The Poet Creek Express - Foamie Hybrid

[GPW]

What the heck? It’s a really cool fan and is gonna‘look great on the trailer I was thinking you’d get around to a little practical Solar ... Seems perfect for TPCE ... Not large (ugly) panels trying to do everything , just little discrete power stations ...

[KCStudly]

Checked out the cabinet parts today and aside from a few minor drips on the face frames, they look good. I used a small scrapper tool to shave the drips ever so gently. They were a little gooey underneath, so I will let those sit a couple more days before sanding and coating again. I think I will either hang them so that I can get to both sides at the same time, or stand them on their top edges, with the hope that this reduces the drips. Might reconsider spraying.

Then it was back to wiring the street side. Here are the tools that I have been using.


The plastic twine works well as a pull tape. The diagonal pliers for cutting wire (duh). The small needle nose pliers and piece of welding wire (along the bottom) are used for fishing the fish tape out of the holes. The wire stripping pliers in the middle work great, the second pair on the end works well, too, and has terminal crimpers that will be used later on the final install. Couple of different colors of electrical tape for attaching wires to pull twine, and help keep wires organized. The bundle of shrink wrap in various sizes is used to seal up splices made with the iron and solder. The rag is for cleaning flux and excess solder off of the hot iron. The paint tray holds the hot iron and catches solder drips, stripped insulation bits and scraps of tape. The little wire brush is used to remove flux from soldered joints prior to shrink wrapping. The lighter is used to heat the shrink wrap, or the iron can be used for this, too.

A sharpie marker (not shown) was used to mark the white wires and help identify the GND’s to their proper circuits. I think the circuit panel has a common Neg. bus, so it shouldn’t be critical for making proper connections, but may come in handy in a troubleshooting situation, so I am keeping the GND’s paired with their respective hot leads.

Here I have completed the splices for the street side lighting hots and GND’s, and have started to organize the wires into the Wiremold trough.




The little bands of tape are just “ties” used to keep the wires paired and organized.

Tucking in.


And in this last one I have started to close up the Wiremold trough and bundled up the excess wire that will eventually feed out thru the front wall into the tongue box and beyond.


From front to rear are: white, green, yellow, brown std. 4 wire trailer lights; pink and white bulkhead vent fan; orange and white street side and red lighting; and red and black galley light.

I still need to splice in the front marker light. However, since it is a straight shot thru the wall to the mounting location, I will wait and pull this after the canvas is on (I’ll have to deal with the porch and rear marker lights while putting the canvas on, but am not worried about it).

[KCStudly]

I only spent about an hour or so on the build tonight. Went over the cabinet parts with 220 grit and wiped them down.

Work has been pretty hectic, and after spending a couple of days up on the roof prepping for an equipment installation I was feeling a bit of heat stroke/sunburn, so I just didn't have any more in me. (The flat roof is rolled rubber with a reflective silver color coating that is a bit like being out on the water; sun reflects back up at you.)

Anyway, that's that. I'm to bed early tonight.

[wagondude]

Sounds like working in a giant solar oven. Gotta be careful with that. Don't want your goose cooked at work. That's what the camp ground is for.

[GPW]

That’ll “poach your pumpkin" !!!

[KCStudly]

Bill, It was pretty rough at times. We were able to step into the shade from the elevator house from time to time, but by the end of the day Thursday I just went straight home and took a 3+ hour nap.

Glen, sure felt that way. A little sunburn remedy with lidocaine took the burn away.

Today wasn’t so bad at work. After punching out I printed some of the USGS quadrangle maps along our planned route on the Magruder Road/Montana Road/Nez Perce Trail. Fortunately I had downloaded them a few days ago; the USGS website is currently closed due to the gov shutdown. I also found this cool Forest Service brochure about the Magruder Corridor Road.

Out at Mecca I finished up the street side wiring rough-in by splicing in the left front marker light wires.


The brown and white wires are spliced inline and covered in shrink wrap, and they go straight out thru the side. The white wire is kind of hidden in this pic, but you can just see it passing under the brown one just after the shrink wrap.


From there I continued with the rough-in on the curb side.

The red and black bundle on top of the wall is for the roof vent fan and will pass straight thru the switch box. The orange and white pair up on the wall is for the dome light on this side, and there is a purple wire looped out at the switch pocket that feeds the porch and foot light on this side.

I’m going to need some more of the orange wire.

So there are a lot fewer wires scrambled around on the floor now and the cabin is a lot less cluttered up.


I’ve been holding off on doing more coats of poly mix on the cabinet parts. Thinking about putting together a small “spray booth” (more of a shower curtain or cardboard box to help contain over spray), but I want to check with Karl first to make sure he is okay with me doing that in the loft.

For those of you that don’t get over to the Vintage Camping Equipment section, Campmaster-K (Kirk) runs an occasional contest there that involves guessing the winning bid for camping equipment being sold on ebaby (usually Coleman stuff), and I was the lucky winner of the most recent contest. Got a nice LED flashlight as the prize!

