Little Ferdie - 11-ft Grumman

[Redneck Packrat]

Could well be a underpowered soldering gun. If it's one of those pencil looking things, it's definitely underpowered.

The trick is to heat the wire and let the wire provide the heat to the flux-cored solder. It goes on smoooooooooth that way

[KCStudly]

Three way connections can be made with shrink wrap.

Here's how I do it:
You want to strip about 3/4 to 1 inch of insulation off the first pair.
If the three wires are all the same gauge then it doesn't matter, but if one or two of the wires are smaller gauge you want to group the smaller two together first with the insulation laying together parallel and the bare ends sticking out together (as you would do for a wire nut); just twist them together. After twisting
Then strip the third, or largest wire about 5/8 to 3/4 inch.
Cut a short piece of shrink wrap that fits on the single wire and a longer piece that fits on the pair of wires.

Now with the pair and single wires facing each other, over lap the bare portions of the wire until the insulation ends just about touch; then twist them together as you also pull them apart until just the wire part has wrapped around each other.

Solder (it helps to weigh both sides down with pliers or use "helping hands" alligator clip type fixture). You don't want the wires to be able to move away from the soldering tip, and you want them up in free air as opposed to pressing them against something else that will act like a heat sink. Pre-tin your iron and wipe it frequently with a cotton rag. I like to clean excess flux off of my joints with a small toothbrush sized wire brush (the flux is corrosive).

Now run the small shrink wrap up as far as you can and shrink it, before overlapping with the larger shrink wrap and shrinking.

The trick is to have a good variety of shrink wrap that is properly sized.

If that doesn't work for you the do make a "liquid electrical tape", but the one time I tried to use it I gave up before mastering it.

[Redneck Packrat]

KC, I've used a combination of the liquid stuff and shrink wrap. (HF had an excellent batch of it about 15 years ago, NEVER split. It is still viable too. We have some still hanging from a nail in the barn since Dad bought them almost out of it. There was a clearance on it when the non-English-speaking printer labeled it "SHINK WARP" and the store wanted shed of it.) Anyway, I have an excellent knack for making a short story long, don't I? ...

Paint the soldered connection with the liquid tape and wait for it to skin over decently, where the shink warp will slide over it without taking the gloop with it.....very much... It still will take some as friction works on it. Then I start heating about 1/4 of the way from the leading edge of the shrink sleeve, and shrink the short end, then go back and work to the trailing end of the wrap. The liquid will ooze out, likely at both ends, and make not just a raintight seal but waterproof. I've used this method on water well pump connections and years later they're still as shiny inside as they looked when new

[plectrudis]

Thanks for the suggestions, guys! If I have to solder on the passenger's side, I'll give the shrink wrap + liquid wrap approach a try.

Also, "SHINK WARP" is awesome. Sounds like the sort of problem that can only be solved by reversing the polarity on your trilithium crystals.

Now that the driver's side 12v wiring is more or less squared away, I've been working on the insulation and framing the door & window. Shaving the insulation down to the height of the studs (it was something like 1/8" too thick <eyeroll>) is the sort of repetitive, fiddly task that is halfway between "annoying" and "meditative." And those darn foam shavings have the worst static cling I've ever seen--they blew everywhere and then adhered, just out of sheer cussedness. Anyway, we're almost all levelish now. I've got a few small pieces left, and then I'll fill in the gaps with puffy foam and THEN it will be ready for the inner skin to be cut and installed.

I finished installing the framing, too, though I'll need to route the studs down to match the contours of the door and window. I'm planning to use my lovely bottom-bearing router bit for this task, hopefully tomorrow.

Oh, and I almost forgot! I was at the Texas State Agency Surplus warehouse the other day, when I stumbled on this lovely orange vinyl chair. For NINE DOLLARS. Yes, one of its seams is splitting, and yes, it's clearly about 50 years old, and yes it is exceedingly, even criminally, orange. But still. NINE DOLLARS. And the casters work. So I've now got an official Shop Chair, so I can do my staring, frowning, muttering, frowning, staring, and knuckling my forehead from the comfort of an upholstered rolly chair.

Artisanally hand-shaved insulated. Well, shaved by a hand holding an oscillating tool:



The Throne:



QUESTION: When I'm sticking the inner skin to the studs+insulation, what's the best adhesive? I was planning on using PL Premium, though I've also got some MasterSeal NP-1 on hand, if that's preferable. I'm looking for something thick enough to compensate for any irregularities in the insulation and strong enough to hold the skin tightly in place so that it won't give or make a crunchy noise if we lean against the wall. I want it to feel SOLID, and I'm planning to more or less paint the entire inside of skin with the stuff. Any thoughts?

