The Poet Creek Express - Foamie Hybrid

[Heifer Boy]

Only jokin'...
Nice poem. Tried Google translate on it but my computer caught fire...

Seriously though, not a phrase I'd heard before. I thought it was Halloween related but a seasonal thing makes more sense.

[KCStudly]

Google Translate: "It was frickin' cold this morning and I had to scrape ice off the windshield before I could drive to work; maybe I should have worn a heavier coat and got my winter gloves out; brrr; here comes another frickin' New England winter".

But I like the poem better in its original language.

[KCStudly]

I've had to resort to the heaters, just to take a bit of the chill off, and used the turd lantern last night for light. The days are getting shorter here and it has been dank with rain, so no sunlight to heat the loft in the afternoons.

Did I mention that the Punkin Chunk has been cancelled for this year? There were too many logistical issues making the move to the Dover Downs location.

Well, I had already put in for the time off from work, so I decided to go ahead and just take this time to work on the camper. Five day weekend starting today.

Last night I brought the 1x3 piece of maple that I bought on Tuesday. Cut to approximate length; nibbled away at it until it fit between the ribs; laid out the lightening holes and pocket screws (more on these in a minute); cut the pocket screw holes; masked the edges to prevent staining on the milling machine; and bored the lightening holes, as before.

Here you can see the rough part, which I am calling the Rib Brace, dry fit. The tape is still on from the milling operation.

Notice the differences as seen from the “back” (front of hatch, looking toward rear of galley). On the Paper Towel Brace (PTB) there are two pocket screws into each rib (one high and one low), the screws come thru the skin into the top of the brace, and it has the two holes for the towel hanger. On the Rib Brace there are large deck screws coming thru the hinge spar and skin into the ribs, so there is only one pocket screw on each side. To secure the brace to the skin there is a pocket screw hole between each lightening hole with the screws going thru the skin into the spar in the rabbet area where the skin overlaps.

Here is the rough fit from the “front”.


Today I unmasked the brace and rounded the edges over, as before. I had a better feel for the tool speeds and feeds this time, so had less charring of the maple overall, but some that was worse than before. The 220 grit wasn’t cutting it by hand so I tried making a quick flap “wheel” using a piece of dowel and some sandpaper chucked in the cordless drill. It didn’t work as well as I would have liked because the ends of the paper clogged fairly quickly. In the end I stepped up to 100 grit and just went over it all again by hand with the 220 grit.


After masking the glue surfaces on the brace and oiling it, I masked the area where it will be glued to the hatch so that I could sand the stain away. The half hobby stick works a treat for getting the masking tape into corners and as a smoothing tool.


Hatch area sanded.


Then I masked the brace again, this time to protect from adhesive squeeze out. I put PL on the sides of the ribs and along the long edge of the brace, using the notched card to spread it sparingly. Then in it went.


I tried to wait until the PL had started to set up by putting tools away and contemplating next moves, but I got impatient and ended up wiping up with a paper towel damped with spirits. Pulled the tape and tada.





I made the washer plates that will back up the bolts for the lower hatch actuator mounts. I even remembered to make sure that the grain in the brushed stainless steel will run vertically.


Next, I removed the galley shelf and counter rails and trimmed 1/16 inch off each end.


When I put them back in the edges of the walls at the bustle had pulled in about 3/16 inch overall, or half the allotted clearance to the ribs (originally 3/16 inch on each side). A little tighter than I had hoped, but might get the hatch skin flush on the curb side.


I didn’t want to move the hatch until the brace adhesive had a chance to cure, so was mulling about contemplating when I noticed a whitetail deer down in the yard on the other side of the driveway. Just as I got the camera and started to zoom in for a pic, the deer spooked and ran off. When I looked to where the deer had looked when it started, I saw what had sent it off; a “rafter” or “gang” of sixteen turkey hens. I think they all were eating the grass seed (more about eastern wild turkeys).



About 5 hrs in today, and I hope to get more done tomorrow.

