CNC Build: The Bed and Breakfast at 4 years and 40,000 miles

[noseoil]

Tambor door tracks, but serving what purpose and for what application?

[capnTelescope]

Tambor door tracks...

We have a winner! Here, Noseoil, have a beer on me! I'd give you two, but you mis-speled "tambour." Those of you unfamiliar with the term, think "roll top desk."

...but serving what purpose and for what application?

Galley and cabin cabinet doors.

I did a lot of pondering on the question of cabinet doors. Normal swing-open doors need a positive latch to stay shut while towing. They, and swing-up and fold-down doors need room in front of the cabinet to open. I could only think how many times I was going to bump my head on any of those. Sliders just didn't fit into my mental picture. Then I picked up the October '13 issue of Fine Woodworking mag, (not that I'm a Fine Woodworker, I'm just curious what Fine Woodworking looks like) and there was an article on making tambour doors. Problem solved. Gravity keeps them shut. Nothing to bump my head on , and no need to clear the deck in the galley to get to the S'mores ingredients. Plus, I always wanted to make a roll-top desk. Except, I didn't really want a roll-top desk.

I really, really hate bumping my head. I've done that enough times, already.

I know what you're thinking. Just keep it to yourself.

Thank you all for playing. Stay tuned for the next contest, which could happen at any time.

[noseoil]

We used some in aircraft work and they're pretty slick. They do take up a bit of interior space and "head room" in the cabinet. Watch the back side for things shifting to the rear (of the space) and jamming the doors. An interior panel of 1/8" or a fiddled edge will take care of that for you. Are you going to glue them up with slats, contact cement & a cloth backing? Watch your thickness, slat width & radius, so they track easily as they "turn the corner" into the open-closed position. You may want to keep a wood-on-wood surface for sliding in the grooves, and just use the cloth (vinyl?) just to hold things in place.

Should make for an interesting look in the galley and be nice & clean once installed.

[capnTelescope]

Meanwhile, back at the build, I've had my mind on the gutters.

I had glued on a build-up strip to the top of the galley walls, as I mentioned before, and needed to trim flush with the outboard wall.

Done.

Since I seem to have an abundance of aluminum sheet, I reached a decision on what super-sealer to use on my hatch rain gutters -- sheet aluminum. What could be more super-er than that? Each side has three parts: the bottom, the inboard side(weatherstrip carrier) and the outboard side. You've already seen the weatherstrip carriers. The bottom is a simple flat strip, 3/4" wide. I cut the outboard sides on the CNC, and they matched up to the wood parts without drama.

I opened up my first trusty tube of Sikaflex, and proceeded to get it all over everything. Fortunately, the vast majority went where I wanted it, and I goo-ed up the pieces and clamped. It looked something like this:

I had a custom-cut piece of wood scrap to help with clamping.

It turned out like this:


I still need to trim the bottom piece flush with the inboard side. That's going to be a tricky operation.

Thanks for stopping by!

[Sheddie]

Hi Capn
I have just finished reading your entire build journal, thus far. What an epic tail! Who do you have signed up for the movie rites?
You sure are making a lovely job of it, and will have something to be proud of when you are finished.
Down this part of the world the hurricane hinge is not available, so I also had drainage issues to deal with. This was my solution and it has worked very well, as we have had no water getting in. And as far as were the water drains to, it is handy to keep the dog bowl topped up.
Keep up the good work
Sheddie

[capnTelescope]

I have just finished reading your entire build journal, thus far. What an epic tail!

Thank you, Sheddie. I'm glad you enjoyed!

Who do you have signed up for the movie rites?

I'm interested! Have your people call my people and we'll do lunch. We can meet somewhere in between. I've heard there's a nice little bistro on the Galapagos.

I found your drainage solution interesting. I couldn't see if you are using any weatherstrip in addition to the inside gutter. How do you keep road dust out? It's pretty dry here in the American southwest, so we're as likely to encounter dust as rain, especially if we leave the pavement.

[Sheddie]

Hi Brad,
The outer skin on my hatch laps over the sides. I have run a strip of foam weather seal under the edge of that, to seal down on the sides. I also have the foam seal in the jambs top and bottom. The alloy rt/angle trim around the inner edge of the of the hatch frame is there to create a drip line and direct any water in to the channel. Even though the curve in my hatch has altered a bit from what it should be, (it ended up with more curve than it should have) which has left a gap half way down, we have had no water getting in. And we have travelled in some pretty wet weather. I have a sketch here some where if that helps.

Re the movie, I have a guy from Ecuador willing to play the lead.

