One month of building

It's been a month since the start of this crazy idea, and how could you guess that the temperature's been exceeding 70 degrees in recent days, despite it being halfway through October. Last weekend, there were more trips to Home Depot, as usual, and some more work on the walls and the floor.

Above, I'm marking the walls with the locations of the horizontal spars that will make the skeleton of the roof. I used a bit of 1"x2" to draw the lines. A sheet from the "plan binder" and a cup of coffee are necessary build materials.

Drawing the lines. Here, I'm marking both interior sides with the layout for the shelves, bulkhead and cabinets. This was mostly tedious, with a lot of measuring and square work.

Floor alignment and bolt-down. Finally, I broke my mental block on bolting the floor to the frame. I'm using four bolts on each side, and three on the front and rear rails. For each of the corners, the there's a depression sunk for each bolt head on the trailer frame. I'm using two unoccupied holes on the top of the frame near the front and rear on the side rails. For the other two side-rail bolts, I'm using the holes just forward and aft the axle on each rail. These were occupied by bolts that were part of the trailer build that were connecting the chunk of crossmember to the side rails in order to make the folding trailer a rigid trailer.

There are three unused holes in the crossmembers in the front and rear of the trailer, and those are unquestionably used, as I've mentioned before.

Another bit of work this past week has been wiring the trailer for the taillights and turn signals. The motivation is to register the trailer as a flatbed, which is reportedly an easy process. In Pennsylvania, you can apparently register it this way, and whatever else you do to it doesn't change the status of the registration. That definitely simplifies the situation.

We've been working this build completely outside so far, as you'd do when you don't have a garage. Sure, the weather has been great this far into October, but it's time to move this operation to "the barn" for the winter, while it's still pleasant to do some organization and setup. We'll have to move the trailer to the barn along with some sawhorses and install a few lights above.

I was considering packing this all in for the winter at some point, but use of the barn will allow some continued building under some shelter. It may be cold, but I might fire up a propane heater to cut the edge a bit. I might take off work Wednesday to work on the barn space and watch out for the epoxy sealant that UPS is supposed to deliver that day.

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Taking sides, and chopping 'em up

I got the roofing tar applied to the floor and and 3/4" EPS insulation pressed into it during the week last week and began working on the sides of the camper last weekend.

The floor portion ended with 12 screws with fender washers secured each of the four panels. I spent some hard cash on 1 1/4" stainless steel screws and aforementioned fender washers, but the screws were just a bit too long and broke through the floor too often, so I switched to some 1" screws I had on hand. Below are two photos of the insulated and tarred floor.

We didn't get a lot of time this past weekend to work on the project - you can't devote every weekend to the build, after all. There's always drinking that needs to get done, and there were some wedding tasks that needed to be accomplished. However, we did get a trip to Home Depot in on Saturday for two sheets of 4'x8' sheets of 3/4" thick birch plywood and some 1"x2"s that will be used as spars. And whatever-the-hell-else we threw on the cart as we rolled it around the store.

We cut a few corners off the sheets of plywood, and we finally have a definite side profile to behold.

The sides each have a matching door with a window, which we laid out and marked down on the walls Saturday/Sunday. Today, the door of one side was cut out along with its windows. The cut-out from the window is discarded, so I drilled a starting hole for the jigsaw wherever I wished. The door cut-out must be saved, as it's the door, so I placed a starting hole on each corner toward the front of the wall and took the jigsaw from there.

I used the completed wall as a template to trace the door outline for the other wall, as well as the door with window cut-out to trace the window for the second wall. A few related photos follow, note that the window is easier to cut once the door is separated, which I did for the second window.

We see the freshly-cut door slid to the side above, and below, my fiancee models the raw product. I still need to take a belt sander to it.

I need to apply the belt sander to a number of things. One thing is the outline of the walls. I'll sandwich them together and hit the top, sides and curved junctions so that we'll at least end up with uniform walls. I'll straighten up the cut-out for the doors a bit with some sanding, as well as a little bit of the window cut-outs. Those aren't critical though, since some form of pre-fabricated window with molding will be installed in the spaces.

I'll finish this update with a photo of the left-side wall, with the dress side facing us. The inside is intended to be the "nice" side of the plywood, since the outside will be covered and the interior space will be stained and treated with polyurethane.

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Moving at the speed of... turtle

This past weekend was mostly washed out. This is part of the problem of building this thing without a garage. It's like guerrilla warfare: build and run, duck and hammer. There was threatening rain both Saturday and Sunday, but the rain held off all day Saturday. Sunday made up for that.

As I'd mentioned last Thursday, the wheels are on, which means the thing is now sitting upright. Note the photo below, describing where I had to relocated holes for the springs to rest on.

Here, the trailer sits in its final configuration on Thursday evening. The next step for the weekend was to build the floor and get that mounted to the frame.

Saturday meant yet another trip to Home Depot for 1/2" plywood and a cache of 1"x2" beams. I've been spending a lot of time at the 'Depot these days. So much so that they gave me a comp card and I get complimentary cocktails while I'm there.

No, it's true. Just tonight I was there after getting back from NJ on business, looking for stainless steel hardware for the bottom of the floor. The large things, like 4'x8' sheets of plywood are the big, obvious trips, but there are sundry items that could fit in your (cargo pants) pockets that require so many of these quick "in-and-out" trips that they collectively consume more time than the big trips.

After all these trips that lead up to, and including, Saturday, we have the floor assembly coming together.

More progress was made Monday, but was limited to finishing the gluing and screwing of the remainder of the 1"x2" strips to the floor and cutting more of the 3/4" insulation that you see above to fit in the recesses between the 1"x2" framing. Tomorrow night looks like favorable enough weather to lay a coat of roofing tar on the bottom of the floor and press the sheets of insulation into it, adding a few screws for insurance.

Of course, I need to make another trip to the hardware store.

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