There is a house out at the corner of our street that the wife and I call "The Garbage House", because they always have a bunch of junk out, stuff that the regular garbage collectors won't take, and they just leave it in a mess at the edge of their yard. Well, on top of a junk particle board dresser that has slowly been disintegrating for the last month, there was a little heater. It wasn't until today that I realized that it was a propane catalytic and not a corded resistor. So on the way home I stopped and plucked it off the pile. It is a Dyna-Glo that looks like this one, except it is missing the little side cover for over the bottle.
http://www.grainger.com/product/DYNA-GLO-Portable-Gas-Heater-4XA49

The ignitor works and it's not in bad shape, despite having sat out in the rain for several days. Tomorrow I will see if it leaks and/or fires up.

Train kept a rollin’.

[GPW]

No Chunkin’ .... well, that’s a bummer ! But the Turkeys are Cool eh !!!
Nice heater find ... reminds one of the old gas radiant heaters we grew up with here with the inner ceramic elements ..

Ps. getting COLD here too , went below 70 F (at night) ...

[KCStudly]

70 at night? Psssshhhhaaaawww. Kid’s stuff.

Tried the heater out and it would not light the pilot. Oh well. I set it aside for now and will do some more research later. Maybe I can fix it or send it in for service, if worth it. At about a C-note for a new one it might just be a wash if I can’t fix it myself.

I decided to stop waffling over the paper towel brace and decided to glue it in now. It just didn’t make sense to put the poly on everything w/o gluing it in. If I find that the towel hanger won’t work the way I want it to I will engineer something else. Pretty much the same procedure as before with a couple of things to note.

First, I did a double mask technique. Before unscrewing the brace I used the wide tape to mask right up to the brace. (On the Rib Brace I had used the narrow tape and went “outside the lines” a little when sanding.) Once I had removed the Towel Brace, I laid an overlapping line of the narrow tape to back mask under the edge. That way I could sand only the area under the brace that won’t show; then once I peeled the top layer of tape the bottom layer showed me right where to line the piece back up and it was already masked for glue. Here you can see that I have sanded the stain and have started to pull back the top layer of tape.


Even though I tamped the tape off on my T-shirt first, the wider stuff (which was the earlier style before they reformulated it) lifted some of the wood fibers and took the stain with it.



I know from experience that I can’t blend the stain (it gets blotchy), and I for sure don’t want to get in to a vicious cycle sanding, masking, and staining, so I think I will try a little targeted staining with a cotton swab. Thing is, I didn’t have any swabs with me, so I decided to put that aside for now. By turning the hatch sideways on the bench I was able to keep it clamped up on end, freeing up the end of the bench and the saw table.

Am I finally ready to start fitting foam on the roof? The dusty operations conflict with putting poly on the hatch, but apparently I’m not in any hurry to do that, so, yes. Let’s cut some foam!

I have 15 sheets of 3/4 inch thk x 2 ft wide x 8 ft long tongue and groove foam, which I had to order special. I forget what I based my usage on as far as how sharp my pencil was, but the plan is to use the 3/4 on the tightest curves first, so if I run out I can piece some of the leftover 1-1/2 thk stuff in on some of the flatter sections, or buy some more 1-1/2 thk to supplement.

Anyway, I want to be able to use full length pieces of the 3/4 inch for the outer 2nd layer so I started by setting up a cutting station to cut all of the sheets to 64-1/4 inches (the width of the camper plus a little extra for trimming). Working on the end of the bench I was able to use the gap between the bench and the saw table so that both sides of the cut were supported.


Tape measure, sharpie marker, framing square, and steak knife.


Not hard to make reasonably straight cuts.


Cutting right close to the work bench worked best to prevent flex.


Holding the knife at a decent drawing angle, keeping it buried in the cut, and moving along in a reciprocating action yielded good results.


I tucked the now shorter full length blanks back in their spot (behind some spare 5 mm plywood drops).


Which left me with 15 of the shorter ends to get started with.


Now the first thing I did was to consider if I could glue two of these together to make more of the longer pieces. Well, as it turns out 64-1/4 from 96 leaves 31-3/4, so two together would come up 1/2 inch short. At first I was upset with myself for not doing this math earlier, but then I realized that it would be foolish to try and get every last piece exact w/o any allowance to trim. So I fooled around for a while taking some 1-1/2 inch scraps and ripping 3/4 inch filler pieces. Really just experimenting to see how the stuff handles on the table and band saws.

When I started to fit the pieces on the bench, as if to glue them together, I realized how much work this would be, and how silly this was and decided to just start fitting pieces onto the front of the cabin. I mean, why glue it together when the goal is to get it glued onto the camper? Cut out the middle man, so to speak. And besides, where the pieces don’t butt in the middle, I can just squirt some GS in there, or even leave an air gap. It will all be covered by another layer anyway.

