Another Teardrop build - DONOR ON EBAY NOW.

[GuyllFyre]

Seems almost a crime to chop up such a lovely and capable caravan, just to build a teardrop.

Looks like a cheap restoration project to fund the teardrop...

[grizz]

Seems almost a crime to chop up such a lovely and capable caravan, just to build a teardrop.

Looks like a cheap restoration project to fund the teardrop...

Ohhh, you are good

Nicola said the same thing once we started to clean it up.

She feels it is a waste to chop it, and ultimately, we need a smaller, lighter trailer as base to build this teardrop for Hannah.

Watch this space.

[grizz]

Mickey came home with about 12 sheets of 2x8 foot sound deadening insulation material he had scrounged for nothing today.... to help me insulate the shed.

No idea what they are worth in the open market, but is still means FREE and a saving. May even skip on adding hardboard cladding to them once fitted inside the frames.

Builder types..... can one leave this stuff (bit like dense foam) open and exposed as insulation, or should I cover it over a bit?



Great to have a neighbour with the same set of values as you.

[grizz]

Yesterday I worked down in Southampton, and on the way home I went via Hastings, which added about 20 miles to the journey.....

The previous night someone had listed a belt/disc sander with a Buy It Now price of £60.00
I very quickly Googled the model and reviews .....

The machine was now selling for £400, and the motor has gone from a 3/4hp to 1/2hp, the one I bought is 3/4hp.

When I got there the seller was an artist who bought the machine 8 years ago and never used it. Seems there were quite a few other people who wanted the machine, some from as far as Manchester.

Loaded the machine and drove home.... chuffed.

It is the last large machine I plan on buying for this Arty woodwork lark.
Nicola and I still have to go to Dover tomorrow to collect an older Pillar Drill I snagged for £63 last weekend, again, right price in my view.

These tools will all come into play with the teardrop build and making custome bits fo rit.




Today I spent most of the day with Nicola as she has the week off, and I signed a day leave.

By 4.30pm she cut me loose to go play in the garage or shed.

I got going with the insulation of the shed, cutting bits to fit tightly between the timbers, thus allowing me to screw stuff in there later.

I think I am going to give the cream coloured stuff a coat of white emulsion paint. The silver in front of the workbench will stay like that.



I also framed the doors and filled the gaps with this stuff. Another thing was to remove the steel shelf from where I had screwed it into the timbers and insulate behind it.



Spoke to Nick the caravan donor earlier about feeling bad about stripping the caravan, but after a healthy discussion he convinced me it was the right donor.
The front right has had a knock in the past, had damp and as a whole the caravans exterior has passed its Best By date.

I will start removing bits and storing them in the Transit inside the garage, so that everything stays dry at least till they are needed in the build.

[crumbruiser]

Hey Buddy,
The sheds looking good and thats a great buy on your tools. I think the insulation is OK being left as it is but I would probably paint or panel it just to be sure. [my luck it would crumble to pieces ]
Frank

[grizz]

Hey Buddy,
The sheds looking good and thats a great buy on your tools. I think the insulation is OK being left as it is but I would probably paint or panel it just to be sure. [my luck it would crumble to pieces ]
Frank

Hi Frank, thanks for the comments. I suspect I will be adding a coat of white paint to help reflect the light in there.



This should be the last tool I buy for the shed and toward this build

Today we went down to Dover to collect this pillar drill I won last week in the last few seconds on Ebay.

Got there by 10.15am and ended up leaving at about 11.30am.

Seller was selling on behalf of a gentleman who according to the Ebay ad "cannot use my tools anymore due to ill health"

When we got there, Louise who was the seller on behalf of the owner met me and took my inside the house to introduce me to the owner......
He had COPD, which in itself is a killer, but on top of that he had been told this week Thursday that he has terminal bowel cancer, aged 72.
I was amazed at finding him and his wife completely at peace with the fact that he was going to die sooner than later.
What amazing people.
He had been offered a few hundred pounds by some dealer type a few weeks ago to clear the double garage/workshop, then Louise picked up the batton and started putting his tools including the drill I bought, a Myford lathe and loads of other very good oldskool tools and some modern stuff on Ebay. One of the older tools made £1300, and others made £900, £600 and various surprise prices..... thank goodness for people like Louise taking the time to help these people sort out what would have been a mess for his wife when he dies.

One of the things the old guy wanted was to sell his tools to people who could and would use them, the price was less important to him than the tools living on.

