Foamie hybrid with ribs and wheelchair accessibility...

[Redneck Packrat]

Not much time on it today. Frame's painted black, and the one wheel that was leaking got painted John Deere green. (Ran out of black paint )






Oh, and I caught the help sleepin' on the job


Found some parts of an old hospital bed. Solves for me the problem of cobbling together a lever to pull the bed up. Now all I need to find is a power screw with the right speed and range. Either that or a couple of limit switches and one of those 49.99 HF winches. If I do it that way, I want to make sure to put some sort of mechanical limiter on the travel so it'll bind up and blow a fuse... or some other easily-activated kill switch. Hate to have the wife turn herself into taco filling!


There. Now I think I've got the pics right

[Redneck Packrat]

Ok. I mounted the tire back on the painted rim and bolted it back on the trailer. Not sure if I'm keeping those rims, but might as well have it cleaned up and preserved one way or t'other. Got the shop cleaned out (shoveled out? ) and pushed the trailer inside.



Started on the wood framing for the floor. The trailer frame was 76" wide and that would've left me with only 72" inside if I'd have stood the foam on the siderails of the trailer, so I added a 2x6 on each side and snugged them down with 4 5/16 x 2 carriage bolts through the frame, and that gave me a outside width of 79". No need for a bunch of extra lights AND I've got 75 inside, so a standard twin mattress will fit crossways across the front.

Cut and fitted cross 'joists' to fall under where I'm gonna put the floor joints. Nothing's glued or screwed yet except the outside four 2x6's (the side rails and the top "sills". Rest are just laying on the trailer frame cross members. I plan to Kreg-jig them to the 2x6's and/or each other, then drop more carriage bolts in wherever I can to tie the wood floor to the metal frame as snugly and rigidly as I can. That, with 3/4 OSB on top of it, should make a fairly solid floor. Keeping in mind it's gonna have a 350 lb wheelchair rolling in and out of it and turning around, I am tending towards over-building the floor.





Wheel wells. Still working on that little irritation, especially the right one. It looks like it's gonna stick up right where the floor needs to be flat. Hmm.... ....suggestions? Raise entire floor? Dove-tail the back 2 feet or so to give a flat platform for her to turn around up nearer the front bed? Just raise the whole floor a couple inches?

Also, take a look at the following pic. It's a (bad) drawing of the wall butting up to the floor, as you'd look from the front or back. Which of the two configurations would be the stronger one? I'm leaning towards the walls setting directly above the 2x6 on edge, and the floor setting on the flat 2x6. This would run the canvas down the foam, then on down and around the bottom of the 2x6 and back up the inside, with the goal being to use the bottom of the 2x6 as the drip edge to keep rainwater from getting to the floor. Then the inside reinforcing canvas, if I can figure out the method, going under the floor and glued to the bottom of the floor, sandwiched in between the floor and the flatways 2x6, which is labeled in that (bad) drawing as a 2x4. (Make sense?)

[swoody126]

Bill, i would strongly suggest you not use OSB

that stuff gets really wonky when it gets wet and even if you coat the "H" "E" doube uggly out of it it WILL end up getting wet and that puts the bridal unit in jeopardy w/ her wheel chair

i would lean toward 3/4" treated plywood if it were my bride rolling around on it

next, if you raise the floor a few inches you could incorporate some hidey holes in the space below the floor

holes for what?

precious stuff or fluid tanks or ???

just shootin from the hip

sw

[Redneck Packrat]

Yeah, you're right about the OSB. It's great if it can stay dry. But....

For the difference of about ten bucks a sheet, it's really damn cheap to not have her "step" through the floor

Drawback to adding height to floor is that it means a steeper or longer ramp to get in.

I might have a deal working for swapping these 13" rims for three relatively-unused (one new, still has the titties on it) fat popup tires mounted on fairly decent wheels, same bolt pattern too, it looks like (4 on 4). Noticed just the other day that Tractor Supply here stocks 'em at about 75 bucks each. Imagine that! That would take care of the floor clearance issue, as well as lower the deck a few inches. Win-win. And with 3 of them, I could limp it to a Tractor Supply

But yeah, thanks for talking me out of using OSB. (Didn't take much to do that, did it? )

[Redneck Packrat]

Well, we have 80% of a floor.

First thing today was to drill the pockets on the cross pieces and get them screwed down. When I was going to do that, I noticed the 2x6's weren't snugged down to the frame so I added some carriage bolts vertically through the frame rails.



