Time for the Bop-A-Tear

[Hepcat]

So we noticed a few more problems with the first side wall that needed correctin' before setting it up: the interior cutout for the fender was too small, and the wall wouldn't go over the fender (which will ultimately be covered by the dinette seats), so I had to cut, rout, saw, glue, and lacquer a bit more:

this is the section that needed to go...

Which meant that the driver's side wall was now hopefully ready to be MOUNTED!!


And indeed, this time it worked. Stabilized temporarily by square boards until the interior walls can be finished and connected to the side wall.
And it even looks good from the outside:



The walls are held in place with three clamping screws on each side. They are listed for 1100lb load each, so that should be plenty stable




So, next thing was to start the interior walls... cutting the frame members, screwing together, and covering with a skin (I left the last bit until a bit later)




This is the front cross wall, doubling as the support for the single bed that sits at the very front of the cab


The second cross wall, separating the kitchen from the sleeping area, is currently in the works.

[Hepcat]

The kitchen separation wall was up next (hindered by bad weather, since we had several hurricanes passing through and the trailer has to remain outside the garage while I work on the walls)
Here the frame is already done and prepared for one of the skins. The interior cross members are positioned such that they support things screwed in from the outside. In this pic, that would be dinette seats, kitchen workbench, dinette table. One for the high shelf in the kitchen still missing.

A little improv is required as the frame members weren't all that straight...

The strip in the center is where some cables will run, so left open for the time being

[Hepcat]

So now it's time to mount the interior walls to the single outer wall to give it strength:


admittedly, not such a brilliant picture...but caused by a rearrangement of the workshop. With the walls coming on the trailer, it is getting difficult to move in and out of the garage, so I removed some furniture from the side and put it in the back


Now for the second side wall, passenger side. This one has openings for the door, one window, and the fridge vent. Luckily I had made all my mistakes on the driver's side wall already, so this one did go rather fast.

...except that the openings had to be framed...




butafter painting the interior, finally the outer skin could be glued down:

Some creative clamping solutions had to be employed again!
Then the outer skin got treated with THE MIX for a current total of five layers (one more to come after finishing)

aaaaand...on we go!

Looks good from inside and out...


And I just love it when a plan comes together. I can't even begin to describe the feeling when I saw the overall shape for the first time...we are slowly turning onto final approach here!

[Hepcat]

So...time to get the roof on. I bought hopefully sufficient sheets of 1/8" luan and fabricated some cross spars with cut-outs to thread the screws through that would go into the sidewall from the inside (the screws will later be hidden by the insulation hemp carpet and the outer roof skin). The positioning of the cross spars is vital, since they have to hold the hemp carpet in place, and reinforce the mounting of furniture inside the cab.

This first cross spar sits on the joining position to the neighboring roof sheet, so it only overlaps half to the first sheet. I am still debating whether to fix the sheets to the spar with screws or not. At least on the inside I still may, but I'd like to avoid penetrating the outer skin if at all possible. At the bottom one can see a triangular cutout from the spar where the screws will be mounted.


This is what it looks like with three cross spars already mounted. Positioning was quite tricky, as you can imagine, and definitely needed two persons. The position of the first spar is determined by the height of the front bed, one of the supporting cross members for the bed surface will be screwed into this spar from the inside of the cab.
The top spar might be used to mount some little shelf...this will hopefully become clearer once I have the furniture going in.


This is what the roof will look like from the inside, sure needs some painting, though. The luan bent quite easily, some minor crunch sounds, but no tearing (I made sure that the ply was oriented horizontally). You will notice that the botton cross spar is missing. This is also the main shape-giving cross member of the cab, so I am having it made by a professional carpenter. Long spars and angled saw cuts don't mix well with my puny hand-held tools...

[Hepcat]

Sigh...as the famous general once said: "The best plans don't survive the first enemy contact"...the enemy being my trusted carpenter in this case! He cannot do what I wanted him to do - making the front and back cross spars. Furthermore, he cannot cut curved shapes out of my massive oak boards, so I am at a loss as to what to do about the hatch spars, either.

