The Poet Creek Express - Foamie Hybrid

[Wobbly Wheels]

Call me crazy, but I don't think your frame will have a problem carrying all that wood...
It's odd, but the picture of you getting the pintle together felt like a milestone for me too: what a sweet moment that must have been !
(You're gonna safety that nut though, right ? )
If I could make one observation re: threaded rod for cushion(Adel) clamps... I've used that method in boats and the threads tend to get trashed. It was a hassle in the engine room of a boat, I would guess it's a lot worse on an undercarriage (look at gas tank hanger bolts).
I started getting the welders to tack 1/4-20 coupler nuts in instead so I could use a bolt and the threads were concealed. I used lock washers to keep the bolts from backing out, but one ought to be able to stake them as well.
Then again, boat harnesses probably need to be more accessible than those on a trailer anyway.

[KCStudly]

GPW, I am considering marine grade ply. Worked on the Range Rover project today for the guy with the CNC router (found out his unit only does 4x8, Doh) and he has offered to get me the ply at his wholesale cost. That should save me about what I will have into labor helping on his project (I hope). He also has other connections and may be able to work out something with someone that has a 5x10 CNC router. Either way, it will be worth having an IOU with him.

Wobbly, Thanks for following along, and for the vote of confidence. The coupler nuts are a good idea. I might use that once I get further along with my electrical planning and fit up.

Re: the pintle nut. If you look back you will see... well I might as well just repeat the picture here.

The nut is slotted and I drilled a hole through the threads for a cotter pin.

[Wobbly Wheels]

Just yanking your chain, KC - the pin wasn't installed in the last pic you posted.

[KCStudly]

Oh. Well it will all be disassembled for paint, so I didn't want to use the cotter pin yet.

[aggie79]

KC,

I have a man crush on your metal working skills and abilities, tools, and shop. I also have a terrible case of frame envy. Man you do gorgeous work!

Can't wait to see the floor and walls start to come together.

Take care,
Tom

[KCStudly]

Golly gee, Tom. Where's the emoticon for "I'm giddy and blushing"?

Thanks for the superlative complements!

I called a couple of listings on CL for possible thrifty sources of foam, but neither of the ads that sounded promising had what I wanted. (There was a place in New Bedford, Mass. that has white bead in all sorts of packaging shapes, $10 any size load you want!)

I suppose that is a disadvantage to pre-planning; if it doesn't fit the plan it's too difficult to make changes. Whereas if you don't have a plan, that's less of a problem (...but you might "paint yourself into a corner").

I'm off the clock now and just getting ready to pick off the plywood list. My cabinet shop guy (that I have about 14 hrs of labor into his Land Rover resto-mod project...pic's later) said that he would see about getting me my plywood at wholesale cost (which I think I mentioned), and that we could probably make a multi-piece router template out of 1/4 inch MDO. I'd like to get two templates; one with the inside blocking recesses, and another for the outside blocking recesses. I'll give another weekend up to his project, but after that I think it will be a diminishing return and too much lost time not working on my project.

[KCStudly]

Working on the purchase list. I had previuosly picked off all of the foam and nested it in sketch to optimize the cut schedule. Tonight I just finished picking off all of the plywood, but still need to sketch out the cut schedule.

To make sure I didn't miss anything, I made a copy of the model and started "supressing" items (turning them off) as I went through measuring electronicly to confirm dimensions and jotting the results down.

Here's an interesting image of the skelton after being picked clean. All that's left are the framing, blocking, and galley side rails.


Still seems like a lot of wood, and many pieces that need to be cut, milled, fit, glued, etc. etc. in some form or another. Lots of pieces to touch.

I'd better keep cracking!

[S. Heisley]

Still seems like a lot of wood, and many pieces that need to be cut, milled, fit, glued, etc. etc. in some form or another. Lots of pieces to touch.

It makes me a little dizzy, just looking at it! (Okay, no wise cracks from the peanut gallery!)
Are you framing your deck with 1x1" boards? I can't wait to see sawdust!

[parnold]

Is it just me, or did anyone else picture this in their mind?



In all seriousness.. you're planning is incredible. I had plans, and general dimensions, but never planned out in the detail that you are. You engineer types are the envy of us common folk.

[DJT]

Is it just me, or did anyone else picture this in their mind?

That's exactly what I was thinking!

Seriously though, I admire your planning! I wish I had done that much when I had the chance over the winter!