After looking at a few pieces and doing some test bends over the front profile radius I decided that it was a little tight to try it w/o kerfing. It looked like it might go, or might pop, but the deciding factor was that w/o kerfing I would have to go thru some contortions and methods to deal with the springiness while the glue set, whereas with kerfing the strain would be relieved and the panels would form easily.

So I started by fitting a couple of smaller pieces on either side of the locker bump out to get me to the first full width area where I could lay out a rabbet for the splice backer on the skin, and the start of the radius for the kerfing.

I started out on the table saw thinking I would plow out the rabbet, but that was going to take way too long with many cuts, so I skipped to the kerfs and figured I would complete the rabbet with the router. I didn’t recall the math for calculating kerf spacing, and, although I had figured all of that out in the model, the callout never made it onto the plans. It was probably for the better; using 1 inch spacing was much easier to figure when changing the rip fence. I went with 1/2 inch deep kerfs (2/3 the thickness) and ran two of the short sheets for each saw adjustment. Pic’s in a second.

Once the kerfs were cut I switched to the router with a 2 flute 3/4 inch diameter straight cutter and a piece of 5mm as a straight edge. The straight edge got me the second side of the rabbet, then I just free handed the rest up to first few cuts I had made on the saw.



Here you can see the lower corner piece next to the locker bump out, and the splice backer for the ceiling skin a little higher up at the base of the front radius.


The rabbet fit over the splice…



… and the kerfs getting it done in a dry fit test.


The kerfs aren’t optimized as the gaps don’t close up, but I like the fact that the curve is fairly even with not much ‘flat-bump-flat-bump’ action.

Now I just have to decide which glue to use. Anyone know what will get foam to stick to hardened epoxy? Yeah I know, thickened epoxy, but how about something less expensive and easier to dispense?

I’m thinking for the raw wood-to-foam I’m going to go with the very thinly applied TB2.

Finished up today by doing a moderately thorough sweeping of the shop.


Another 6-1/2 hrs but it doesn’t seem like I have much to show for it. One foot in front of the other.

Friday is smoked corned beef brisket night at Chester’s BBQ, which is on the other side of home from the shop, so I don’t get there on Fridays very often. But since I had an early start today, I made an exception.

[KCStudly]

Today (Sunday) was a get together in Framingham to try and get the new punkin chunkin design moving again. Nice grilled kabobs for lunch and a plan for me to get together with Dave on the computer modeling, but no work on the camper.

I did work on it yesterday, but again it seems like not a lot to show. I think it is taking more fiddling and tinkering to decide on the approach for gluing the foam on, and dancing around avoiding putting poly on the underside of the hatch.

I was able to move the hatch off of the bench and stand it on edge behind the galley (Karl still doing site work). This time when I grabbed it by the ribs I must have been a little off of the CG. It wanted to roll in an unexpected way, but I was able to head butt it, and roll it onto my back like a back pack without losing it. This ended up being helpful later on.

The cotton swab touchup of the lifted stain on either side of the PTB worked better than I could have hoped.



Back to the front. I used TB2 brushed on the lower front corners and back side of the foam very thinly. I laid the foam on and rubbed it around a little before sliding it into its spot. The tape helped hold it up tight until it had cured.


I did press/rub the outside repeatedly to try and make sure that it had good contact, and it did pretty well in the end, but I can still tell that it is not 100/ct. After 1-1/2 hrs or so I woud have to destroy the foam to get it back off, but I could find an area here or there around the edge (like in the corner where the bead of caulk may have held it up) that it didn’t grab fully. In hindsight, I probably could have scared up enough 1-1/2 thk foam for these flat corners, but I didn’t mind experimenting a little to get started.

I’m still thinking about thickened epoxy, especially for the front radius where the fiberglass reinforcing is.

While I was waiting for both of those corner pieces to set up, I got impulsive and put the hatch back up on the galley. To do this by myself, I got it back up on my back again which made it very easy to keep an eye on the ribs and get it aligned between the walls without hitting anywhere. Then it was easy, with the front ends of the ribs locked against the bulkhead, to just lift the hatch from the back like you would normally. That got me out from under to where I could set the hatch back down fully and put the temporary screws back in to hold it securely. The milk crate and blocking was just added insurance against the hatch sliding off before I could get the screws back in.


