

[KCStudly]

I put in 3+ hrs last night and another 2-1/2 tonight.

When I went to pull the paper and tape off of the bulkhead so that I could temporarily mount the lower rear cabinet ledger some of the poly peeled off with the tape.

I also needed to pull the tape off of the toe boards so that I could mount the Wiremold chases before starting to pull wires. More poly came off.

I did manage to get the ledger placed and the red light wire hole drilled, and spent the rest of the evening (Thur.) pulling the tape and paper out of the galley to get a handle on just how far this tape trouble was going to take me. Some pretty good sized areas along the curb side rear of the bulkhead were disturbed.

I think the poly must have still been slightly soft when I put the tape down (although not perceptible to the touch at the time). I'm sure I did a thorough job scuffing between coats, and it seemed to lift right down to the wood grain, as opposed to just taking off a top layer. Lesson learned: Take the number of hours drying time on the can and multiply it times days! The parts that had been done earlier had much fewer issues with the tape.

So tonight, rather than starting the wiring, I put masking tape on the adjacent areas (to guard) and hit all of the trouble areas with 220 grit. The poly was hard enough now that I could sand it back fair. Of course I sanded thru the stain in several places, so I hit these areas with the stain again. Added benefit was that the stain helped hide the grey color of the PL where it was peeking out in little whispers.

The only tape left is on the floor, so I may have some more spot repairs to do when I pull that up later.

Many of these trouble spots will be hidden in the final build, but I want to make sure that the wood is sealed up good, so I need to go back and lay down at least one more touch up coat of poly on these spot repairs before moving on.

One step at a time.

[wagondude]

Another thing you can try for the tape. As long as you don't need it for masking paint lines, stick it to your jeans before sticking it to your work. that will reduce the holding power of the adhesive. Ideally, you want your jeans to be clean and saw dust free. Otherwise the tape may not stick at all.

[KCStudly]

Thanks, for the tip Bill. Now that you mention it, I have used that trick before.

The blue tape is supposed to be low (or medium?) tack. I was putting it on in long straight lines, so it would have been difficult to dispense, tamp off and then still use (I can be clumsy with tape sometimes).

Even still, I was in fact trying to get a good seal because I wasn't sure what to expect from the PL adhesive and didn't want that to run everywhere. It worked great for that, and now that I know that the PL is fairly stiff, I probably didn't need to be so careful rubbing the tape down when I stuck it on.

It might have been much less of an issue if I had taken it off sooner, too, rather than leaving it on. Dunno.

[GPW]

KC, we’ve found all the supposedly low tack painters tapes become affixed after a few days ... That and over a fresh finish , can be a problem ...

[kudzu]

When I went to pull the paper and tape off of the bulkhead so that I could temporarily mount the lower rear cabinet ledger some of the poly peeled off with the tape.

Oh, my. It's repairable but certainly disheartening. Another life lesson, I guess.

[GPW]

One trick to try is removing it by heating it with a hair dryer first ... the slight heating loosens the adhesive ... works for removing box labels too ...