Teardrop Outer Skin and Insulation

I took a trip to Home Depot after work last week to pick up a 5' x 8' sheet of 1/4" plywood. I ended up with more birch, for its quality, but that's a bit of a misnomer. The top several sheet had defects... mostly de-lamination and faults in the outer veneer. I found a sheet that was solid, but had one end with poor coloration. I quickly measured with a tape measure on the rack nearby and realized I would be lopping that section off anyway.

Prior to that, however, I finished the insulation above the galley section of the headliner. I had spare chunks hanging around, so I pieced them together to fill out that section. Below are a few photos of that progress.

I placed a brace across the center and jammed it against the garage ceiling to keep the insulation down, as it's on a curve and there's a seam across the center span.

The next task was to cut the section of plywood to fit the front curve of the outside of the teardrop to stretch from the previously installed skin to the center of the back of the "fan mount" double spar on the top. I'll get to that later. Here are a few photos of the section that has had Rot Doctor EPS applied on the underside and the initial fitment to the front of the teardrop.

I'm going to let that front seam set overnight, or at least until I get back to work, so the glue can dry nicely. However, I've already started training the curve of the wood with a cargo strap, seen below. It's just enough to start to pull the curve back.

That seam on the front is problematic, it will want to pop outwards due to the torque applied by the entire bend. Let's let it rest for a bit. Now, for the measurement to the length, front to back, of the section, see the photo below. I want it to rest directly at the seam between the two glued-together spars that sit at the rear of the fan cutout. That's at about the center of the photo.

You then have something for the outer skin to bite on for both this section of headliner (to the left of the photo) and the section that will follow to the right.

That's it for the past week. I determined that my deep cycle battery is dead, so I have to snag something to test the front cabin lighting before sealing it up with the outer skin section, and then I can glue and screw this thing down.

Here's to more work days in the garage with decent temps,

cheers!

[g]

Teardrop Blog Milestone

According to the stats, the Teardrop blog has just surpassed 6,000 views. That's really pretty small, relative to actual popular sites on the Internet, but it's something. Something to toast to, and I'll take anything to have an excuse for a drink!

I checked my auto photo backup, and have just one meager step to update on. I drilled the hole for the conduit in the headliner above the cabinet area in the galley. Below, you can see the top-down view and then from the side.

I think I've drilled it 1 1/4" in diameter, and I'll grab some conduit to pop in there on my next Home Depot trip. That's an easy task. I need to pick up some 1/4" plywood for the outside skin at the front of the teardrop, now that I've extended the wiring for the front lights backwards.

Under the miscellaneous category, I've fueled up the kerosene heater for the garage and slapped the new battery tender on the deep cycle battery. Now we just wait for some free time to get more work done... a tough order during the holidays, which have already effectively begun in my life.

cheers!
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October Teardrop Progress

Ah, the crisp October air is rolling into the Northeast US and a busy two months of work and social stuff has calmed a bit. My last post was based on the galley drawers installation. Here, I have a batch of several activities recently.

I've completed a full three coats of satin polyurethane on the inside headliner. That was a prerequisite for the installation of the interior lights. Below I have a few shots of the headliner with the lights installed. These are adjustable angle lights with incandescent bulbs. There are replacement LED bulbs that will fit this application, however.

The satin polyurethane will cut down on some of the reflective quality in the cabin. In a small enclosure, too much reflection can be a little much. I've also removed the square section of the headliner that will accommodate the fan/vent. Here is a photo of that below.

The next chunk of activity centered around wiring the front interior lights. These are foremost, as I can then install the outside portion of the skin that stretches from the front of the teardrop to the rear of the fan opening after the wiring has been extended more towards the rear of the teardrop. Below, you can see the wiring as I'm running it towards the rear, traveling through the spars.

To continue the grab-bag of work, I've also cut the 2x2" spar that lives at the back of the headliner at the top of the galley. Note the photo below, and I'll describe some considerations with this.

The 2x2" spar fits flush with the top of the wall outline at the corner of the cutout for the eventual hatch door. On either side I had to remove some material so it would rest on top of the cabinet face and flush with the outline. I just used some jigsaw work to do this. Also note that I'd placed a brace between the top of the spar and the garage ceiling, as the headliner has enough torque to bow the spar upwards until it's been conditioned a bit.