After shortening the galley rails the skin overlap on the street side had increased to something like 7/16 to 1/2 inch.


And on the curb side I now had a positive overlap most of the way (some of what shows here is just the masking tape flapping in the breeze, so it is a bit deceiving).


Only the last couple of feet on the lower end of the curb side still underlaps by a scant 1/16 of an inch or less. I can live with that.


Still waiting for the front foam to cure before being able to move up, I started fiddling with how I was going to hold the foam curved to the hatch while it was being glued. Clamped a stick on the lower spar as a toe catch for the foam at the bottom, then screwed a couple of dogs in line with the ribs (so as not to poke thru the skin in the field) to be able to dog down another load spreading stick.


Kind of waiting for that stain touchup to do the poly on the underside of the hatch, and if I move forward with foam, that is dusty. Got a little ahead of myself and went ahead and glued the above piece on. This bigger panel was too big to brush the glue on with my little chip brush, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to commit a roller sleeve to one piece, so I drizzled the glue on both sides and spread it very thinly with one of the fake credit cards. This worked really well. With the glue thin and almost the consistency of contact adhesive (dries pretty quick when spread this thinly) it seemed to grab pretty well. I still ended up taping the edges, and added more wedge shims along the bottom; and repeatedly rubbed the outside of the foam. Turns out the band of my wedding ring leaves streaks in the foam, so I will have to be mindful of that on the top layer of foam.

I probably should have waited until the hatch is all secured on the hinge for a dry fit, but because it went back into place so easily, and since it would be more difficult to trim the skin edges after the foam is on, I got carried away and shaved the skin back flush to the walls. On the curb side it wasn’t much so I just stroked it a few times with the small Surform rasp, followed by the little matchbox plane and sanding block.



On the street side I used the flush cutting bit with bottom bearing in the trim router and got what I could down to the foam clamp setup.



It took a bit more hand work and working around the foam clamp was somewhat tedious, but I managed to get the street side down to the bottom.



In hindsight I should have flushed this off before attaching the first piece of foam, and I really should have done the poly first. Now I will have to worry about damaging the foam when I flip the hatch back over to do the poly. Like I said; got ahead of myself.

I’ll check this out better tomorrow and see what comes next.

[KCStudly]

Ran around this morning and struck out three times; couldn’t find the size and type of tarp I wanted for the boat at the hardware store; my breakfast order got lost and I ended up sitting there much longer than I had wanted to (they took off the cost of my coffee, big whoop); and the marina store I went to in Norwich (which was a gamble but less out of the way) did not have epoxy fillers, had to go way out of my way in the wrong direction to get some 403.

But breakfast turned out yummy; I got the filler in the end; the weather was nice for driving around on a sunny day; and I still don’t have to go to work until tomorrow.

Once I finally made it out to the shop, I tried to look at my foam gluing process closer to see how I can speed things up. So far I have fit a piece, developed a method to hold it in place securely, glued it on, and then had to wait to fit the next piece while the glue dried, mostly due to the clamp rig being in the way; so decided to look at taping the dry fit pieces down so that I could continue fitting the next row, and maybe gluing multiple sections all at once. When I tried taping the first roof pieces on the front, they weren’t held evenly enough, nor tightly enough that they wouldn’t bow out when bent over the curve. This led me to do a dry run of a clamp setup. I started with a temporary backer lashed thru the cabin doors using 550 cord, then wedge shims to secure the base of the pair of panels.



Then it sort of snowballed with ratchet straps, additional temporary backers, and more wedges.


That got almost all of the panels down snuggly, yet there were still a few areas that were floating a bit.

Still resisting using epoxy (mix hassles, risk of exothermic damage to the foam, etc.), and not remembering other people’s test results, I decided to do a couple of tests with PL Premium. My thoughts are that it is thicker than the TB2 so should do a better job of grabbing and filling in some of the minor unevenness, especially on the glass weave of the hardened epoxy. So I used the coarse end of my little notched credit card spreader and put a thin coat of adhesive on a 4x4 chunk of 1-1/2 inch foam, which I stuck onto a flatter section of the glass reinforcing.


