D&D build (Walls up!)

[VanIsledave]

After lots of prep and planning we finally got the walls up on our TD.

We recruited some help as the walls are getting heavy AND we have to lift them over the fender.

So we had kind of a modified barn raising followed by smoked brisket and beer.

It was a good day!











Nice to finally reach this milestone.

[pchast]

Looks good!

[Sparksalot]

Yay! I remember celebrating that milestone too.

[Marcogs]

Very nice especially your aluminum chassis (am i right?!)

[VanIsledave]

Very nice especially your aluminum chassis (am i right?!)

Hi!, Yes, the trailer is aluminum. It was made by a company here on Vancouver Island, Express Custom Trailers.

Dave

[VanIsledave]

We've been at it this week but progress has been slow.

We've poly'd some of the bits that will be covered up in subsequent steps. Yes, it might be overkill but we lived on a boat in a previous life and really like to have things sealed as much as possible.

We've built the shelf in front of the forward bulkead.



And we laminated together a 2 X 2 spar for our galley hinge.


We also have been working on the rear bulkhead. While we do follow Tony's book a couple of steps have been modified along the way. One mod has been to make the rear bulkhead one piece rather than two. An unintended consequence of this is that we have to maneuver a fairly heavy board down a long dado. Not a fun process, but we confirmed that yes, it's too short (I made it flush to the inner wall, not the outer wall). ARGHH!!! So we have to add a couple of inches to the top. RATS!



And yesterday was one of those days where I couldn't seem to get it in gear. After 4 hours, a number of colourful curses, and a lot of sawdust, this is all I have to show for the effort. Not much.



But the suns out this morning and today is gonna be a good day!

Dave

[Capebuild]

Looks great.... and really nice chassis!

I'm looking to make a trip from the east coast to west up to Vancouver and back to the east via the Canadian side (at some point in my life).... Vancouver looks great.

John

[VanIsledave]

Hi John, we've got the same idea but backwards from you We're thinking of heading east across Canada to the Maritimes then south down the east coast to South Carolina to visit my brother, then home to Vancouver Island through the states. We'll have to compare notes and maybe cross paths!

By the way, I really like your posts! You seem to be quite a bit ahead of us but are working through many of the things that we'll be hitting in the not to distant future.

Dave

[orourkmw]

Looking great so far! Can you elaborate on your bulkhead mod from Tony’s design of the pass-through counter? And sorry you experienced the too-short cut. I keep telling myself “any screwup can be fixed….”
Mike

[orourkmw]

I just found that you’ve got a whole blog on yr build! I was wondering how the story started in the middle!

I signed up and will catch up in the next few days. It looks like fun. I definitely agree with yr philosophy of treating the td like a boat and sealing everything against water…it is insidious.

[VanIsledave]

Hi Mike!

I just checked out your build, it's beautiful! Amazing work!

We've decided to go with a "basement" for storage which will raise the mattress by 4.5 inches or so.

In Tony's book the galley countertup extends through the rear bulkhead and forms the lower shelf in the cabin. We (not me but the Smarter One of Us) realized that if we did the same that with the extra height, and the thickness of the mattress, we'd likely not have much room for our feet under the shelf. And since we're going with a 5 foot (not 4 foot) tall cabin we simply moved the shelves up. Once we did that there really wasn't any reason to extend the shelf through or to create an upper and lower wall. It seemed simpler to just make it in once piece.

One thing we did find is that it's challenging to raise a 5X5 panel high enough to drop it into the dado. Not impossible but a bit of a pain.

Hope that "logic" makes sense.

Dave

[VanIsledave]

We're in between major tasks and are waiting for a couple of electrical components to show up. We should see them by Wednesday (we hope!)

Once we have them we should be able to finalize decisions about interior cabinetry, wiring runs and a couple of other details. In the interim we're still making progress.

This week we fixed my blunder on the back wall. We spliced on an additional strip to give us the needed height. Didn't come out too bad.



We dry-fitted the wall, scribed the roof angle and cut it to length.



Then we added some holes along the bottom, ran some adhesive into the dadoes then dropped it into place. Feels really solid.




We've also made some progress in determining the height of our basement and have ripped some long scrap to the correct width.
Looks like a nice day so we may work on the subfloor this afternoon.



Dave

[VanIsledave]

With most of the major electrical pieces now here we're starting to get things rolling. As can happen at times, progress is slower than hoped for but we're still moving ahead.I do find that building a teardrop and building/working on boats have some similarities. I see it in the curves and angles, things just look "eye sweet" to me.





Since we're figuring things out on the fly we're spending A LOT of time figuring out options and thinking through the implications. Lots of mock-ups and trial and error - I think this is the 5th iteration of an electrical panel that will go in the galley

[VanIsledave]

We continue to make steady progress. Of late we've been focussed on getting the electrical bits sorted out. We've got most things in place which will allows us to turn our attention to the roof and the galley furniture.

Putting together the electrical system has been "interesting". There are so many opinions, so much advice, endless posts, videos, options and (unfortunately) there are frequent conflicts and differences of opinion. But...it was the same when we owned a boat and had to rewire. In the end we learnedto do the things that make sense to us, are based on solid practices, and that we can maintain over time. I thought I'd try and describe the logic(?) we used to put things together for our TD Doing so has helped us think things through. Here's the post where we describe it.

https://jamestraylortd.wordpress.com/2022/06/12/life-the-universe-and-our-electrical-system-part-1/

[tony.latham]

Tony