Hi Everyone,
I have just joined and am looking at starting a build soon. Wondering if there are any other Aussie members scattered in here?
At this stage I am leaning towards a foamie for the low weight characteristics, however I really like the wood grain vintage look of the more traditional tear drops (some of the time it will be towed behind my 1948 Wolseley sedan, so "vintage" would be the right look but being that it is a 1948 vintage car the light weight like a foamie is important too). Just wondering if anyone has an opinion on if doing a 3 ply outer layer over the foamie would work or not without affecting the structural safety of the canvas over foam or would this just be a total failure. I have spent many an hour reading through various builds and really like the design style of the Alto Winter Warrior by mikeschn (I have noted that the thread was last added to in 2014 any chance that there is more recent info on it here that I have yet to find?). With having flexibility issues with an artificial knee the extra height inside when set up seems like a solution but when in tow mode it could still be the teardrop look that I want.
Another major hiccup I have hit is sourcing the foam here in Australia, the only suppliers I can find here have it in about 40 inch x 18 inch x 2 inch sheets to be used as underfloor insulation. That would mean a heck of a lot of joins even if I stayed at average teardrop wall and roof sizes. So I am maybe going to have to go all timber but try and cut down on weight in the walls and roof. And to be honest I am not even sure if this is the same type of material that has been used to build foamies with. None of the suppliers can give me any info on what a sheet of this weighs so that isn't really helping me with final design answers either. So many idea's and so wanting to start on the tools straight away.
Well like all newbies here I guess I have a little bit of information overload from reading through so many different builds. Any extra advice or info to help clarify my confusion on if my thoughts on the ply on the outside makes sense or any suggestions on how to make from timber only but the best way to cut weight down on the walls and roof would be very much appreciated. Any experienced builder's that have tried timber frame with ply skin and can compare with the thick ply with cut outs and then ply skin. My thoughts are that timber frame (thinking 2x1 timber) would be the slower and more challenging/difficult to build and looks lighter , but the thicker ply (thinking half inch or maybe 1 inch) with cut outs would be a quicker way but would ultimately be the heavier of the two, like I said earlier it needs to be as light as possible but unfortunately I can only build with what I can source. All suggestions and advice will be gratefully accepted.
I readily acknowledge that these questions have most probably been asked before and I have looked but wow there are a lot of pages to work through, and the info would probably be 3 lines on page 14 of a 60 page build.
thanks everyone
Roley