The Dutch Oven Build

[Gruney416]

Hello All,
I (Sarah) definitely did this out of order, but here it is... Our Teardrop, meet the Dutch Oven. (*insert childlike snickering*) I wanted to post our adventure building it last summer because I used so many of your build journals and advice to source the perfect products and materials to create our home on the road and hope that someone else will find some inspiration to do this themselves!

She is built out of a recycled 5x8 boat trailer that my Father-in-Law acquired and shortened the tongue for us, Plywood, and Fiberglass panels that we've UV treated with Marine Paint. I'll go through the step by step via the pictures we had, but thought I should introduce her first.

We started the build Memorial Day weekend 2018 with a trip to raid my FIL's garage and get the trailer, got her campable (barely) by June 21st, 2018 and finished completely by September 23, 2018 with most of July spent keeping cool and not in our garage. We're so proud of how she turned out she made our annual Christmas card!

Thank you for all the Inspiration & guidance as we worked through this journey!
-Sarah & Sean

[Gruney416]

So we began the build with a standard boat trailer that my FIL found for us. He was able to remove most of the structure for winching and supporting a boat. Plus he shortened the toungue quite a bit to make a pretty standard 5'x8' trailer. It had lived a good life thus far and was covered in rust, stickers, and peeling paint.


My husband took a grinder to the trailer once we got it home and in the garage to remove the extra brackets, paint, and rust to get a clean trailer that just needed a coat of paint. We also removed all the old wiring as most of the wire insulation was cracked and wires were corroding.


We chose a gloss black rust-stop (likely good ole' Rustoleum) to coat the entire trailer to protect it.


As for the structure of the Teardrop body itself, I had spent a great deal of time reading build journals, watching builds on YouTube, and using Pinterest to find ideas. I came across the plans from teardropbuilder.com and downloaded a copy of the Wyoming Woody plans. We used them as a guideline for the structure, and deviated fairly significantly. It is definitely not the same measurements or assembly as his plans, but we used his build journal as a guide as we assembled.

We did build a base similarly to his and many of yours. There are 4- 2x4's running the length of the trailer pretty close to 24" on center to help support the 4'x8' sheets (1.5 sheets per side) of 1/2" plywood which skins each side. We used leftover Fiberglass insulation from a home remodel to insulate between the sheets of plywood. Coating the entire box- top, sides, and bottom with rubber bed liner coating and silicone to weatherize & waterproof.


The entire box is bolted directly from the bottom to the trailer frame. It is going nowhere.

[KCStudly]

... and???? <eating popcorn emoji>

[dhbret]

You had me a "Hello All"

[Gruney416]

Nothing like a global pandemic to get me to continue my build journal! Sorry for the long wait! It's been over a year. So last I posted we had prepared the boat trailer and floor. We coated the entire underside of the floor panel with rubberized bed liner. We also had sprayed down the trailer with gloss black rust-stop paint.

We're using the plans for the Wyoming Woody from Teardropbuilder.com at least loosely. We took our 4x8 sheet of plywood and traced out a teardrop shape that we thought would be perfect. Started cutting and.... remember that adage measure twice, cut once. Whoops! An 8 foot sheet of plywood won't make a trailer we could have a galley in like planned! Thankfully we stopped cutting in time! We were able to source one extra sheet cut down to 4x4 & cut a rabbit joint to make a 4x12 foot sheet! Then we course corrected the shape of the trailer and got to work! I wish I had pictures of this. The only one you get is us realizing that its going to be too short.



Now that we had a shape we wanted we added in a sheet of paneling from the hardware store for the inside walls. Making a giant sandwich. There is no insulation in the walls. This was my significant other's decision as we use the camper in the Later-Spring, Summer, & Early-Fall. I had personally wanted to do a 1x2 framing with rigid foam insulation and then skin the inside & out, but he felt that was unnecessary. As we have now camped a whole year in our camper including during some below freezing temperatures, we can say that it maintains temperature well & condensation isn't a problem.

Once the wall sandwiches were ready we mounted them on the sides of the floor panel. We used 1x2's to create our spars across the entire top including the galley area.


I promise the next post won't be over a year away! Thanks for staying with me.