The Poet Creek Express - Foamie Hybrid

[KCStudly]

GPW, I don't know about lighting up the underside with neon, but I have made provisions for extra amber marker lights under the side doors to act as foot lights that activate with the porch light switch. Nice little project with that amp.

Capn, thanks for the feedback. On fender nerf bars: I am very pleased with how the ones on my car trailer turned out. I made them out of two pieces of 1x sq tubing with bolt tabs and secured them with large 3/8 inch riv-nuts (so that they can be easily replaced when... not if... they get crunched). Then I formed a piece of aluminum diamond plate, matching the fender, to form a step. The nerf is only two pieces of tube; one perpendicular to the frame supporting the end of the fender; and one angled brace piece. The bent up lip of the step pan along the main frame of the trailer stiffens that leg of the triangle to where it needs no other support or fasteners. Just 3 rivets along the angled nerf tube hold the pan and one in the corner. Very sturdy.


Last night I routed the other 3 clearance light wire ways. On the rear ones, since I had the router set at full depth for one pass in the foam, I did over and under the side table blocking as an interrupted cut, then went back and step cut across the blocking using multiple passes. I hope to glue the clearance light blocks in this evening.

Humidity has been awful here for the last couple of days, but we had a down pouring last night, so not so bad this morning... yet. Local weatherman is calling for near 90's or just over for the next few days. If the humidity comes back I may decide to work on the SS back plates for the clearance lights, downstairs on the mill, rather than up in the hot loft.

[Atomic77]

I really like the amber foot light idea. I might have to steal that one!

[dales133]

Great minds, I got some strip lights for under the doors and at the back to light up around the perimeter .
They are dimable so I'll set them low so it's just a glow

[KCStudly]

I'm sure I got the idea from someone else, so steal away!

[GPW]

footlights ... COOL !!!

[KCStudly]

Have a little lull in the action here. Doing a little work for Karl modeling and FEA'ing a stairway support structure, the hidden steel part, for a high end floating wood stair with glass panel railing. Has taken a couple of evenings and will take at least one more, maybe two. Might make a little cash in return, maybe, but it is still the least I can do for him.

Today Eric (team captain) and Dave came down from MA and we worked on cutting the broken segments off of the aluminum throwing arms from the ballista. The plan is to shorten the arms (which we did) so that we can get a better pull back using the pseudo compounding bow string arrangement. Although it only threw half our best distance the first time we tried it, the longer arms limited pull back and the bow line length was not optimized. The fact that the arms were broken and we didn't really want to spend time or money building new ones for the old machine made the decision to shorten the arms and take another stab at compounding kind of a "no brainer". There's still a little work to do on them, but the hard part is done.

Gave Dave and Eric the nickel tour. Dave follows the thread fairly regularly (hi Dave!), but Eric hasn't and seemed to get a kick out of seeing what I've been up to.

[KCStudly]

Finished up the analysis for Karl last night but then had to tear into a mixer this afternoon at work, so ended up staying over. Frustrating. The mechanic(s) on the job know that they should check certain clearances at the start of the maintenance period, but then they don't and we end up finding out there is a problem when there isn't enough time to fix it without getting into OT. Maybe they're doing it on purpose. Worst part was that it was a gorgeous cool dry weather day.

Tomorrow is another day.

[daveesl77]

For my clearance lights, I found these little, round 1" diameter LED that I was able to insert into the lower wood trim. You don't see them until they are on and they work well. On my outside lights over the side areas, I put in 5' of RGB LED light strip on each side just under the "wing" trim pieces.. This allows me to adjust brightness and color. I can also fire up the "crazy" side of the remote and make it like a Christmas decoration. On the more sane side, I can tone them to a soft orange to keep away the bugs, but fire up the bright white if I want a lot of light.

dave

[GPW]

Many Cool lighting possibilities these days ... Nice idea Dave using the RGB strips ...

[KCStudly]

Thanks for sharing.

To put it into perspective, I still use a flip phone, and get this, I only use it as a phone, so spending time on fiddly electronics with a million features isn't something I'm going to spend a bunch of time on. Call me an old fart if you must.

Sure, I'm not immune to technology. I have the smart battery charger for the TB and will likely end up with that trick controller for the hatch actuators, but I consider those more of a necessity than a gadget/toy.

Karl used the little 1 inch bullet lights on the pizza oven trailer, and I might look at those for the fenders, but I think I will probably be better off with surface mounts to keep anything from sticking in toward the tires.

All this talk about LED lighting has me thinking about the simple things, like sitting quietly around the campfire at Poet Creek in otherwise pitch dark, or closing up camp for the evening to the hiss of the white gas lantern with the crick babbling past and the cool night mountain air.

Time to get back to work!

[GPW]

QUOTE: "has me thinking about the simple things" ... Old Fart Syndrome .....

[Wolffarmer]

We are a syndrome now????

[KCStudly]

It’s either a syndrome or a symptom.

It felt really good to get back on the build today. Got the side clearance light blocks glued in and sanded back.

I started by getting my clamp blocks ready. The two with the rosin paper will go against the finished insides of the galley walls. You can’t see it, but the wood pieces have a strip of packing tape on one side. Someone here had better luck using packing tape as a release agent than I have been having with blue tape, waxed paper, and plastic coated freezer paper; so I decided to try it.


I used my big SS palette (that I typically use for body filler) to squirt the GS on and knock down the initial foamage. In retrospect it took a bit of effort and much acetone to clean this back off later, so if I were to do it again I would look for a disposable piece of cardboard or something else to mix on.


I had such a good fit that I probably should have just used TB2 to glue the blocks in, but the G-stuff kicked off much more quickly and by the time I was done with the cleanup I was able to go right into sanding flush. Here on the front street side I smeared the flattened GS on the sides and rear of the block, pushed it in the hole and screwed thru the wire recess into the front cabinet face frame wall blocking using a pair of #6x1/2 FH screws.


At the back I used the clamp and blocks to hold the light block in. I was only just a little nervous about getting the taped clamp block free later.



Did the same thing on the street side.

I figured I would have to let that all sit overnight, but the GS seemed to have done its thing so I went ahead and took the clamps off. I did have to pry at the clamp blocks a little but when they came they popped right off clean as a whistle.



While sanding the front (left in pic) edge peeled up under the sanding block and took a little of the blue foam with it, but that will “buff out” with a little spackle. The large gouge at the back is from that incident with the DA sander (note to self: stick to hand work whenever practical… the screw ups are smaller and take longer to rear their ugly heads).


The fronts were a good 1/16 proud and took a bit more sanding. Here are the front street side and curb side, respectively.



As usual, the last one came out the best.


I’m not sure if I showed this before, but this is where the hatch wires come thru on the street side and will be joined to the cabin wiring coming out near the top of the bulkhead under the hinge. I have a 6-way weatherpack connector and some corrugated wire loom to dress it up. The hatch may have to come back off to do a proper job on the canvas, so I will wait to connect the wires later.


Weather for the weekend is to be very hot and humid. Also, I had a call from mom this evening and we are having a family get together on Sunday with sis, aunt and cousin’s family from Brazil. I should get myself up and going earlier to try and beat the heat.

[GPW]

.... have a great weekend !!!

[dales133]

Brazil Ian eh...You'll have to get them out on the bbq for some carne assada!