Cut the first sheet by lining up the front left corner both across the front and down the left side, and marking from underneath on the right side, then flipping it, sawing, and flipping again. Then I lined it up on the back and both sides, letting it overhang the front, marked it underneath and flip, saw, flip, and check then screwed it down with a screw on each corner. Once everthing's cut and fit together, I'll take 'em loose one at a time and TB2 'em back down with 2 1/2" screws along all sides and center supports.

First sheet down. 43x79.


Before I monkeyed with the second sheet, I laid a piece of 2x4 across atop the tire, and found that with no wheel wells I'm going to have just under 3/4" of air above the tire. No bueno.


Laid another flat 2x4 on the framing, and got just over 2" of space. Poco mas bueno. Once I applied Newton's Posterior Law to it (sat on it), it bowed the spring less than 1/4 inch.


If my 210 lb only does that, I think I'm gonna be okay with 2" clearance. (Check the clearance, Clarence?) [Proofreading my post before hitting "submit", I just realized that there's gonna be an additional 5/8" of clearance: The main floor plywood will be under the 2x4 spacers. So I'm probably really okay on Clarence ] Pic is with me sitting on it:



The second sheet went full width and covered the wheel wells just about centered. Did the line-up, mark, flip, saw, flip, and screwed it with 4 screws:


After stabilizing it with the 4 screws I went under the trailer and marked the areas I'm going to cut out over the tires. I'll flip it and cut out the wheel holes tomorrow.

I did climb up on it, from one of the front corners, and it is solid. Very little frame warp when I stepped up on the unsupported front corner. Probably zero after gluing the deck on it.

I did get to do a little surfing, though. Was walking around on it, getting pics, and my dumb ass got a little too far back and achieved a negative tongue weight just after taking this pic. It was an exciting few seconds as I got it to slam back down on the tongue block.


The partial sheet I had was 6 inches too narrow to fill in the tail. I It's a half sheet, but because of the way the cross members lined up, I had that strip cut off the front piece of plywood. So.... back to Lowe's tomorrow. The trailer was laid out originally to have the front sheet come all the way back to the front of the wheel wells, I expect, because it was 48" outside-to-outside on the crossmembers at the front edge and in front of the wheels. By adding 6 inches to the front, it threw most of it off. I don't think it was a bad thing, because I wasn't sure if I liked that joint that close to the front of the wheels, and having the unsupported little strips on the outside of the tires. It's always stronger to cut a hole out of a piece of plywood than it is to notch it and have a joint for one side of the hole.

Plan is to rip some 2x2's to fur up the wheel wells and then lay a piece of plywood on top of that. I'm not going to do that permanently until I drag it around loaded like I expect it to be, plus some, and see if I see any scuff marks on the bottom of those covers. So that's on down the road.

Tomorrow: Cut out tire holes, rest of floor, rip some 1x1's to give the sides a "stop" to push against. Those might or might not stay after the walls are on, depends on how glued to the walls they are. I seriously doubt that a 3/4" high "baseboard" is going to be any sort of a hindrance

To put the nasty on the bottom, I believe I'm going to brush it on. I'm going to spray paint the outside of the can of pooky flat black and leave it in the sun all day. It should be pretty thin after that, don't ya imagine? Then I'll use Scoop to pick the tongue up high enough to get under it and start at the back and work my way forward with a brush that I don't mind throwing away later. Might even offer the son a bottle of water if he'll paint it on (Running joke.... I ask him to do something hot and unpleasant and offer him ice water as pay, and his response always is, "well, Dad, I wouldn't need the bottle of water if I wasn't out there in the heat doing you a favor!" ....maybe I'll offer him a )

[Redneck Packrat]

Ok, so yeah, I've been slackin'. Need to go get that last piece of plywood for the floor, and might as well use it to hold down some of the foam boards. But first, had to take a break from the hard work of playing with wood and break out ~600 sq ft of ceramic tile and clean the thinset off the slab. Son gave me an Indian name: Gray Booger. Seems no matter what kind of dustcatcher you wear, some of it gets in Soon as I settle up for that job, I'll have the ability to go get some foam to cushion that plywood's trip to its new home

A nice side to this little job is, finally got the moon craters in daughter's driveway filled with the four plastic tubs' worth of mortar crumbles! She's happy

Sometime today going to get a pile of foam and sheet of plywood. Maybe tomorrow. Then back to playtime!

