Lance and Becky's Sagwagon

[DMcCam]

Hi Becky,

Very nice paint job there, you'll be camping in no time now!!! Isn't it wonderful working on finish stuff? Thank you for keeping us updated on your progress; I too really enjoy your style.

Cheers,

Dave

[Oldragbaggers]

My very basic galley. The upper shelf is just sitting in place for now. I still need to put a couple more of coats of varnish on it before I permanently mount it. I used a Formica type laminate from Home Depot for the counter top. I bought 2 sheets of 2'x4' and pieced it. The seam is barely visible. The trim is 1" aluminum angle.



My Coleman storage rack located behind the sliding cooler drawer.



The rack has bases cut specifically for the 2 lamps and the can of fuel and the fit is fairly snug. (Our 502 Sportster stove also fits perfectly in the compartment for the CL2 lantern), In addition I put a hook on one side of the rack and a small cleat on the other side so that I can run a piece of small line over the ball nuts on the lanterns and secure them down. An option to that might be cushioned hoods that will slide over the lanterns to protect them and the wall from scratches under travel. That will be an easy winter project.

The cabinet will be left as is and we will just stack our stuff inside in plastic storage bins. I will put in a couple of hooks in strategic places so I can secure the bins with bungee cords.



The sliding drawer installation gave me a fit, but it's working well now.





Starting to look like a real galley



I still have to mount lights, hooks, hold down eyes and other small finishing touches, but it isn't going to get any more complicated than this. And then I just need to GET THE LID ON IT!!!

I also got my diamond plate rock guard cut. Started to mount it today but I ran out of day before I got everything done that I wanted to do. (I'm also still working on the hatch but I'll save that for another update.)



That's all for now.

[CliffinGA]

Great job Becky! I like the look and the depth! Mine isn't as deep and we wish it was that deep! Keep it up girl, your getting there!

Cliff

[KCStudly]

WOW! That is looking really really good.



The simplicity is belied by the craftsmanship. It is beautiful.

[Oldragbaggers]

Thanks Cliff and KC. Your compliments are very much appreciated!!

[fcreamer88]

Looks really good!! Might turn to you later for questions on the cooler slide out.

[aggie79]

Wonderful job on the galley, Becky!

The slide for the cooler looks great as does all of your cabinetry. Simply gorgeous...and very useful/practical too.

Take care,
Tom

[Oldragbaggers]

Thank you Tom. I appreciate that very much, especially coming from you. How is your hand doing?

[Verna]

Looks great, Becky!!! You are doing a great job. When's the first camping trip?!!

[Oldragbaggers]

I'm not even going to speculate Verna. I have figured out that everything takes much longer than you think it should, weather is often uncooperative, electricity in my neighborhood is unreliable, and finding parts can eat the better part of a day. If I get it done sometime before the end of this year so that we're ready to go in the spring I will be happy.

[S. Heisley]

It's looking good, Becky! I thought it was going to be woody-colored; but I see you've painted it white.
While wood is very pretty, there's often extra upkeep with it; so, white paint is an excellent choice.
I hope you get to camp in it before the weather turns cold.

[Oldragbaggers]

Sharon, I am not a skilled enough woodworker to leave it woody. I had crude lap joints, overlapping fiberglass tape, screw holes, markings, epoxy smudges and a million other imperfections that paint made to disappear for me, just like magic. The outside is a nice light tan, the inside of the galley and probably the cabin interior are white, but I think that makes a nice backdrop for the pretty maple I am using for the cabinet frames.

I too would love to get in a camping trip this year, but as you well know, all the little finishing details seem to be never ending, don't they?

[bigblockbarry]

Its looking great! It seems like forever when you get to the details but that is what makes or breaks a nice build like yours.Keep plugging away and I'll save you a spot at the campground.

[PSBreen]

It's been a while since I checked your build thread. All I can say is WOW, it looks awesome. You guys are moving right along. I really like the basic galley set up you decided on. We haven't finalized ours yet but that's close what we are looking at doing.

As for not being a good wood worker....I have to disagree. All the work I've seen here looks terrific.

Someone on this forum once said "A teardrop trailer is never truly finished. We are constantly adding details and making improvements." If you have your galley hatch installed and all your wood sealed, I'd say it's time take it on a short local camping trip. If you wait until you think it's finished it might not make it out of the garage.

Happy Trails

[Oldragbaggers]

I was hoping to wait until the hatch was actually finished and installed (which I had thought would have happened by now) before I posted an update, but completion has been pushed out a bit because of the problems I am having with the fit.

The last time I wrote about the hatch I was attempting to correct the tweak in the frame. In order to straighten it out I clamped it into straight position in the teardrop (clamps on left side, and across the bottom) and then screwed a scrap of 1/8” plywood over the center span to hold it in that shape until I could get the interior skin on.



The interior skin went on fairly easily. Piling all that weight into the curve held it down nicely until I could get all the clamps in place. No fasteners were needed for the interior skin at all.



The skin was then routed flush and glassed with 6 oz. cloth. This seemed to work very well and the hatch fit much better at this point.



Insulation was added.



And then the trouble began when I got to the outer skin. Despite all the care and advance planning I did, it was a huge cluster from the very beginning.