Finally, I've drilled the hole for the wiring conduit through the bottom of the shelf area of the galley. I'l run a piece of conduit down from the headliner through this opening, which leads to the wiring raceway inside the cabin. This will carry the wiring from the interior lights and fan to the raceway, which is the electrical motherbrain of the teardrop. Below you'll see the hole that is nearly a few inches thick due to traveling through two hunks of 3/4" plywood.

I'm pretty much ready to grab that next piece of plywood for the outside skin. I need to test the front interior lights first before I seal that portion in, of course. As always, there is much more to do. As winter approaches, sunlight dwindles and the garage kerosene heater warms up, however, there will be more time to work.

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Friday Night is Teardrop Night

There are quite a few ways to blow off steam after another long week, and one of them is having a few beers and building more Teardrop II! While I used to spend Fridays in a bar drinking the draft deal, I'm now more often in the garage building stuff. So I'll kick off my shoes, prop up my feet on the galley and update the FNtTD blog.

The update tonight involves finishing the galley drawers. At least functionally. I still have to build the drawer faces with some birch for aesthetics. Below is the lowest, and biggest drawer completed.

I calculated that there was a 1/4 inch between the drawers and the top and bottom. I used a scrap piece of plywood to space the drawers and mount the hardware, seen below.

Due to the marvels of modern technology, we fast-forward to the completed drawer installation. It all lines up wonderfully, but that's not for a lack of careful measurement. Below is the showcase, sans the drawer faces, of course.

I'll let the drawers sit for now. I'm thinking one more coat of polyurethane in the cabin, and then move to install the fore cabin lights, wiring and drill the holes through the spars for the harness back towards the rear. That would set me up for the next outer skin section, along the most precipitous bend of the teardrop.

Before that I'll have to cut the fan opening in the interior skin. That's some crude jigsaw work. This is it for now, it may be until next work week before I get around to building more.

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Teardrop Insulation, Drawers and Reinforcement

The clock has struck September, and I feel like I want to get things moving faster. The drawer slides came in from Amazon and I had some building to do there as well as more insulation and interior polyurethane. I was also able to start working on the galley drawers with the new slides in hand.

The reinforcement idea refers to the middle floor reinforcement stud, constructed from a 2x4 coated in roofing tar. It has cutouts top and bottom to align with the bottom of the floor and and clearance for the metal trailer frame as well as cutouts for the bottom lip of the frame. It essentially jams into the sideways U profile of the frame. Here's a photo below.

It's hard to see, but it's the black bar that's closest to the camera. Other portions of the floor are supported by the remaining metal rails, but the middle section has a fairly large gap that needs this reinforcement.

Other recent activity was completing the insulation around the aft interior light mounts. Below, there is a photo of the pieced-together insulation section.

The drawer slides arrived quickly this time from Amazon. They are decidedly Chinese in origin:

I've also laid down two coats of satin polyurethane on the interior headliner. I chose satin for the fact that it's less reflective than semi or full gloss polyurethane. Here are two photos below of the results.

The drawer slides are easily attached, while considering the alignment in the tiny space allocated in the Benroy. These are 9 inch slides, seen below on the largest of the drawers.

The mounting width is 13 1/2 inches in the design, so you have to build a spacer on the left and right side. Fortunately, my build evolved such that I could use a 1x2 inch stud on the left side. The right side required several inches of spacer, so I went with installing a 3/4 inch section of plywood to fill out the width. Photos of this build are below.

The plywood section on the right above is glued and screwed into the galley cabinet face and from the bulkhead from the cabin.

Teardrop work only comes in short bursts. A few hours at uneven intervals, so I have to move from subproject to subproject while poly is drying, for instance. I'm almost done mounting the slides to the drawers, and then I'll install them within the drawer area. I want to cut the ceiling fan opening soon, but I will verify that I'm using the same fan assembly first. The sizing is fairly standard, in any case.

The interior lights will get wired soon too. At least the front set, as I can then lay the next section of the outside skin, that would otherwise obscure the mount locations for the front lights.