[aggie79]

I'm a big fan of PL Premium for gluing skins.

You really don't need complete coverage of the PL for the skins. I applied the PL in a zizg-zag pattern:

.

Then I used a disposable plastic v-notch (1/4" notch) trowel to spread the PL. The trowel creates many small "hills" of adhesive. Then I added the plywood skins. Even though there is a not full adhesive joint, the end product is very rigid.

This method is similar to applying thin-set mortar for ceramic tile.

[plectrudis]

Perfect! That sounds considerably more economical than my original approach--thanks for the tip!

[Nobes]

It's a Pondering Chair! A wise investment, teardrop builder.

[ELM]

My foam was a little to thick also. I used a piece of 1"x 1" square steel tubing with a strip of 40 grit sand paper glued on one edge to sand it down. It worked great but a HUGE MESS.

[Nobes]

Summer is over (sort of, it is Texas) but we are approaching ideal outdoor building weather. I trust you have been taking this time to make all your plans for next steps, etc, getting materials tools and procedures lined up for a whirlwind of activity this fall? Yes?

[plectrudis]

Oh my! It's been a long time since my last post.

I puttered away fitfully over the winter getting the walls ready to go up. I kept thinking, "There's just this one thing I need to do, and then I'll be able to finish the walls..." and that one thing always led to 3 other things, and then I had to wait for The Mix to dry or the adhesive to cure or some part to come in the mail...

Anyway, by mid-May I had whacked most of the moles I could find to whack, so I decided to finally get the walls up by the end of the Memorial Day holiday. This entailed finally gluing and nailing the interior skins on, a terrifyingly permanent step. I tested all the wires with an ohm meter, but none of the batteries or switches or light fixtures are connected to them. What if... I dunno... I discover that I miscounted the number of circuits I need? What if...the wires I used turn out to be some cheap knockoff that melts when I run a current through it? What if... an infestation of robot cockroaches attacks the trailer and eats all my wiring right out of the walls? Huh? What then?!?

But, sometimes, you just have to stick a fork in it.

So with Mr P's help, we closed up the walls. Permanently.

And then we glued and screwed them to the floor! Hot diggity!

I had used The Mix on the floor and the bottom of the walls, so for adhesive I used great heaping globs of PL Premium and screwed everything down with pocket holes. We screwed some temporary plywood braces to the walls to hold them upright during the proceedings, and installed a couple of oak crosspieces to hold the two walls parallel.

I'm so excited about this major sign of progress. It makes the whole thing seem so much more real. And now I can start thinking about the bulkheads, roof, hatch, and doors. Huzzah!

One wall up:


The braces:


The final product:

[aggie79]

[lthomas987]

That is awesome. When I got to that stage I couldn't stop sitting in it when planning the next steps


Sent from my LG-LS993 using Tapatalk

[KCStudly]

Welcome back! Good to get back on it serious, like.

Walls up is a big milestone.

[Nobes]

woo hoo! one bite at a time...

[plectrudis]

I had the day off, and the weather was shockingly non-repulsive, so I spent most of the day in the garage doing small, unsexy little tasks that follow getting the walls up.

I put in some more screws into the walls just to make sure the things stays attached (using extra-long blue interior-exterior grade Kreg screws).

And I cut most of the rest of the spars for the roof. (Still need to buy another piece of oak. Had to sacrifice one of my two oak 1x2s unexpectedly during the wall-framing phase, so need to buy a replacement so I can double-up the spar that will hold the hatch.) All others are poplar 1x2s.

And I used my Kreg jig again to drill pocket holes in the spars. Here's a weird thing: it was freakishly difficult to drill those pocket holes. The drill just did not want to penetrate the wood. I had to lean into it to push it in and kept having to pause to let everything cool down. I've used the kreg jig a lot, and it's never been this reluctant. Theories:

(1) The poplar has been sitting in my garage rafters since... March? December? Could it have dried out so thoroughly that it's become kind of rock-like? (I live in Texas, and we've had a warm spring/early summer.)
(2) Probably likelier: have I used up my kreg bit? I've primarily used it (extensively) on the teardrop project--is one teardrop enough drilling to wear the bit out?

The other thing I worked on was tidying the disaster zone that is my workspace. When the walls were horizontal, they took up a lot of space. Now that they're vertical, I reconfigured my workbench to be a little more compact (much to Mr. P's relief), reorganized, and swept/dusted the sawdust that coated everything like a light snow.

SO: a useful day, but not glamorous.

I'm also trying to decide what to tackle next:

The ceiling?
The rear bulkhead?
The front bulkhead/storage bins?

Plus, I didn't actually install the spars today--just prepped them. So I need to do that, too.