While we were there he also offered me a massive unfinished dolls house, complete with all the parts to complete it, right up to the wallpaper, roof thatch and stairs etc for nothing.
I had no interest in it and told him, but Nicola's dad had built a few over the years, and when I told her, she called dad and he instantly vollunteered and said he would have it and complete it over winter. So the Dolls House and 2 boxes of extras was loaded into the car, to be delivered when we got home.
Nicola's dad was saying that a dolls house with all the bits, plans etc, like this would cost in excess of £300 today.

The drill took 3 of us to get it into the car, and at home Nicola and I managed to get it out the car and onto a skate board, then I drove/pushed it down the drive to the shed.
I called Tom to come help us get it into the shed and onto the table...... he came and after hardly touching it, stepped away and said "I can't do it" , so I moved it into the shed and later Mickey and I got it up onto the table.

Large claw hammer in position for perspective.
This pillar drill was way bigger than I thought when I bid on it on Ebay, so for what it is, I think it was a bargain at £63.00






The plate shows 3 phase, but the motor was replaced at some point with a 1/2hp single phase motor.

My plan is to strip all the old Hammerite paint off it, and to paint it the same colour as the lathe, after oiling and lubricating it and fine sanding all the open metal.

I think I have now run out of space in the shed.
Mickey suggested I dig out the garden and add another shed for tools and storage.

[mezmo]

Hi Rian/Grizz,

Great going on the shed and tool collecting!

I "vote" to have you spare the caravan and do a minor restore and sell it
to fund the TD build. It's rare to find an old one in such good shape. It
should sell fine on one of the old caravan enthusiast web sites.

Cheers,
Norm/mezmo

[RIVERMOUTH]

I had fun reading this! that old trailer would be a great retore project. what kind of trailer are you going to look for? for the teardrop trailer now? new or used?
cheers.

[grizz]

Hi Rian/Grizz,

Great going on the shed and tool collecting!

I "vote" to have you spare the caravan and do a minor restore and sell it
to fund the TD build. It's rare to find an old one in such good shape. It
should sell fine on one of the old caravan enthusiast web sites.

Cheers,
Norm/mezmo

Hi Norm,

It seems after all the initial effort, and after a thorough inspection etc, the caravan will be donating part of its inners to my teardrop (the Zig/electrical conversion unit) and fridge. The new trailer will get whatever I can use from the caravan, and th original owner wants the chassis which is too big for me, back to use to build a trailer for his Side car outfit.

So the new trailer is pretty much going to have to get a new chassis, and whatever else is needed.

[grizz]

I had fun reading this! that old trailer would be a great retore project. what kind of trailer are you going to look for? for the teardrop trailer now? new or used?
cheers.

Hi Rivermouth.

I will look for something lightweight.

Price is the driver, so second hand will be fine.

If you look at the original "Grizz-Pod" thread on here, or through this link, you will see I enjoy making old stuff work again.

http://www.retrorides.proboards.com/ind ... read=67389

The important this here will be availability and weight.

I have a few other things on the go at the moment as well.

So this build should be slower than most of my projects.

[grizz]

I have previously mentioned publicaly that I Love my wife. (Yep, I am forunate)

Yesterday I was busy doing some more finishing on the shed, painting the ceiling hardboard a couple of coats of paint, putting up some shelves etc.
At one point I went up to the house to make a cuppa tea as Nicola had gone to the shops and to see her parents, so naturally I drifted upstairs to the internet with my mug of tea and some vanilla cream biscuits......

Just as I settled, she came home and found me upstairs......

She asked me how much I loved her..... to which the answer was pretty predictable, she then went downstairs, disappeared out the front door and then came back upstairs and said she was sorry, but she had become an "Honorary Womble" and produced a whole jockey wheel assembly from behind her back.

Seems that when she came out of the road where her mum lives she saw it lying in the road, she turned around and went to fetch it for me......

Now this is an item that would cost anything up to £35 incl postage on Ebay and elsewhere......

What a girl !!!

One less item to purchase for the build.




In other news, the second time Mickey came around today, he again gave the shed a look while I was fitting some random shelves (You never have enough shelves, do you ? ) and asked me why I did not move the white steel shelves over to the right, next to the lathe.... that would be the third time it has been shifted since I got the shed up. However, it did free up some space to get the belt/disc sander closer to the rear wall, and also made more space available in front of the small workbench which I had finished earlier with a 26inch or 660mm wide sheet of plywood.

