1/2 Scale Square Drop Trop

[*Inside]

It's been officially over 5 years since I've started down the path to build my own trailer. I've spent most of the dithering on various design choices, but have finally made some progress!

... not on the full scale model of course, but I did build most of a 1/2 scale model. I wanted to make sure that I could actually build something like this before committing possibly thousands of dollars on materials and hundreds of hours of effort.

The goal wasn't for a perfect 1/2 scale model, but to use the same material and techniques that I would use on the full scale trailer.

Goals:



1/2 Scale Model Progress:

Base (1x4s w/ 1/5" underlayment for floors).



Sticking up are loose tenons (standard festool dominos). The base/side walls have mortises cut using a router (I don't actually own a festool domino). I don't think I'm going to use this method of attachment for the full scale version because it was quite finicky to get right. Instead I'll use a combination of a 3/8" lap joint and battens on the inside.

[*Inside]

Clamp up

Got a couple of discrete assemblies here:

• Driver side wall
• Passenger side wall
• Front lower cabinet
• Front upper cabinet
• Rear lower cabinet
• Rear upper cabinet

The assemblies are glued together, but the whole trailer is held together with just 2 clamps. The loose tenons are holding the sidewalls in place and everything is pretty snug.



With back wall, sidewall, and rear cabinet attached. The back wall/side walls are glued & pocket screwed (from the outside). Pocket screwing from the outside makes for stronger joints since the screw is pointed "into" the board instead of pointing at the end grain of the board.

[*Inside]

The roof is something that I am completely going to change. The process that I used was a major pain in the butt and I do not want to repeat it.

Here I bent 1/8" plywood over the top of the sidewalls and epoxied it into place. The little blocks of wood are keeping everything clamped down. The reason why I did this is because I wanted to get another ~1" of height in the cabin.


I wanted a 3/4" thick skeletonized roof so that cables can be run through the roof to power the fan, etc so I needed to bend some wood to follow the contour. This was pretty tight on the 1/2" scale version since the radiuses were quite small. This required making a custom jig and using an expensive tapering bit.


With the 3/4" skeleton on top of the 1/8" ply and the exterior 1/8" ply:


I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the full version yet. I've got 2 options as far as I can tell..

• What I did for the 1/2 scale model
• A lap joint cut into the side walls so that the 1/8" sheet can sit right on top of the plywood, followed by the 3/4" skeleton, followed by 1/8" ply on top?

[/list]

[*Inside]

The exterior is going to be fiberglassed. I put a 1/4" radius on everything since that was the minimum recommended, but I still found that the glass had a hard time adhering around corners. The full scale version will have 1/2" radii.

Lots of holes to fill:


Details of fiberglass on corners.


Then completed and out at the curb. I was initially thinking of painting this trailer, etc, but decided that there was nothing else left to learn.


On to the full scale version..

[Wolfgang92025]

Wow that was a lot of effort.

At this point building full scale should be a breeze and the experience of the 1/2 scale model.

[*Inside]

I sure hope so!

I've noticed that a lot of people fail/give up on their builds because they get themselves into a corner where they screw something up or can't figure something out (getting stuck on hatches seems to be a common pain point). I wanted to go through the whole process to make sure that I had all of the right tools/techniques to do the build. I absolutely did not want to learn how to fiberglass/epoxy on the finished trailer.

Also, the cost for a 1/2 scale isn't 50%, it's less than 1/4th (I only used ~1.5 sheets of 4x8 ply, for example).

[FischAutoTechGarten]

That would make a cool little cat house / dog house for someone.

You have skills. Thank you for sharing the project with us.