Frank.

[capnTelescope]

Re the movie, I have a guy from Ecuador willing to play the lead.

Oh nooooooo! Not the steenking Ecuadorians again! Those guys are up to something sinister. I'm not sure what, but I'm sure it's evil. They are cutting down their trees and probably sending assassins, disguised as children, over the border to get me. What else would you expect from a bunch of short furriners wearing blankets and funny hats? Sheesh. And then there's that weird portrait of Ecuadorian Gray. Don't get me started on that.

Meanwhile, in a secret underground base far away from Ecuador...

I had enough of my indecisiveness over how to seal off the bottom of my galley hatch. I decided that "Patience my asterisk, I'm gonna kill something." Probably a tree. So I took what I think is one of my better (debatable) ideas and ran with it. The objective is to seal the bottom edge of the hatch from rain and dust. To accomplish this, I need to a.) hold a piece of weatherstrip b.) in a useful position, that c.) seals against the bottom edge of the hatch, d.) without getting in the way of the slide-outs in the galley.

Knowing I'd eventually come to this bridge, and that I'd have to burn it, I had purposely cut the rear end of the floor a few inches short. So, time to add that back. My grand plan was to hold the weatherstrip below floor level, so it meets the bottom of the hatch when closed. I came up with this:

The plywood face facing us is the top of the floor. The 2x4 blocks get screwed onto the bottom of the floor.

Some careful table saw work got me to here:

Don't you just wanna get that splinter off of there?

Add a piece of 1/8 Al from my stash and an ample length of weatherstrip, and you get this:


Ready to mount:


Mounted:


I needed to add a "little" more wood to the bottom edge of the hatch:


I'm going to have to take a little off my floor extension, as it's making the hatch not close right


Here's a couple of shots fully assembled:



It looks a little funky and needs some tweaking, but I think it's going to work.

Thanks for dropping by!


P.S. I obviously don't know squat about Ecuadorians. I made up all that stuff about them. I have never (afaik) met an Ecuadorian, but I'm quite sure they are fine people. Except the assassins disguised as children. That's just going too far. If you are an Ecuadorian reading this and you are offended by something I said, I'm sorry. I'm sorry you don't have any sense of humor, and I'm sorry you're an Ecuadorian.

[capnTelescope]

Some other things got in the way of progress, so I haven't posted in a while. Progress has marched on, and it's time to update.

Hatch
I fixed the problem of the hatch not closing because of the floor extension extending too far back. Everything fits good now, and the extension is now installed and ready to go.

If you compare this pic to the one in the last post, you can see I had to take off about a half inch.

Once that was taken care of, the next step was to build up the rear end profile so it can be routed to match the curve of the hatch. You might remember that when I skinned the hatch with ply, I allowed the ply to bend naturally, rather than force it to follow the hatch rib profile. That caused the hatch skin to extend beyond the wall profile.

First, I cut some thin bendable slats.


Then glue a slat on, strap-clamp, allow glue to set up, repeat as required.

It ain't pretty, but ultimately, it won't show.

Electrical
My battery charging strategy is that I charge while towing or when connected to shore power, without having to remember to do anything other than plug in. I have to plug in anyway, so less burden on my addled brain. You can read more about it in this series of posts.

computer crashed, gotta reconstruct the post from here. I'm starting to think "new computer."

The charging setup consists of 4 components: a smart charger mounted in the galley, a continuous duty 12VDC solenoid, a 300W power inverter and a 115VAC relay. When the TV is running, the solenoid supplies TV power through the 7 pin trailer connector to the inverter in the tongue box. The inverter sends AC aft to the galley, powers the relay and supplies AC to the charger. When plugged into shore power, the charger is powered through the normally closed side of the relay to the charger.

Here's the solenoid installed on the TV:


The relay and tow power outlet, ready to install:

Both shore and inverter power go in and one or the other go to the outlet.

Wired up but not nailed down:


Rear side markers wired and ready:

Front side markers are next.

I also mounted my brake/tail lights:


In a failure to plan ahead, I had to add a spar to the hatch at the vertical:


Measure thrice, drill once:


Transfer the holes to the new spar, drill, add pocket screw holes, mount:




Off Topic -- Credit where credit is due
If someone will prepare a nice big dish of crow, I'm willing to eat hearty and clean up my plate. A town in Ecuador was just named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the world's best places to retire. Who knew?

For those of you not familiar with this American idiom, "eating crow" refers to a distasteful eating of one's own words.

Thanks for stopping by. Here's to you, Ecuador!