[GPW]

Getting close now KC !!!

[KCStudly]

Thanks, GPW. I appreciate that, despite the fact that my first thought was, “It doesn’t even have the roof on yet!”

Any who, it is getting closer bit by bit and I put another 6 plus hrs in today.

The roof fan came by FedEx today and it is a pretty nifty piece of engineering. Seems to be a real quality piece, and was packaged well.



My first reaction was, “Holy crap, this thing is huge”, but I’m sure it will be fine once it is up on the roof (...what roof? ).

Next I made four (4) of these little stands combining various bits of scrap 1x pine and 5mm ply cut offs. Screwed them to the tops of the rear cabinet face frames where the screw holes will be hidden. The little shim does not overhang the width of the frame so will not collect drips or blobs (Karl’s idea). The pine is long enough so that the frames stand upside down on edge keeping drips from forming on the lower rounded edges (top in pics).


I thickened the poly mix up to about 3:1 trying to get a little better coverage, but ended up with some small streaked areas where I missed getting full coverage (I’m blaming the poor lighting in the loft).


Anyway, the rest of it looks pretty good to me.

Back to wiring. I got the curb side rough-in all but done with the exception of a length of orange wire needed to finish up the hot lead to the pillow light on that side.

Here are the front marker light wires; dark brown and white.


Foot and porch light wires; purple and white.



Another look at the roof fan wires, red and black with plenty to get out past the center of the roof and then some.


Rear side marker; dark brown and white.


Got the front (main) section of the Wiremold installed and everything a lot more organized inside the cabin.

From the rear forward we have the large 10 ga red and black for the hatch actuators (and future potential battery in galley); 14 ga red and black for the roof fan; white to be joined by more orange for the interior lighting on this side; and brown and white for the side marker lights on this side (to be tied in with the wires on the other side later up on the tongue). You can also see that I left the pull twine running up to the pillow light location so that I can pull the orange wire there (managed to pull the white wire w/o pulling the twine all the way thru).

Here you can see how I have organized the wire pairs by binding them with small wraps of electrical tape and laying them into the Wiremold.



Tomorrow Karl and I are going to Framingham to swap in the “good” chunker axle and other set of multi-leaf springs, hopefully getting at least one axle with functioning brakes. I don’t see much chance of other significant design improvement happening this year, but we may still throw farther just by taking slack out of the compounding setup.

[GPW]

NICE Fan/vent ... Pillow light? ... you’ve thought of EVERYTHING !!! Deluxe all the way !!!

[KCStudly]

I've been using the term 'pillow light' instead of 'reading light' because we don't usually read in bed.

I need to check the weather. Wet this morning and we were heading up north to lay in a field under a ballista.

[KCStudly]

Sunday Karl and I swapped an axle and springs on the ballista. Fortunately it did not rain too hard and we were fairly well prepared, so it went reasonably well. The brakes still do not actuate, but we can rewire the whole system in the time that it would take to troubleshoot the old one, so that is what we will do.

Monday was my Tuesday this week, so today I thrashed!

Started by doing a little touchup on the cabinet poly; hit those little dry spots with the little hobby brush and am calling the first batch done.

Finished up the orange curb side cabin light wire rough-in, so that’s it for wiring for now; at least until a start in on the switches and get back to the switch plates and trim.


Back to the rear cabinet installation. I opened up the red light wire hole in the lower rear ledger a bit (just to let the wire pass thru a little easier) and dry fit it to the bulkhead again. I’ve been struggling in my head on how to glue the ledgers in when I screw them in place without making a mess of the nice finish. Also, I don’t expect the shiny poly to take the glue well w/o roughing the surface up, and I don’t want to screw up the finish doing that, either. All this is a compromise due to the maple and Okoume having different color stains and having done the bulk of the finish work “on the bench”.

I thought about just screwing the ledgers in place w/o glue (neater, but not really unitized construction). I thought about just gluing the back of the ledgers, screwing them up and wiping any glue squeeze out with a damp rag, but that wouldn’t address the lack of “tooth”. So, as usual, I over engineered a tedious and detailed installation procedure. I masked over and under the ledger (using the tape on T-shirt method to dumb down the tape some). From here I can pull the ledger, scuff between the tape lines (tape protecting surrounding finish), glue and screw the ledger back up, and the tape will act as masking for the glue.


Before doing that, I continued by dry fitting the side ledgers, using the rear ledger to align at the back and the story poles at the front.

Curb side.

Street side.


In order to prep for glue on the ends of the cabinet face frames, I did a rough mask and used a cut off piece of the face frame rail stock to trace around.



Then carefully cut thru the tape with a nice fresh blade in the utility knife.