[Redneck Packrat]

We have FOAM! (And the third sheet of 5/8 ply for the floor!)


Got the last 30" of plywood on the back of the floor and cut out above the running gear. All glued down with TB3 (no typo, I picked up a pint of it just on account of because, and I don't like it.)


I know I'm gonna have some curves on the foam, so since I had some foam, I went to playing around with nothing but my memory on building a hot wire with a block of wood and battery charger Blew the rest of my time playing with this, making stinkum and long plastic hairs Wound up using .035 solid wire because that's what I had, and a 6/12 volt ancient battery charger, 'cause that's what I had


First try did not heat up sufficiently with 3' of wire. Not quite hot enough, so I moved one clamp down about a foot's worth of wire 24" and got a nice clean cut that didn't glue itself back together.


The rods used to wrap the wire, on the other hand, were a complete flop. Ya know, if I was looking for a carpenter's pencil, I would've found nothing but round wood pencils....but noooooo, I needed a couple of round non-conductive things to wrap the extra wire around, so there wasn't a #2 pencil anywhere in captivity. Found a coathanger and cut it pencil length. Guess I should've had a 3rd requirement for the wire-wrapping studs: Able to withstand heat! So that hotwire was a flop. Re-did it by just laying the extra wire in a zigzag wrapped around multiple screws, and it worked just fine. Also cut the wire down to 24" since I had an extra foot that I couldn't see needing. (Then promptly forgot to take a pic of the new, improved hotwire )

Did manage to make a few parallel cuts that folded without snapping:




Now, what is the guiding measurement here? I used 1" for my playing, simply because I picked up a 2x2 chunk of it to, well, play with. I went a little better than halfway through the 1" to make that curve. Now, for 2": Do I go a little better'n halfway through it? OR do I leave a little less than 1/2" un-cut? Intuitively, I'd leave the same amount un-cut, since that seems to be able to bend fairly well that amount of curve. If I'm wrong, I guess I'll find out when I do it. I'll have a couple of drops from curving the front of the walls to play with, before I screw up a 36 dollar sheet of foam, though

[GPW]

You still need it thin enough to bend so cut the 2” down to 1/2” left intact on the outside , and if you’re worried about breaking it , canvas the outside ( tension side ) BEFORE you bend it … It will NEVER break after that …

[Redneck Packrat]

Glen, thank you for your answer. That was what I was figuring just intuitively, glad to have confirmation.

Got a lot done today....at least it seems like a lot

Been trying to figure out how to get the walls up and secured singlehandedly. (Well, I have both hands , but it's just me.)

Yesterday I did put a little 1x1 strip around the floor, 2" from the outside edge, to give the foam a ledge to butt up against. Laid a foot wide strip of canvas under it and folded it back and thumbtacked it out of the way. I wanted that tie-down strip along the floor and up the inside of the wall, but I also wanted that stop to push the foam up against, since there was only gonna be one set of hands on the wall erection. At first I was planning on Gorilla Glue, and had visions of that stop strip becoming permanent, is why the canvas is up under it. Turns out that might be less of an issue than I thought. That'll become clear as the post continues.

Now, I needed two other things to hold the walls in place: Something to hold it upright and something to hold it down tight against the floor. First thought was just running a 2x4 temporarily up the outside of the 2x6, just shy of the top of the foam, and then screwing a block to the end of that 2x4 for down-pressure. Problem is, same as with that 1x1 strip, winding up with the dang things glued to the outside of the trailer As the idea matured, I decided on this:


I then screwed a vertical 2x4 securely to that, then inside (directly above the horizontal one in that pic) a 45" long 2x4 spaced 2 3/4" above the floor, putting the top of it 47 3/4" above the floor:


Close up of the bottom part:




The idea further matured, and I realized that the shear force using a clamp would be sufficient to hold the foam in place if I pulled it down with one hand and clamped with the other on all 3 of those uprights.

Since I had the front full width and the sides butted up to the front, then I realized I needed to make two more of those 2x4 jig thingies for the front wall, and put the front wall on first, then when I stood the sides up butt them against the front, hold and clamp, and repeat until the full size side sheets were held down.

I got ahead of myself here. Yesterday, I bit the bullet and melted a streak on a perfectly-good, full size sheet of foam to make the 79" long front wall. I rushed it and bent the .035 MIG wire. Got most of it, except for about 1/4" of the thickness, so I just held my breath and snapped it. Cleanly. Whew.