Guess I'll have to bite the bullet and do everything by myself...with my puny hand-helds, and a lot of brain and elbow grease. So at least I could get the carpenter to cut four spars in different sizes that I was hoping to angle down and assemble somehow. Luckily my handsaw has a lateral angle function, but the problem will be to fix a 1.5" wide spar such that I can run the saw along its 6'5" length and not slip or worse, cut into the flesh. So here's what I came up with:


These are the parts for my front cross spar which will not only stabilize the cab, but also hold the inner and outer roof panels down at the front of the trailer. The left spar will be placed at the bottom (angled down 90 degrees, in this photo only in upright position due to the need of creating a stable lead for the hand saw), the spar to the right needs to be cut at the angle indicated by the pencil line - and a second angle towards the rear. The distance between the two angled surfaces must be precisely 1 inch, as that is the depth of all my other roof spars, so that insulation material can go between the panels.

So I am fixing the spar to be cut at the very edge of my "worktable", and fix a positioning aid next to it. Then I have to make sure that the distance between the cutter spar and the positioning spar is always the same, so more clamps and screws. I am positioning the saw, start to cut, and immediately run off to the side, because something or other IS moving. More and better fixing, then sawing again in multiple instalments, as I have to remove clamps that are in the way of the saw and fix them again behind the saw. The end result looks completely atrocious, but nothing that a grinder couldn't fix. So - I have one angle successfully covered.


Now for the second angle, which will hold the inner roof panel down. I better make sure that the distances are absolutely equal all along the length. Surprisingly, this goes much better than the first, maybe because there is less wood to cut away and the saw doesn't labor as badly.



Well, hot dang, that even looks useable!! Gluing the two together and coating with the MIX is up next.

[Hepcat]

Now I got a real incentive to finish this beast...I booked a place at the rockabilly festival the pentecost weekend, and that's where I will be inaugurating my BUILT.NOT BOUGHT. trailer! I should be getting my a$$ moving instead of posting here..

So we had this bout of really wet weather which essentially prevented me from dragging the trailer out and doing some real work, but at least I got the front spar lacquered and a few other roof spars finished. Doing that didn't take up too much space inside the garage.

The front spar is already in place and joined with the inner roof panel. Gives a nice stability to the whole cab structure. Now I am trying to get the second inner roof panel up there and in place to join with the sides and the first panel/cross spar. That thing is 4 by 6.5" and doesn't like being moved...and I am all by myself, so I had two supports propped up, dragged the panel on top of them, prevented it from sliding down by fixing the block, and then went inside and dragged the panel over the top. Then I still needed someone else to push the panel inside the slot that the uppermost cross spar of the first panel left, so that the cross spar would press down half and half on both panels. Can't be done without having four hands.

But here's the proof: panel in place and tightened down. Next is some of the interior furniture. The front bed is supposed to act as an additional cross-member to stabilize the bottom of the cab, and it will be joined with the small wardrobe next to it.

So first thing to go in was the wardrobe side wall, joined with the bed front.

Since there is storage under the mattress, accessible via a hinged panel on top, I thought it a good idea to put in two cross-suports for the weight of the bed and anyone lying on top of it. These had to be manufactured to allow for the curvature of the front end of the cab. The strut on the front end of the cab is joined with one of the roof spars outside by 6 screws of 2" length. More stability!

This panel stops things in the storage compartment from sliding out...

while this mattress stops my back from hurting too much after a night's sleep.

So this is the current status of the interior at the front end. The white shelving unit doubles as the side of the dinette/double bed.
On another level, the first window got put in:

And seen from the inside:

Note to self: next time take a string that actually manages to pull the seal lip out of the opening. This one was just too thin, I took a screwdriver and pulled that one along the rubber.

[Hepcat]

So after a 3 weeks long business trip I decided to ramp up my effort, as the tear should be, if not ready, at least usable within 4 weeks over the pentecost weekend. I will be going to a music festival and was hoping to have my BUILT. NOT BOUGHT. sticker ready!

