“Go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. (Build a camper and blog about it. - KC) Tell Stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something." - Kurt Vonnegut
He understood.
So this is a big reason why I am building this camper. Not so much to get it done. Not so much to be thrifty or just make something that will function for a time, but for the art of creating something to challenge my ability; to exercise my creative abilities, however challenging that may be.
I have been struggling with motivation lately, but feel that I have turned a corner as the weather has become milder.
Last night I started by sanding on the street side rear wall panel. At the top of the galley wall just ahead of the side clearance light pocket, there was an area about 6 or 8 inches along with some heavy epoxy saturation in the cloth and some runs. I was able to sand that down w/o ripping into the cloth.
For the ripples straight down the middle of this broader section of wall, I sanded them down at least to half height w/o causing any of them to go soft, so they must have been heavily soaked, too, not bubbles or blisters. I figured that was close enough to fair for the weave/fairing filler to cover up, so I didn’t risk scuffing them down any further (we are only talking about variations that are maybe 2 or 3 equivalent layers of 6oz cloth here, by my estimation, so not epic, but still, we are trying to do well).
Mea culpa, there was a soft spot, slightly less than palm sized that seemed like it may have been poorly adhered to the foam (maybe a spackle patch?), or perhaps a bubble between the plies of cloth. Monday I drilled a small hole at the top and bottom of the area, mixed up a single pump batch and injected it in. Unfortunately (?) it did not seem to take any epoxy, as if it wasn’t soaking in and all of it was just oozing back out. Again, when taping over the holes to try and keep the epoxy in, the tape just seemed to float in the wet epoxy and didn’t really seem to stick; but maybe still helped.
So last night (Wednesday) when I checked that, despite not seeming to take the epoxy, the suspect area now seemed to be solid and didn’t flex like it did before, so I’m calling that a success. Just have to fill the drill hole divots as they left a pocket in the foam.
In going over the whole wall with the palm and touching any high spots with the small block I found another sub palm sized area closer to the door header that seemed to also be a “bubble”. This time I drilled holes at the top, bottom and both “shoulders”, angling the drill downwards to create a small reservoir where the injected epoxy could sit and soak in small batches if needed (rather than ooze right back out). Another one pump batch injected and this time it took it just fine and started oozing out the shoulders in short order. Of course I have been out of it for a while and was ill prepared having no tape strips ready to seal up the holes. Try peeling an inch of tape off of the roll when you are wearing rubber gloves that are slightly soiled with wet epoxy! Anyway, I managed to peel up a couple of pieces of tape, even though they didn’t want to stick to the oozing epoxy; but with the relative success on the first bubble section I was fairly confident that it would still firm things up nicely.
From there I started in mixing 3 pump batches adding fairing filler to fill the drill hole sockets from the first bubble fix, to start filling the weave, and to hopefully fair out the remaining ripples (albeit now sanded down).
I used the big Bondo spreader for most of it and the faux credit card for around the galley edges. While I was spreading near the “bustle” at the back of the wall I felt another palm sized bubble area collapse and spring back under the pressure of the squeegee. Drat, somehow I had missed that during my previous inspections, so I had to wipe away the wet filler from that area so that I can do the drill and squirt fix next time (I didn’t want to switch gears right at the moment and kept going with the filler).
It felt good to get some real work done.
Here is a long shot showing progress, just to prove it really happened.
If you look closely at this shot you can see a couple of vertical waves (darker shadow lines) that kind of show where I built up to cover the sanded ripples. Hopefully I added enough to sand back to appear flat. When I first looked at this pic on the camera the lighter horizontal lines stood out and I was surprised that I could see the “scoreboard” lines telegraphing thru like that after all of the spackle and sanding prep; then I realized that it was just the reflection of the hatch ribs in the gloss of the wet epoxy. Funny thing was you could barely see it in person, but in the pic it stands out quite a bit.
The white looking spot at the very rear dead center of the previous pic and shown here in close up is the blister area that I felt spring back under the spreader, which I subsequently wiped back off. This is a good example of why it doesn’t make sense to try and show pictures of bodywork; it looks like a blob and you can’t really see what’s going on. Can’t really see it in person much better; it is more of a ‘feel’ kind of thing.
Here’s that injected area closer to the door header. This was still oozing wet so I didn’t want to try and fair over it until it has cured; and it was about time to head home, so was a good place to stop for the night.
Tonight some of the guys from work and I went to a lobster/clam bake dinner put on by one of our local industrial suppliers (FW Webb), so no work on the camper. Boiled lobster with a couple of steamers, potatoes, corn on the cob and drawn butter. They had canned beer and soda on ice and about 100 bottles of Yellow Tail wine in different varieties. Can’t remember the last time I picked thru a lobster in the rough like that, but it was good! For land lubbers they had chicken breast and steaks, all you could eat. Pretty good deal.
by GPW » Fri Sep 02, 2016 6:41 am 
