The Poet Creek Express - Foamie Hybrid

[KCStudly]

On Thursday night I went out to Mecca but didn’t make much progress due to the cold; can’t do glue ups.

I did manage to pull the clamp setup off of the front cabinet face frame, but when I tried to pull the masking tape it wanted to tear rather than lift. I was going to use GPW’s heat gun trick, but decided I didn’t want to give up the heater to use the extension cord. Not a big task and I’ll get to it later (hardly worth even mentioning).

Okay, where did I leave off fitting the cabinet floor panel? Maybe I can fit that and I don’t think the stain cares much what temperature it is.

Well, the panel was already fit, so I decided to take a look and see that everything was still the way it was in the dry fit before gluing the face frame in. Dry fit the front ledger.


Despite having reduced the heads of the screws securing the side ledgers, they still were slightly wider than the panel groove, so where the side riblets land they were sticking up a bit.



Karl asked why I had not put these screws further back out from under the riblets, and I said frankly I had not planned this out in advance. Anyway, even though I have already dry fit and set the screw locations for the side riblets, I decided to clearance a spot on the bottom of the ribs for these screws. Here is the street side marked in pencil.


And here I have used the 3/8 chisel and a little spot drilling to make a little pocket.


I’m not sure if this will change the fit any, and I’m not going to try to fill and move the screw holes in the wall, so it is what it is. There may be a little shadow line under these on final. (It is way back in the front corner of the cabinet… doh… don’t worry about it KC!)

The key catcher shelf panel has not been sized yet and I am still trying to decide whether to install this before the front wall goes on, or to wait until I have cut in the lower front cabinet... the locker that will protrude into the back of the tongue box. Either way, it was too cold to glue the rail and side ledgers in for the shelf in order to fit the panel.

Staining the upper front cabinet floor panel will only take a minute or two, and since the shelf panel is not sized yet, it only makes sense to finish these together. So what’s next?

I did a little housekeeping and cleaned up the accumulation of stuff that had collected in the cabin; dug out the toe kick spar that will go at the bottom of the front wall and checked the fit of that; then called it a night after just an hour and a half.

So now, Saturday, (play broken record) it is still too cold to glue. Looking ahead to tasks that do not require glue or finish, I have the rough stock and detailed drawing for the lower hatch actuator mounts,


…and it is nice and warm downstairs where the milling machine is.


So that was a no brainer decision. The drawing shows a built up piece screwed together using 3/8 flat bar aluminum and pocketed cylindrical socket head screws, but Karl suggested that it would be quicker and easier to just mill them out of billet.

First a couple of rough cuts in the big Marvel saw to get the blank lengths a little closer to final, then to the mill. Here I am “qualifying” the blanks by first holding them by the “factory” faces and milling one side flat; then turning them on the parallels and milling the opposite side parallel to the first and flat; then measuring for reference and milling to the final dimension. This is the first reference cut.


Not shown, when I flipped them to get the other side, I also left them sticking out of the ends of the vice so that I could make a cleanup pass along one end, squaring that up. Then I flipped that true end down onto the parallels and end milled the blanks to final length.


On the bench I used dial calipers to layout some reference points for the bevel cuts, and scribed the lines. Then I used a parallel resting on the top of the vice to line the scribe line up parallel and clamped the block in the vice askew. Now I end milled the corner off until I got down to the scribe line. In this shot you can just see the scribe line for the long bevel about halfway between the top cut (in progress) and the vice.


Since the short bevel is 90 deg to the long bevel, all I had to do was flip the piece over with the long bevel on the parallels and the short bevel sticking out of the side of the vice so that I could cut with the side of the cutter.


Here’s one of them with the final profile shape (except for rounding the corners over on the sander).


Next up is hogging out the valleys.


After that I switched from the rough cutter and made the final dimensions on the valley.

Setting the final dimension and finish on the sides, before drilling the thru holes for the shoulder bolts that will be the pivot points for the actuators.




I’ll do the rounding on the sander at work. It has a hard back and a work rest that is square to the belt, whereas Karl’s belt sander is freehand. Also, the mounting bolt holes are to be threaded with helicoil inserts, so I will do those at work where we have the proper sized installation kit.

That’s 4 more hours in and no clue as to what I will work on next. Weather forecast is cold with chance of snow.

