A woody tiny-trailer for my first build!

[felixx]

Well done! It looks great

[drshoe]

6th weekend

Started out by finishing up the futon. It began life as one of these monstrosities:

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After some rearranging it looked like this:

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I moved the foot to the head and attached the recline stopper to that. I also made the front feet foldable:

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[drshoe]

The futon was still a bit tough to slide, so I took some inspiration from rolling step-stools, and fashioned this mechanism from a corner bracket, a caster with a threaded bolt and a spring.

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I made four of them and attached them to the futon:

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You can see the futon leaning against the interior wall in this picture as it is holding that wall to a spar while some glue drys. What you can't see is a felt slider pounded into the very end of the same board the wheels are attached to - under the recliner stops.

It is definitely an improvement, the wife can slide and operate the futon by herself, but the mechanism is not perfect, rather than going up under a load the caster posts tend to go out at an angle. I'm hoping some stiffer springs will remedy this.

Here is the back view of the front wall being attached:

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[drshoe]

Weekend 6 continued

But before that wall got glued on we trimmed over the aluminum cleats

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Filled the gap caused by the door panel

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And struggled through the galley window installation

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The trim ring I received did not seem to fit the advertised 1 3/4" width very well at all. Not only that but it was not sized to the window very well, I had to trim the trim ring with the hacksaw. And since it didn't come with screws, I picked up some machine screws and for whatever reason the heads kept snapping off, usually after I had gone too far to grab the shaft with vice grips. I guess that's what I get for buying from joe shmoe on e-bay.

[drshoe]

Weekend 6 continued

Painted the filler white and added a spar for the front wall

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And put the futon inside

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At this point we glued on the interior front wall as pictured a coupled posts back.
The following day, Labor day, I wired in the fantastic fan:

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[drshoe]

Weekend 6 continued

The wife picked a pretty panel for the exterior front wall:

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And we glued the foam and the panel in place

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Another productive weekend, feels like we are getting close to having this thing ready to go.

[aggie79]

Awesome! Great mods on the futon.

[rebapuck]

That is a pretty panel. I'm getting a beachy feel from the color.

[drshoe]

Weekend 7

Took the clamps off and it looked like this:

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Finished installing the vent fan:

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and got to work on our star-gazer window:

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I first cut the inner and outer panels to fit the rectangle. Then I clamped them together, traced and routed the window from the outside of the plywood panel. We glued the two together with an acrylic panel floating between them.

[drshoe]

Weekend 7 continued

It was a little tricky keeping things lined up:

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But once we had it in place it turned out really well:

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[lfhoward]

The tiny camper is coming right along. This is my first time browsing through your build, and it looks like you have made consistent progress the last 7 weekends. It won't be long until it is campable!

[drshoe]

Weekend 7 continued:

We also installed the doors:

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and added some hatch framing:

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The hatch framing was covered with strips of the red oak, but I didn't get a picture of that. You can see we also used an aluminum L along the edge of the counter where the hatch will come down. I didn't want to try and bend the aluminum the match the hatch angle, so I turned it around the other way. If I discover I need it later I can pack that l full of weather stripping.

[drshoe]

Weekend 8

Kind of a slow weekend.

The peel and stick lights we had put up in the cabin came down, so I stapled them up.

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They have 3 different color LEDs so they can do all sorts of fun things, plus a remote. I drilled a hole through the wallboard near the outlets the stuff the IR receiver into, so it would be able to pick up the remote in the cabin, but the circuit box would be in the electrical compartment. I had to make an extension cord for this to work though. Fortunately, since these lights have a + lead and 3 grounds (one for each color) I only had to remove some unused telephone cord from the house to do this. Also, we needed two strips of lights, and for the multi-color ones we bought there was no ready-made solution, so I put my soldering skills to the test and was able to join the two strands, admittedly after a few tries. I went with wires at first, but those quickly broke, so I went contact to contact, but had trouble crossing the grounds.

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We also built the frame for the hatch:

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[drshoe]

Weekend 8 continued

And we got the hatch installed:

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We did add some 3/4" 4 rib style EPDM weather stripping along each side of where the hatch sits. After doing it a couple times we decided sliding the hatch off the hinge wasn't too big a chore, so we're going to leave the hatch removable and put some folding table legs on it.

[S. Heisley]

You're coming along very well on your trailer. Your wife picked a nice color, even if it does drive you crazy.
...Love the fold-up futon bed frame, too!