See all my clamps and weights all organized and ready(??), so I could move quickly once the glue was on. Because the interior worked so well, I fully expected the exterior to go just as smoothly.




I got it bent into place, glued, weighted down and clamped…..



And then sat down in a chair next to it to enjoy a cold drink and admire my work. And while I was sitting there gazing lovingly at it I saw that there were big gaps between the skin and the frame in the area of the curve. I moved the big C clamps to that area but no amount of clamping was going to close the gap. Fortunately the glue was not fully cured yet so I worked quickly and got the skin back off. All that glue had to be scraped and sanded from the frame and the skin. Ugh. (My thanks to Lance for doing that for me!!)

It turned out to be a mixed blessing though, because once I had the skin off I realized that I had forgotten to add in blocks in the areas where I needed to put the lifting handle and the supports. So I numbered all the insulation pieces and removed them and installed the extra blocking I needed using thickened epoxy as the adhesive.



Insulation put back in and brace myself for another try. This time I decided to put the skin on ½ at a time. So I started at the bottom edge and applied glue only up to the very beginning of the curve. I had marked the location of all the frames on the outside of the skin and since I was dealing with just a flat area it was easy to get fastened it down with my pneumatic stapler. So far, so good. Now the remaining problem is only half as big. Divide and conquer.

I happened to be home alone the day I was working on this, so if I screamed for help there was no one to hear me. Also, thankfully, there was also no one to SEE me. If what followed had been caught on tape it could have easily gotten me a prize from America’s Funniest Home Videos.

It was easy enough to get the glue on the remainder of the frame under the skin, so I just need to bend it around that curve and get it stapled down. I laid a 50# bag of sand and 2 – 35# dumbbells on that curve to help hold it. Still it fights. I clamped the most severe part of the curve with C-Clamps side by side all the way around. Still it fights. And I laid across it while I put staples in (not as easy as it sounds, believe me). And I swear, STILL it fights. That thing fought me with all the power that the forest could bring to bear. And, yes, I had it turned the right way, I’m positive. I was sweating and exhausted by the time I finally got it stapled into place. Why was it so hard? I have no idea. You tell me.


But finally it was done, and for the MOST PART it fit.



I glassed the outside with the same 12 oz. cloth that I used on the roof, but only one layer.



Next problem…(OF COURSE there’s a next problem…..) I cut the notch in my wall way too deep (I swear it didn’t look that wide when I was cutting it, and I measured it for 3/8" so have no idea what happened), but the gap between the wall and the hatch skin was a good ½”. No way could I ever seal that and get it waterproof, neither would the roof edge molding even conceal a gap that large. What to do…what to do…what to do.

I had to sleep on that one. And a lot of possible solutions came to mind, but in the end it came back to my old standby, fiberglass. There’s more than one way to skin a teardrop, and I wasn’t tackling that hatch again, no way in hell. Anyway re-doing the hatch would not address the problem of the too-deep notch. So I decided to use fiberglass tape to build the wall back up to meet the hatch.

I started using 6 oz. cloth, 2” wide, but quickly realized that, because the cloth was so thin, it would take forever to build up any thickness.


Plus 2” tape left a big overhang to cut off. The more layers of cloth, the harder it is to trim it off, and I wanted to lay up a few layers at a time to get it done quicker. So I changed to 1” wide 9 oz tape which required no trimming and was much thicker to boot.



This is with 6 layers of tape along the entire edge.



I have adequate thickness now over most of the area.



It looks like there is no room there at all for the galley wall cap molding or the rubber seal, but I still have to sand it smooth, and I also have to sand the inside edge of the hatch skin because I used a strip of glass tape in there also to reinforce that edge. I will be able to shape them however much I need to get the right amount of gap.

I still have a couple of problem areas though. I apparently cut into the wall more at the top and I will need to build that up just a little bit more. I’m thinking maybe 3 or 4 more layers of cloth, tapering it down to the curve.



At least with this method, between laying up tape, and then sanding it, I can finesse the shape of the wall until I get it where it needs to be to match the shape of the hatch.

The last concern is, God only knows how, but it appears I have a tiny bit of springback at the bottom.



It’s not excessive though, so I am thinking that between building out the wall just a little, and using draw down latches (and maybe a piece of trim across the bottom of the tear below the hatch to bring it out a bit, if necessary) I can make it all fit somehow.

I know it seems like a long, slow, tedious, convoluted way to get the job done. I wish my skills were such that I didn’t make these mistakes in the first place. Or maybe if I had more woodworking experience I would have seen a simpler more effective solution. But with what I know and what I had to work with, I think this is the solution that will get it done for me. One great thing about fiberglass is you can really compensate for a lot of shortcomings in woodworking skill, and hide a lot of mistakes, because with enough fairing and sanding, after it is painted there will be no visible evidence that it ever happened.

The temperature dropped here 30 degrees between Saturday and Sunday. Now I just have to hope that I get a couple of more days warm enough to complete the rest of the fiberglass work and then get it all painted up. Once I get the hatch and the wall modifications primed, I am going to put one more fresh coat of paint on the whole thing with the sprayer. I would love to have that done before I have to button it up for the winter, but who knows.

I can at least get the interior of my cabin done over the winter.