I have an electrician coming this week to fit the mains power to the shed (As Nicola said I was not allowed to do it, due to insurance etc) which means no more extension cords.



Started to prep a bit of kitchen worktop offcut, which gave me a 200mm diameter blank, this will be a test piece to see if I can survive the lathe, or if it can survive me.....



It is now 03.20 and I guess I should get back to bed.

Even the cats are waking up.

[grizz]

I will post this over int he general forum as a seperate thread, but thought I would add it to the build thread as the machines will be working on the Surf-Pod as well.

I am not sure if anyone is interested in this sort of thing.

If not, I will either delete the thread or just not add to it in future.

Having been made redundant in January after 14 years with the same company, I have realised that it could happen again.

So I had been thinking of stuff or jobs I could do that are fairly self sufficient and would pay the mortgage while I actually enjoyed what I was doing.

I love to work with my hands, enjoy woodwork and with the next teardrop build taking shape I thought it would be an option to start doing "Artistic Woodturning" as I have some tools and am happy to learn or make it up as I go along.

The type of work that people who know what they are doing in wood turning are turning out blows my mind, I also know that there are people who will pay for the time it takes to make stuff.

To this end I started my first little plate today.
Keep in mind I have not touched a lathe in around 20 years, so it was purely a test piece.
The pleasure was instantly back as I remember it was when we built the Grizz-Pod..... wood dust and the smell of oak being worked takes over the senses and made me grin madly inside my dust mask.

The bit of laminated oak offcut from a kitchen worktop was cut to shape and then screwed to the backing plate, after which I started to work the base, followed by the top and bowl.

When I was done I showed Nicola who promptly took it from me and plonked it in the lounge with a candle in it..... probably the most expensive candle holder we will ever have if you add the cost of the tools and shed together.

Clean workspace..... the last time you will see it like that.




Offcut piece of oak kitchen top from Mickeys fire wood pile, not the best piece of wood to start with, but the challenge of oposing grains and a hard wood made for a perfect test piece.



Cutting to shape, this bandsaw rocks !!



For once in my life you will see me adhering to Health & Safety for my own comfort... the dust and flying chips are a bugger.



Getting there means getting dirty.



Up close....



Not having bees wax at hand, I came to the house and asked Nicola to sacrifice one of her zillions of candles..... the wax is not easy to work with as it has hardeners etc in, but still brings the life out in the wood more than if I left it just natural.



And of course in use once she had claimed it for herself.

Hopefully the future will see nicer and more refined pieces come from the shed, and more importantly, pieces I can sell to suplement my mortgage payments.




Comments welcome and advice accepted.

Also any tree surgeons in the Kent area, I will be looking for wood and intersting bits of trees. So please PM or post up if you have interesting stumps etc about.

[grizz]

For this who do not go on the general board.....

I popped into a sawmill on the way home today to see what they charge for "wood turning blanks"
I also knew there was a woodpile of offcuts so asked about that as well.

Now I have been on Ebay and a few other places and if you take a look, you will note it is not that cheap.

Anyway, I ended up at the offcut pile with my Ford Mondeo, back end opened up and filled it with various sizes of wood.

The wood ranges from Douglas Fir (a bit like Oregon Pine) to Sapelle Mahogany, Oak, and American Tulip wood, there may be other types in there but I do not know my woods very well at the moment..... another thing to develop and learn.

This is a small part of the woodpile, it stretches both ways bys some distance.



Loaded up and at £20.00 including tax it has to be worth it to me, even as fire wood.



I spoke to the security when he checked my inventory against the receipt and he told me one of the guys who works there knows the wood types inside out and also puts all the best offcuts aside, so next time I may well buy from him, hopefully getting even better wood than to day, which I am increidibly pleased about anyway.

I will continue to look for any other exotic wood and trees being cut down.

[grizz]

PS: Got a few small pieces of wood from the car to get a pic.

The shed is being wired up to mains tomorrow morning, so I will unpack the wood after the sparky has gone.

In the mean time.

Sapele Mahogany, Dougles Fir, Oak, American Tulip wood offcuts.




Can't wait to produce something interesting.

Mum in law has already expressed envy of Nicola's "Candle stand" so I guess I will be trading the next piece for a nice cuppa tea and some biccies.

[crumbruiser]

I really like the thrifltyness of your ways. Having a lathe would be great and finding all of that wood is fantastic! Have fun turning it and making all of that mulch.
Frank