So for now every waking minute must be devoted to the build, and this is what's been happening for the last week:

1) major progress on the interior - the dinette is sleep-usable, and I will finish the proper table mounting at a later stage





As you see from the first picture, the interior wall has been covered (prerequisite for mounting the wall supports for the dinette), then I constructed the seating area with internal reinforcements, and the support where the table surface will lie on while in sleeping configuration. Finally both seats were done, and the table could be positioned between them (the gap at the rear of the right seat is meanwhile closed, this is just a section of the seat that won't fold up to access the storage compartment)

2) Electricity is progressing -my son has finished the cables for the kitchen sockets, lamps, and light switches. All remains to do is the lighting and sockets inside the living compartment.



3) The inner roof shell has been finished, including the rear cross member where the hatch hinge will be mounted upon. That was another tricky bit of engineering with the multiple angles to follow the roof line...




Now I need to cut out the opening for the roof vent, then the insulation and outer covering can be mounted, lacquer applied and edge trim fitted. The other two major construction efforts to be finished will be the door, and the hatch. Minor accomplishments have to be squeezed in-between, such as finishing the kitchen surface with metal sheet protection, storage compartments under the kitchen workbench, finalizing the hatches for the storage compartment under neath the frame, getting provisory windows in (I just got notice that the two bulleyes I have ordered will only be delivered 3 weeks after the event!), and getting the inner fenders watertight. Not even speaking about the outer fender mock-ups, or the aluminium trim to cover the seams of the outer luan sheets on the side walls...

[Hepcat]

Meanwhile I have been working on the kitchen:

I had bought a 90cm x 195cm aliuminium slab of 1mm thickness. This was about to be transformed into a countertop and backsplash. At the front ledge, a strip of 1cm was hammered downwards to give a protective edge to the wooden plate stabilizing the aluminium. Then the backsplash was hammered upwards, holes drilled and filed, and the thing could be temporarily be put in place:


For the storage underneath the workbench, I opted for the simplest possible solution - just a rack with normated plastic boxes. I ordered 60x40cm (normated to 1/4 of a Europallet), 40x30cm and 30x20cm, 2 of each. Sadly the largest boxes (for pots and pans proved about 2cm too long to be put in lengthwise, so I had to adapt and construct a rack that would hold them laterally:

and finally filled with the crates

There may be a pull-out drawer for the fridge box at the right in the future, but probably only after our shakedown cruise...weekend...only three weeks to go!

[Hepcat]

First things first. There's only 3 weeks to go, and I'd better get this thing finished. Roof insulation is up next: using the trusted hemp sheets cut to size and squeezed in between the roof spars. Luckily we have a bit of good weather, and I could work outside




The roof vent needed a cut-out, and a sub-frame...


As you'll notice, there is a problem with the part of the roof that slopes inward - the hemp sheets are not stiff enough to not fall off. So I put some glue down and fixed the sheet temporarily, just enough to let the glue set.


Now we're ready to fix the outer shell pieces. There had to be at least three (turns out there is a 3 inch gap at the end towards the hatch, so that needed another separate strip of luan). We' ll start at the front, glue on the spars, and screw down into the side walls. These screws will be covered by aluminium trim that is 1.25 inch wide, with Dekasyl glue-sealant underneath for water rejection
(Junior being highly instrumental here). Why we didn't take two straps? Well, we kinda did, but the circumference of the trailer is bigger than my single 8 yard strap could reach, so we had to combined two into one...
The strange stuff on top is just weight that kept the sheets down
The end is nigh!! I usually let the glue cure over night
The opening for the solar vent in the outer shell
And here we go, starting the coating with THE MIX. I wasn't super happy with the way the sheets contacted, so we'll have to cover the seams with more aluminium strips over Dekasyl sealant, similar as is intended for the seams on the side walls. Let's hope the overall look is good!

[Hepcat]

It occurred to me that it might be a good idea to actually have a door to be able to close the trailer off...so I went and bought one.

Kiddin'!! Where the heck would I get a prefabricated door for THAT shape? Gotta do stuff all by myself.
The problem with the door is that it is 61cm wide and 125cm high...which rules out most of the DIY store wood plates, as the mostly come in 60x120cm. So I need to enlarge something, and add something...like cutting one of these boards down in the middle and separating by 1 cm, then add 5 cm of another board at the bottom.