Looking forward to the second layer of foam, I did another test using PL between two pieces of scrap foam, also about 4x4 inches, shown here weighted with half a quart of poly.


Early results: By the end of tonight’s session these were both showing quite a bit of grab. On Wednesday I will do destructive testing. What I can assume so far is that, again, using product sparingly with no large glops or beads appears to be the key to getting it to cure well. Maybe my test pieces are still too small to be truly representative, but it seems promising so far.

A note on my foam choice: while the 3/4 thick foam does form over the larger radii, I am having second thoughts wishing that I had stuck with the 1-1/2 inch material throughout. The kerfing is simple and speedy enough to do on the table saw and it is plain to see now that it would be far quicker than doing two layers is going to be. Lesson learned.

So while waiting for the final verdict on the PL tests, rather than breaking down the clamp set up at the front, I decided that I would need to have the lower hatch bumper installed before I could put the second layer of foam on the hatch. So I started working on that. To account for as built conditions, I used a scrap of pine cut to the same height as the bumper blank as a template and traced the angle between the bottom of the lower hatch spar and the back edge of the floor. Then I cut the 13 deg angle on the template and used that to trace the cut on the end of the blank. In this pic both pieces are laying on the bench on the side that goes against the underside of the lower hatch spar (upside down).


The angled line on the left will butt up against the rear edge of the floor and squeeze the hatch seal gasket. The large radius on the upper right of the template represents the lowest rear portion of the hatch where the canvas will wrap under.

Here I have done the angled rip and removed the excess slab off of the rear.


Using the face of the angled cut flat to the saw table with the saw back at 90 deg, I made the right angle cut that set the angle of the bottom of the bumper parallel to the underside of the floor (still shown upside down here).


After swinging the 3/4 inch radius arc on each end and scribing the tangent points all along each face as references, I set up this little dog arrangement to hold the edge up and make it easier to plane the radius.


Used long full length strokes with the plane, paying particular attention to use my fingers as guides to hold a steady angle and take even width ribbons. Eventually I switched to the small sanding block and 100 grit.


Test fitting showed that I needed to take some more off of the angled face that will match the rear edge of the floor, so I took a few passes with the powered hand plane, and will end up working this face a little more on Wednesday.

Poplar spaghetti.


Next will be cutting to final length and rounding the outside corners off.

Train kept a rollin’.

[dales133]

Looking great kc I haven't got through your whole build thread but it's totaly changing my mind on methods and design.

[KCStudly]

Welcome to the grand experiment!

[GPW]

Gosh , that laminated bumper should be really stable huh !!! Nice !!! Foam looking Good !!!

[KCStudly]

Thanks, GPW. Yes, poplar is very stable and to get a piece big enough for the section I needed, it was much more cost affective to laminate. I'm calling this a "bumper", not because it will act like a crash guard, but more because it is at the lower rear and will be the first thing that bumps anything as the hatch is in motion; perhaps my noodle.

Once I get the screw pattern transferred on to the top section (where the pre-drilled screw holes from the lower hatch spar will land) I may mill some lightening slots out where they will be hidden once installed.

[GPW]

Upon completion of my first wooden TD , I immediately proceeded to prop open the hatch and Bump my head on it straight away ... From that experience, I’d suggest anything protruding, that could cause noggin lumps , should have a soft Rubber bumper of some sort ...

[KCStudly]

OT: The cable company (which also provides our internet and phone service) sent us a new portal device, that includes WIFI, for me to install. Followed the instructions, which were extremely basic... plug all of the cords in and wait for it to turn itself on, then log in and activate your new device; and wouldn't you know, now I have no phone or internet connections. Upon failing to find the internetwebs, the message that pops up says "call this number". Um, no phone you dumb idiots!!! .

So now I'm using my cell phone minutes, on my phone that needs to be charged, so plugged in, talking to a machine that doesn't offer the correct options. Yell a little and ask for an operator; despite it saying that wait times are longer than usual (when aren't they?) I did get connected to "Joe" who was difficult to understand due to his heavy accent (I won't be disrespectful and try to guess where he was from, but you get the stereotype, don't ya?). So just as he was starting to ask a few more questions we get disconnected, the line goes dead. Not sure if it was my cell phone crapping out of something else, but

<end rant>

[dales133]

Gotta love "help" desks [GRIMACING FACE]

[KCStudly]

Back online.