Dave

[KCStudly]

Hi Sharon. The floor is mostly 1x2 on edge with 2x2 over the intermediate steel xmbrs where the 5 mm floor plys (top & bottom) butt together and the field bolts come up through into the T-nuts that attach the floor to the frame. The foam in the floor will be 1-1/2 thick (some feel this is overkill). I have been struggling in my mind on how to stay with the 1x around the perimeter of the floor sub-frame. The fact that you asked has nudged me to a very simple solution, so I must thank you. The solution? Kreg screws angled up through the outside face of the floor into the stringer at the bottom of the wall. My walls are going to sit on top of the floor flush to the outside edge. I'll fill the Kreg holes over the screws before wrapping the canvas skin under the floor.

Good one, Paul. It does sort of look like a puzzle shaped tear. Thanks for the compliments.

[KCStudly]

Thanks for looking, Dave.

Okay, so this post is going to be a little off topic, but in a horse trading sort of way this is work going toward my build.

Forgive me if I get some details wrong. I will try to relate what I heard or over heard about the Land Rover resto-mod project.

The chassis and running gear dates from somewhere in the mid to late 1990's. The mostly aluminum body is a collection from something like 6 or 8 different vehicles from the late 1960's to early 1970's, except the doors are newer and have roll-up windows instead of half sliders.


Here we have the frame lifted up on the saw horses and leveled side to side.

This was a group project. Mike, the guy with the cabinet shop/high end contracting business and CNC router, his son, and a couple of other young men brought this out with the body just sitting loosely on the frame. Our job was to help align it, and build and install all of the body mounts. Later, the chassis will be stripped down and sent out for hot dip galvanizing.

The outriggers that support the door post/fire wall/cowl assembly were already notched to clear the front suspension links at full droop. I cut, formed and welded the boxing plates to fill the notched sections.


And here is one of the outriggers in place as seen through the front wheel well.


Here are the crusty old formed channel door sills.

The extra bits in the middle were for a short piece of sheet metal trim that will be eliminated in order to fit rock sliders.

And here are the new tubular ones that Karl fit and I welded.


Here's a pic with the shortened roof cap on. If you look closely you can see the seam where Karl had previously welded the sectioned cap back together. Not as visible is the sharpie outline where the rear side windows will be cut in. There will be side facing jump seats in the back of the cab accessible through the original rear hatch.


This piece, and the opposite hand version behind it, is another outrigger that I built to span from the top of the frame to under the door sill, supporting the front of the seat pan, the rear of the front floor sheet metal, and the future rock slider/running board. The kick up notch on the inboard side is to clear the rubber mount on the frame end of the trans xmbr. The notch platform with plate ledge is where the door sill will bolt on, and the pied wedge on the bottom right matches the height of the rock slider rail.


Here's the door sill end. It will get another bolt hole down thru the box with a pipe sleeve so that there is access to the nut from the bottom.


And here's a close up shot with it upside down showing the pie section wedge shape, and tab weld in detail.


Next weekend we will finish fitting and installing these. In the mean time, Karl and one of the guy's finished building the bed support rails, added braces to the fire wall in the foot well area, bobbed the rear of the frame to accept the cut down stock bumper assembly (which is also the rear bed mount), and welded some temporary braces so that we could take it off of the horses and free the shop back up for the work week.

[KCStudly]

I think the 64 inch width is going to end up adding significantly to the build cost, especially if I go with higher quality plywood.

The foam sheets were relatively easy to group and optimize by hand, but once I made a list of all of the 5 mm ply cut sizes, two things became apparent; 1. It was going to take a bit of work to optimize the cut schedule by hand, and 2. Most of the longer pieces where also more than 1/2 a sheet wide, so I was going to need a bunch of full sheets.

Rather than fuss with sketches and layouts I decided to look for a free or low cost sheet goods optimizer program.

I came across this link claiming to provide a way to optimize cut schedules in Sketch Up http://lumberjocks.com/jocks/daltxguy/blog. I haven't checked the link yet but thought I would share, in case it turns out to be useful to someone.

Then I came across http://www.maxcut.co.za/ which claimed to be a free download and the tutorials looked promising. I ended up down loading it and entered all of my 5 mm cuts into it using 4x8 sheet size. It seems to be fairly sophisticated software and even lets you pick if you want to stay oriented with the grain of the wood.

After entering all of my cuts and optimizing it spit out that I will need 20 sheets (ouch) and showed a graphic representation of the cut layouts. However, it did not label any of the cut dimensions, nor did it identify the piece parts in the graphic. Guess that's where the "free" part ends... the marketing hook. Have to do a little more research before I give up or shell out the $40 for the full version.

Anyone have a lead on a simple free sheet optimizer program that actually works.

[GPW]

20 sheets of Foam ... That doesn’t sound right ...

KC, foam is homogenous so the smaller (leftover) pieces can be easily joined to make larger pieces... No Trouble ... Two less than half sheets can make one less than full sheet ...

[absolutsnwbrdr]

If I haven't said it before, you're fabrication skills are top notch!! Wish I knew my way around a metal shop even half as good as you