[tonyj]

Glad to see a build update that doesn't include pictures and a description of what you had for dinner!

As to eating crow, I am sure it tastes like chicken, so no biggie. Disparage the Ecudorians all you all you want, I doubt they will invade. They seem to be a mellow folk (reference to their dress).

Try to find comfort in the thought that regardless what you to to prevent dust/water infiltration, it will fail. It is a trailer constant.

Work on making it trailerable and weather-tight before LCG. tick tick . . .

[capnTelescope]

As to eating crow, I am sure it tastes like chicken, so no biggie.

One guy I worked with out in Kaleefoornya, where they have crows, had tried it and said it wasn't bad at all. We have lots of grackles here. Just a smaller cousin in the crow family. And have you seen the price of chicken lately?

Try to find comfort in the thought that regardless what you to to prevent dust/water infiltration, it will fail. It is a trailer constant.

What doesn't get in while you're on the road will blow in while you're in camp.

Work on making it trailerable and weather-tight before LCG. tick tick . . .

I hear you. That clock is ticking louder all the time.

[KCStudly]

Glad to see a build update that doesn't include pictures and a description of what you had for dinner!

Disparage the Ecudorians all you all you want, I doubt they will invade.

Nothing like a little off color humor to go with a fine meal!

Keep up the hard work capn, you'll get there eventually.

[capnTelescope]

Glad to see a build update that doesn't include pictures and a description of what you had for dinner!

I thought for a moment he had the two of us mixed up.

[KCStudly]

Hey, I get more replies from my mothers cooking and my eating habits than I do from my build!

No skin off my apple. Bu-dum-bum.

[capnTelescope]

Hey, I get more replies from my mothers cooking and my eating habits than I do from my build!

I'm keeping it clean. You won't find any food porn in this thread. Unless you post it for me. You do seem to eat well.

Meanwhile, back at the build...

The day started with the UPS guy dropping off a long cardboard tube. My molding arrived from Vintage Technologies. Everything arrived in good condition, and I was ready to go to work.

They (whoever "They" are) say you should pre-bend your trim before you go to actually apply it. Sounds perfectly sensible to me. So I got with it. I got two kinds of trim molding, their HT09 and the HT11. The HT09 will cover the outer gutter wall trim and the top of the galley walls. The HT11 trims the length of the roof/wall corners.

Since "trimming" seemed to be the theme of the day, I first trimmed those areas around the hatch that I had to built up before (dramatic re-enactment).

The router bit is a CMT 806.690.11 flush trim bit with a 2" cut length. I used the insert plate for my router table as a base, to give me more stability.

Results were good! The wall comes up flush to the hatch skin on both sides. Right:

Left:


Trying to bend the trim to the wall profile wasn't very productive as the trim springs back pretty much to where I started. I needed something with tighter curves. Just happened to have...

That is an offcut piece of the ply I cut my hatch spars from. Roughly the same profile only a tighter curve. This worked pretty good, and I was able to further curve the trim by running the trim piece over a corner while applying moderate pressure.

Here's the rough bend for the left side of the Tear:

Kinda looks like one of those "chalk around the dead body" drawings.

I've been wanting a nice bend on both ends of the roof skin. One to tuck under the front end, and one in back to transition the roof into the top galley gutter. The trouble is, the Tear is 5 feet wide, and most bending brakes apparently only go up to 4 feet. At least, the one at Tech Shop does. (Danger ahead) So I got to thinking... could I make a quick and dirty brake that would work good enough for 3 or 4 bends in .032 Al? I had everything I needed: 3 2x4s and 3 good door hinges. Why not try? The bend on the front end doesn't really show, so it can go first. I get the strong feeling that I'm about to learn something.

Here goes:
Laying out the hinge-y part:


Rout a space for the hinge pin to go:


Screw the hinges on, and assemble:


Clamp the ... uh ... Clamper board so it clamps the work piece along the bend line:


OK. The first thing I learned is that even .032 Al needs more muscle than I have here on my knees with bare hands and no leverage. Let's raise it up a little and bring out the XL Super Bar:


That wasn't much better. Let's put it up on the sawhorses. Only a little bit better. Oops, game delayed on account of rain:

It was a nice little shower, about a tenth of an inch according to the official CapnTelescope electronic wireless rain gage. This gave me a chance to think.

What if I turned it upside down?

Hey, that looks like I'm halfway there already!

Success!


close-up:


Not bad. It's OK for the front end bend, but I want better for the back. I guess I'll have to find a sign shop or something.

Thanks for stopping by!