The separated board can be just about discerned at the bottom of the pic, below the upper (inner) plank, which didn't have to be quite as large

The separation didn't matter, as this will be covered in luan as the rest of the body. Here I am preparing to lay the sheet down. The cutout is for the ventilation grid. I had planned to put a bull's eye window in the door, but my order won't arrive until end June, so skip that for the time being.
After the luan got glued down, the whole thing was treated with THE MIX, and then the problem with the door lock started...there is an outer piece, which is round, and an inner piece, which is square. There was no manual with the kit...the supplier did not answer my service email...gotta try this on my own. I figured that I need to rout a circular opening about 0.4 in deep into the outer shell, and position the square counterplate on the inside with the help of the screw ducts. There was a square opening going through for the latch to be connected to the pushrod coming from the outer piece, that needed some reconfiguring until it all worked out.

Then, finally, the mating of door and body!

[Hepcat]

So, where were we... roof is closed and insulated. Door is in and closing. Beds are in. Wardrobe is in. Kitchen kinda works. What's missing?

Dang, THE HATCH! Better get cracking, it's only a few days left until the maiden trip. I got the profiles very roughly cut back from the local carpenter. Using my slightly less than trusted handsaw, I corrected the profile shape to more closely resemble the sides of the cab.
. Oh, well..let's see how it goes when the cross spars are in.
In the end. I used three profiles (left, center, right) and 5 cross spars.

One can already see how the kitchen will be organised...

Then I had two more profiles left over but decided to just use their lower parts to strengthen the part of the hatch with the smallest bending radius, so that the luan cover would be well supported all over the width


The bottom had to be covered by two smaller strips of luan, as I didn't have any more sheets in the full width. Time's running out, so just cover outside and sides with 5 coats of THE MIX, then slap an aluminium strip over the joint between the luan sheets, fit two regular doos hinges on top and adjust, readjust, re-re-adjust...and do it all over again. The covering with luan already was a nightmare, as the luan had to run over the sides by about 1.5 inches on each side to cover over the side walls, and then getting the distances of left, right, top, bottom just so... not gonna do it again.
Temporary struts:

...and temporary locking mechanisms. The hatch lock is still to be constructed (at least I've bought it already)

So, let's put some utensils and supplies in the kitchen, slap a sleeping bag on the bed, and off to the rockin' fields of the weekender concert marathon!

[Hepcat]

(double post)

[JasenC]

Looking good.

[Hepcat]

My first weekend camping trip is ovah, and by and large everything worked as it should. Since the tear wasn't 100% finished to begin with, here's what I learned:
- my first fear was that I had under-dimensioned the whole strength of the cab and it would just fall apart on the autobahn due to vibrations, wind pressure etc. It didn't!!
- the improvised window made of plexiglass with Dekasyl sealant/glue held watertight even during heavy rains. Meanwhile the real bulls eye window has arrived and will be mounted.
- a few raindrops entered at the upper end of the hatch, when the hatch was open and the water was running "up", and then under the rubber strip that I had mounted to cover the hinge gap. Apparently I need to dekasyl the "bottom" aluminum" strip (when hatch is closed), so that water is repelled there.
- One sheet of luan on the hatch seems to have a production issue, as there was a water bubble appearing in the middle of the hatch somewhere. Need to dry, inject with waterproof glue, press down, re-seal with the mix.
- For some reason, the solar vent in the roof never worked. Replace.
- I put a collapsible pavillion (3x3m) next to the entrance. This was of course not joined with the cab, so there was a few inches gap between the top of the cab and the side of the pavillion, and rain dropped down directly over the door. Either i squeeze the pavillion closer to the cab, or mount a strip of tarp so that rain will be deflected onto the roof of the cab
- 10m of shore power cable are a bit tight. Better get 20m.

Here are a few pix from the campground, where a lot of vintage gear was present...

[JasenC]

Nice first time out.
So how was the camping.