Now back to current events. I stood everything up without any stickum anywhere, for a dry fit trial run and bound it up with clamps:




Here's what the gap in the outside vertical supports was for: To keep separation from the to-be-removed support bracing and the oozing glue joint:


I then found that the front wall wasn't holding itself square with the front edge of the side walls. I needed to snug that up. Enter ratchet strap:


Now, I find that the top 6-8 inches is not lining up, but the rest of it is pretty dang close. Enter headless 16d casing nails as 'pins' to line stuff up:


The pins aren't pushed in yet, I'll do that when the glue is on, after everything else is strapped and clamped. Now to take the whole thing back apart and spread out the Gorilla Glue. That was brought to a screeching halt when I discovered that the GG foamed up almost right out of the bottle, with the 100F and >90% humidity this afternoon, and the bead of glue was dry on the front before I got to the back. No bueno. Here comes the alternative:

...and where NOT to set it when you're in a hurry: over the cordless drill!

Ran a line of that Loctite brand Great Stuff knockoff:



And squeezed it all together:



And that's where it's gonna set until tomorrow.

[pchast]

Good planning and execution.
Having the clamps ready, tested and
positioned ahead of time - verrrry good

[Redneck Packrat]

Good planning and execution.
Having the clamps ready, tested and
positioned ahead of time - verrrry good

You got that right, Pete! I'm by myself, and I've had the experience before of 'hand me that dang thing I didn't think far enough ahead to put in arm's reach'

Oh, I've got helpers, but keeping them awake and focused is the hard part!





...except when I have something to eat....

[GPW]

Bill, hoping the weather is kind to you , raining here already …

[Redneck Packrat]

Cone keeps shifting west. Y'all must be doing a better job of praying than we are

Admitted area of uncertainty is landfall anywhere from Port Lavaca to Baton Rouge. Pretty wide area. We're both outside it but not by much.

This was our last "biggie":


They say 125 mph, but the anemometer in Aransas Pass was measuring 180 sustained when it blew away Of course, it wasn't an "official" weather station...the only "official" one then was 45 miles south and 30 miles in from the coast.

[Redneck Packrat]

Walls stuck well. Had one more sheet left, so I decided to cut the little 22" pieces to finish out the back jag of side walls. Thing is, remember I bent my .035 MIG wire foam cutter? Well, I spied sitting on a shelf among other HF flotsam from their earlier, cheaply-made days, an orange soldering gun. Says 180W on the side of it. I remembered why it got pitched into the morgue... it kept eating tips. The one in it was burnt through. So I went in search of something to make a foam cutter out of it with, and found a bundle of Dad's brazing rods that he hadn't used in maybe 15 years. There was 1/16th all the way to 7/32nd sizes. I think I got a 3/32nd to fit. Next size was too big, this one was a loose fit that the collet wouldn't chuck up. But it's stiff enough where I put just a wee kink in the ends of it and it friction-fit into the gun. Cuts like a sonofagun, but hard to keep it straight. So I came up with this, made out of a 1x4 chunk and one of the spacer slats from a bundle of fence pickets:


A close-up of the gun, collets removed, with the kinked ends of the cutting wire wedged into the gun's tip holder:


I drew a line on it with a magic marker, across the top and down the front and back edges, to give me a guide since it's impossible to see the wire unless you're a contortionist. Cuts nicely, and stiff enough that it didn't wander....much....


Took the clamping jigs down off the front part of the side walls and moved them to the back piece. One centered on the joint and one as close to the end as the horizontal part would allow, wrapping the one at the joint with wax paper:


The little pieces were bowing in when I dry-fit everything, so I cut a 2x4 to length to use as a spreader, and built a couple of end supports for it. Remember, I'm doing this by myself and in kinda a hurry after blurping the GS glop all over everything, so I need to have something easy and quick for every bit of support/clamping.


That 2x4 is all warped and twisted but it worked just fine for this, since it was temporary it didn't matter what it looked like ....but you can see how it flushed up the butt joint on the wall:


Now to take it all back down and squirt the stickum and clamp/brace/spread it all where I want it.