So a bunch of little steps forward, and now one step back. When I went to do this same mask detail on the street side, I noticed that the panel groove in the rail stock did not align with the groove in the side ledger on that side. Hmm, I thought I had checked all of these previously, or maybe just the first one after set-up? Back to the pile of ledgers for some QC. The radius at the bottom of the ledger was holding the frame rail up high.

If you were to take the time to go back and look closely at the previous pics of the side ledgers and the radius cope detail you would see that some of them had longer tails on the thin tapered part that wraps around the round lower rear edge of the face frame. I assumed that this was just variation in the hardness of the wood and therefore different amounts of “fin” at the edge. I detailed out all of the mill work by hand sanding with the little block, including lightly touching these fins. Some of them were more fragile than others, so I attributed the differences to these factors. Turns out that about 40/ct of them came out accurately and the others need some more work. Apparently when I did my earlier detailing I only looked at the fit between inside and outside radii, and did not check that the parts were seating together to where the grooves lined up. I wonder if the router bit pushed back into the collet changing the set-up midstream.

Well, the router is still setup, but it was a good time to knock off for the night, and it is always better to let events like this sink in a little before jumping to any conclusions or taking action rashly. I’ll check out the router setup again, and will probably be able to run the bad ones thru again without too much drama or damage to the finish.

Tune in next time.

[KCStudly]

Strike while the iron is hot. Take the bull by the horns. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes.

I’ll get back to this thought in a moment or two. First let’s talk about what I got done on TPCE today; just a little bit.

But first, what is wrong with this picture?

Hint: This is not a galley shelf location, it is a rear cabinet.

If you said that the cabinets have vertical frame members up against the wall, as in this pic, unlike the galley shelves that only have a single rail, you would be correct, so the masking job needs to be trimmed and continued up the side on the face frame.


Fixing the misaligned ledger panel grooves was a simple as making a 1/16 inch adjustment to the router fence. Here is the misalignment.



And here is the fix.



And that is as far as I got before Karl helped me grab a gift horse.

I’m going to call it “The Briquette”.

[grantstew8]

"it is always better to let events like this sink in a little before jumping to any conclusions or taking action rashly"

This statement has saved me from turning a mistake or slight error into a disaster. Normally I can only work in the mornings for a couple of hours. Often, after mulling over the issue and the original plan of "attack" changes and the result is satisfying. I'd also add that rushing or "I'll just quickly finish off" has lead to a few frustrating and avoidable mistakes. I have to remind myself that part of teardrop is building it, so it really does not matter how long it takes. To be truthful, I'm loving every minute.

Kc yur build is looking tremendous,

[KCStudly]

Thank you Grant. I really do appreciate your comments.

[KCStudly]

Mini milestone tonight that really has me feeling pretty good about sweating the details.

To tell the truth, I have been a little concerned that I have been working too far ahead with the finish work and being over confident in how everything is going to fit together just by planning, measuring and trying to maintain accuracy.

However, after starting to do the complete dry fit of the inside rear cabinets, my confidence level has been boosted greatly! Follow along on today's efforts.

Before getting back to the cabinets I pulled the cargo straps off of The Briquette (to return them to Karl) and tested out the heat gun that we found in the tongue box. It was the only piece of plastic on the thing that survived the heat.

The carpentry pencils were a bonus. The heat gun works fine, although it is a little stinky, and a little scrub with some sandpaper took the charring off of worst of the pencils (thrifty).

After finishing up fixing the cabinet side ledger copes on the router, I worked on dry fitting the lower rear cabinet bottom panel. I had to trim the panel length (side to side width) slightly to account for the previous change in design to using this side ledger style, but the width (front to back width) that was originally planned and specified to Rover Mike was spot on! Nice.


Street side close up.


Curb side close up.


The panel is raw in these pic’s but will be stained in the red chestnut just like the walls and floor.

Here is another shot with the little test piece of scrap cabinet rail held up to check fit.


Next I cut and taped a couple of temporary stop blocks to help me position the top sides of the lower face frame accurately.



My happy moment.


And now too many detail shots showing pride in my work:
Behind the face frame on the curb side.


Behind the face frame on the street side.


Underneath rear corner street side.


Underneath front street side.


Underneath rear curb side.


Underneath front curb side.


And another happy moment, fitting the upper cabinet face frame.



Oh, yes. I am very pleased with the color combination and contrast.

This shot of the street side looking at the back of the upper and lower face frames (on right) and the side ledger (on left) shows better how the dado in the side ledger allows the top of the lower face frame to come up to the bottom of the groove for the upper cabinet bottom panel (clear as mud?).


The dado in the curb side ledger needs to be opened up just a tad; it was a little too snug after the addition of the poly.

If Karl’s UT is available, the plan for tomorrow is to start ripping into the junk from The Briquette to get that headed to the dump on Saturday, so I will likely be covered with carbon soot for the next couple of days and will not be going anywhere near TPCE in that state, but I might sneak up there to drool some more!

I can’t begin to tell you how good it is feeling to have these cabinets coming together as planned!