[Wolffarmer]

If it was me I would weld them up from some scrap 3/8 x 1 1/2



Looking good though

Randy

[Wolffarmer]

But if i had the machines and knowledge who knows what I would do. One thing I always liked about my BMW motorcycles was how they looked like they was milled from a solid block of metal and didn't have things bolted onto them like some after thought.

Randy

[Mary C]

Randy I know what you mean about having the machines and knowledge , One thing for sure I can be honest and say, I don't and if I need something I will just have to figure out another way to do it with wood or some premade stuff. KC is so smart and doing such a great job.

Mary C.

[GPW]

KC sets the TD “Standard of Excellence” for all the rest of us !!! ... I don’t think even”Norm" could do as good a job as KC .... but it would have only taken him 30 minutes to build it ...

[KCStudly]

.... but it would have only taken him 30 minutes to build it ...

Yeah, the third one always goes quicker!

Thanks for the kind words, everyone.

[working on it]

I don't know about you guys, but, KC with all his tools and plans and attention to detail makes me feel like I built my trailer with

stone knives and bearskins

to quote Spock.

[91kuhndog]

WOW KC... I have been on the forum but haven't taken the time to read other build posts until this week. Amazing piece of work your creating! The level of detail and craftsmanship is astonishing! Keep it up bud.... You'll be there before you know it. I'm just beginning to see the fruits of my labor too!

[KCStudly]

Hey WOI, don't be so hard on yourself. Yours is done and camping, and you did it your way. Self-deprecation is not indicated, but I can see how that is probably intended as a compliment, so thank you.

Thank you very much Kuhndog. I appreciate the kind words and encouragement!

I had intended to finish up the lower brackets for the hatch actuators tonight after work, but had taken them out to show the wife and forgot to bring them with me today.

Instead, I scrounged up some aluminum out of the scrap bin and rough cut the blanks for the upper brackets where the struts will attach to the hatch ribs. More on these tasks with pics next time.

[SLUG36]

Hey WOI, don't be so hard on yourself. Yours is done and camping, and you did it your way. Self-deprecation is not indicated, but I can see how that is probably intended as a compliment, so thank you.

Thank you very much Kuhndog. I appreciate the kind words and encouragement!

I had intended to finish up the lower brackets for the hatch actuators tonight after work, but had taken them out to show the wife and forgot to bring them with me today.

Instead, I scrounged up some aluminum out of the scrap bin and rough cut the blanks for the upper brackets where the struts will attach to the hatch ribs. More on these tasks with pics next time.

Oh how I miss working at a Machine Shop. well, for the scraps any ways. and I can concur with the others on your build. as said before, I am borrowing your light switch idea.

[Gunguy05]

Wow. To say you have an extremely well documented build would be the understatement of the year.. You must have incredible drive and patience to be able to build lilterally everything on your TD...

I was going to ask if you made the screws and nails yourself, and possible planted the trees for the plywood, but I know the answer is probably YES!

Really though. Good luck in getting it finished, looks like you have done an outstanding job so far. I look forward to see it through to completion.

[KCStudly]

Thanks for the glowing compliments GG (Brian). I hope to work on the hatch actuator brackets some more later tonight.

Slug, no problem at all. Borrow away! Imitation is the highest form of flattery.

[KCStudly]

Cold. Snow forecast.

I stayed after work to do some machining operations on the hatch actuator brackets.

First the pictures from Monday when I forgot to bring the lower brackets. Making the best of it, I went ahead and started on the upper brackets. These are essentially a pair of tabs for each actuator. Each pair will sandwich one of the ribs in the hatch bolting thru with three small bolts at the big end, and a floating shoulder bolt thru the actuator rod at the small end. I went “dumpster diving” in the scrap bin and pulled out an odd shaped piece of 3/8 aluminum plate that had a bunch of holes in it. To find a layout that would optimize material and minimize the freehand saw cuts, I made four full scale copies of the drawing, cut the outline out and fit as many as I could get on the blank; just 3.


From there I scribed some reference lines leaving a little space for the saw cut, and cut them out on the big DoAll band saw. None of these have a true edge. Fortunately the piece I found for the 4th bracket had a mill edge on the baseline that I could use as a reference.

Here is the stack of rough blanks.