And that's where it sets til tomorrow. I'm out of foam until I go do some "real" work somewhere, but that's happening tomorrow and Thursday for at least part of those days, then I'll be back to the filthy orange place that apparently doesn't own a broom and procure some more foam

Oh, I did go dig out that bed I'm gonna use for the front bed, and it's 84" long It does break down into a 41 and a 43 inch section, so I'm thinking about building a wood frame to set the head end of it on, and use it only for the head-raising feature. Wife never uses the knee-elevating feature anyway. Could probably build a manual version of that in with some hinges and spacer boards cut to go under the knees, but that's easily done later. Also tinkered some with the motor for the power-head-raising and I *think* it's pretty straightforward. I'll know more in a day or two. Might work on this bed next, before putting the roof on it. Because if I can't get this bed to work, I might as well stop til I find/design/figure out one that does.

By the way, when using GS, be sure you're putting it on the correct ledge! If you'll notice, in the last pic, look at the stabilizer on the right side, at the horizontal piece of it.

[Redneck Packrat]

Got a lot done today. I'll edit this post with an update with pics....

Played with TB2, Alex Plus, the Kreg jig, and both the miter and table saw

Yeah, it's a tease. But I've gotta go shower this pink dust off'n myself. And eat. Yeah, eating would be first if it wasn't for the pink dust.

Ok.....This was Friday, internet was acting stupid, tried to upload a couple times and nothing. Didn't really amount to much that day anyway. So, all in one update....

I decided to go ahead and pull the 1x1 strips out that I had put on the floor as a bumper for setting the walls. Apparently the Great Stuff made it through the canvas, enough to pull away the canvas from the foam board. Actually, pulled the foam apart, and I kinda hossed on it to do that. And peeled it, sorta, by pulling on one end and flexing that 1x1 strip. I'm satisfied the walls are stuck as well as they're gonna stick Already had both ends loose and all that stuck hard was this 12-16" long section:


I'll glue that back with something after I get the ribs in. Built one rib and clamped it together. These ribs are 2x2's ripped from pine 2x4's. Set fence to the height of the board, then laid the board flat and ran it through. Flipped it around and ran it through again to get all of them the same thickness, true 1 1/2 x 1 1/2. Came out with a thick "shaving" that'll make good shim, or cut into short lengths it'll make good stir sticks. Reason I flipped the board was to get the rounded factory edges on one face of the rib. Wasted a few inches double-cutting the miters to keep the rounded edge facing inside, but it does look good.

Rib was too tall. I don't need 5 inches of clearance over my head. Wasted space and more wall for wind to hit. So, that's where I left it Friday:


On to today's fun and games....

Took the rib back down and cut 5" off the vertical parts, dry-fitted it again and just barely brushed my hair against the bottom of the rib. Plenty of room to stand and pivot with the Boss Lady. So, I took it back apart and made four more of them. This will get me to the center of the thing, I later realized I need one more before I get to the "fun" stuff where the bed has to be jammed into the front. Kreg jigged out the bottoms to screw 'em to the floor with 2 1/2" screws. At that point I realized I need to glue that flap up against the walls and floor before putting the ribs in place.






I mixed up batches of 8 oz TB2 and 4 oz faucet juice. Took 3 batches to do the floor-to-wall strip shown above. Went and got another jug of TB2 and came back, took an hour or so to make the round trip, I found it dry enough to start installing ribs. Now you can start to see the shape of it:




The front is going to carry that shape on around. There'll be a couple of triangle pieces in the corners that I'll just "engineer" in there a little at a time. They'll probably be the last pieces I stick on the framing.

The bed framing and bed are going to go in the way of the front two ribs, I'm thinking, so that's gonna be a puzzle to put together. Probably next.

The ribs weren't tight to the foam. I remembered I had read on someone's post (wish I could remember whose, I'd give credit for the idea...if it was yours, say so and claim credit, if you see this before I find who it was) about holding temporarily until bonding agents set, using 3" screws with fender washers. I did that up the ribs until I saw squeeze fairly uniformly:




Oh...on the upper of the two pics, the crack.... The GS didn't expand out both sides evenly. That is Alex Plus I worked into the crack Friday. Forgot about that. Worked it in with a plastic putty knife, ran a bead of it forcing it all the way into the bottom, pushing the swell of it as I went, then followed that like striking off drywall mud, and got it fairly smooth, then walked away from it to dry over the weekend. It had pulled in just a little but not bad for as thick a bead as it was to start with. It did not pull away from the foam, but it did dry a little concave on the surface. Maybe another bead of it before I skin the outside.

Anyway, that's where I left it today, with Baby Girl to guard the thing and keep the phantoms from making off with it


Ferocious looking, huh? Lookit that tail wag!