Wednesday now. Brought the lower brackets in. Used the mill to index, drill, chamfer, and tap the mounting holes. The tap is a specialty item from a Helicoil thread insert kit. It has an oversize major diameter, but retains the pitch for a 5/16-18UNC thread. The idea of the Helicoil is that you can repair a damaged thread, or, as in this case, strengthen the thread in soft material for better holding power and running wear characteristics.


I clipped a full coil off of each insert to set the proper height for the material thickness, while allowing for the chamfer and making sure that neither end of the insert extended out of the tapped thread. Here is the insert threaded onto the installation tool. Note that the insert has a drive tang that the barb on the tool engages. If you are super eagle eyed you might just be able to make out the notch just ahead of the hook in the tang that allows the tang to be broken off cleanly after installation.


The tool drives the insert into the threaded hole. The precision size of the insert, which is just a little bigger than the tapped thread, causes the insert to hold itself in place by friction. It is essentially a compressed spring trying to push out around its diameter.

Took care to drive them just so, so that neither end was exposed.

Here I am using a pin punch to break the tang off.


Wash, rinse, repeat.




On to the belt sander to put some radii on by taking the corners off.



A little time with a fine file to take the sharp edge off, a greenie pad to spiff them up a bit, and they’re done.


Back to the upper brackets. First I found the center of the blank with the mill edge, and laid out the two holes that land on the centerline. Next I set the true edge down in the bottom of the vise to reference and milled the small end tip parallel to the base line. This allowed me to now hold the piece flat in the vise on parallels and drill the holes using the digital readouts to locate the holes as accurately as possible. (The holes at the tips will eventually be sized up to 5/16, but for now I needed them to be the same to aid in indexing.)

Here I am matching each of the rough blanks to the first and using a transfer punch to match mark the hole locations.



This allowed me to clamp the rough shaped blanks flat in the vice and drill each with a matching set of holes, again using the digital readouts for accuracy.

Now I could stack the parts and bolt them together. By using the same size hex head bolts I was able to line the wrench flats on the bolt heads up and clamp them in the vice. This gave a reasonably accurate way to hold the centerline square. Here I have milled the tips off to true.


Not shown, I swapped ends and milled the baselines true.

From there I sort of found an average “flat” on one of the tapered sides by just laying a parallel on the rough edge and measuring equally to the vice with a measuring tape. Close enough. Milled those edges true by cycling back and forth until everything was smooth and all of the saw cuts were gone. (Power feeds were welcome here.)


Matching the other side symmetrically was a little tricky and I ended up having to take a little more material off of the second side to get it to clean up, so then I had to flip it again and match the first side to the second, but in the end the blanks are true enough.


Just a couple more operations and these will be done. If I had been thinking like a machinist, I would have drilled all of the holes when I had each piece indexed for that, but I should be able to pick these up again to drill the rest, and to open up the holes in the tips. Need to remember to mill the thinner flats before rounding the tips over.

[KCStudly]

Lots of snow falling this morning. Big huge balls of snowflakes larger than cotton balls. This is the view out of the machine shop at work.


Then it turned to rain and warmed up. Lots of water on the roads now, and it will freeze overnight with more snow called for.

So when the bell rang I went straight to work on finishing up the upper brackets for the hatch actuators. Drilled the remaining 1/4 inch holes across the top (what I was calling the base line), then bolted thru those so I could open up the holes in the tips to 5/16. Then milled the steps in pairs. The actuator rod is a little wider than the 3/4 inch hatch ribs, so the steps provide for the difference while keeping the actuators centered on the ribs. Used a 3/4 inch round nose cutter to scallop out the corner of the step and avoid a sharp notch/stress riser.




They’re not perfect. The tips came out a little smaller than I had planned (should have left more margin in the rough cuts); they have some scratches from the stock having been knocked around (scrap bin battle scars), and I’m not going to sand those out; and I just eyeballed the radii on the sander without working to a scribe line. But I like them and they will get the job done. Maybe I’ll have Dave Z. powder coat these and the lower brackets to match the galley floor edge trim.

What ‘da ya think?

[RandyG]

I love watching each step you plan and take to make something out of raw material. You did that almost the same way I would have done it. Instead of milling them down, that's where I would have busted out the 90* Dotco. They would have turned out better your way. Just a difference in training and using tools. Machine shop is always a lil more accurate.