I'd love to take a trip in late October with this camper, but I don't know if I'll make the build in that time. I'm going to shoot for that date anyway, because deadlines really do make you move.

Until next time, cheers. I'm going to finish my beer and call it a night.

[g]

Light Mounts and Miscellany

The teardrop build continues, and in short fashion since that last update. Maybe it's the summertime blues or the oppressive heat and humidity that veers me towards working in the cool(er) garage rather than mountain biking. I'm also a bit worn out during August due to work in higher ed. technology and need a side project.

I cut the remainder of the light reinforcements on the jigsaw and mounted the two near the front of the teardrop. Here they are, just glued and clamped down:

The light fixtures will screw upward into these blocks, holding the entire mess together. I opted for more burly screws than the ones packages for this task.

I then added the insulation across the entire section, cutting to fit around the blocks. Here's a closeup and a wide view.

I knew those odd sections of leftover insulation would be useful. I stalled at the light reinforcements due to only having four small clamps (you can never have enough clamps) and moved on to some other miscellaneous work. I added two more coats of polyurethane to the underside of the "rear flap" of the cabin headliner that protrudes into the galley. Below, you see the galley perspective and the flap that will fold over the sliding cabinet area of the galley.

This area will feature two sliding doors, left to right, where food items, rather than screws, will store. For this build, I intend to build a shelf that will split the vertical difference, providing additional room for plenty of supplies.

There are a number of tasks to do next in the near future. Behold, this list:

• Install the rear interior light fixture reinforcements
• Install the insulation on the panel with the rear interior lights
• Finish the interior headliner with sanding and polyurethane
• Cut out the section of the headliner for the roof fan
• Install the galley 2x2 spar that will push the "flap" of the headliner down and thus seal the cabin
• Run wiring out of the front light fixtures and install the outside skin over the front curve and the fan section
• Or any other number of items in some other order

Of course, this is a lot of fun for me, and a great diversion. Until the next update, cheers.

[g]

Lights and Skin

I was on standby for work last weekend, which means I actually had a weekend where I was mostly home. That makes for a good weekend of building stuff! I picked up a 4x8' sheet of 1/4" birch plywood and a few other bits from Home Depot and set my sights on installing a piece of the outer skin and working on the interior lights install.

Outer skin came first. The garage is open for business, and I'm cutting the lower front outer skin. It was a bit wider than spec, so I adapted. This piece is something like 30 inches tall. I'd tell you precisely, but I'd have to rip the front skin off, as I'd written the notes on the inside.

This is the lower front section is its complete form. I've applied a weather proofing agent to both sides. The product is sourced from The Rot Doctor, and online retailer, and is called Clear Penetrating Epoxy Sealer (CPES). It's expensive, but builders swear by it. You can certainly feel the difference, the wood feels harder, which is quite evident if you've applied it over pencil markings and you try to sand them off.

The front of the teardrop will take on a good amount of weathering during travel, so this is key. Part of this is also treating the bottom inside of the panel that rests against the metal trailer frame with roofing tar. This stuff dries very hard and makes a great wood seal. You see this application below.

Here is the panel installed in the below photo. The bendy parts are up to come, as the next section up will be installed after the front cabin lights are in.

Like many things, the cabin lights install is part of a series of prerequisites. I want to at least polyurethane the inside headliner around where the fixtures will sit. Sanding before that. Really, I should just finish the interior headliner with a full sanding and polyurethane treatment. Regardless here is the process for installing these particular lights. Below are my placement measurements: 7" from the sides and splitting the headliner segment at 4.5". This could vary for preference.

Below, I partially disassembled the fixture so I could use it as a template of sorts.

I now cut out a keyhole-like hole in the headliner to accept the orbital portion of the lamp as well as the wiring/switch connector bit.

The next two photos are of a reinforcement for the assembly. The lamp screws into the wood as a surface mount, but 1/4" plywood does not provide much to grab onto. Pivoting the lamps, as they are designed, will eventually loosen up those screws. This block of wood will allow the screws to chew into something more substantial and also provide a boundary to butt the insulation up against. The open side allows for the switch/wiring block and also makes it easy to cut with a jigsaw.

That's it for the weekend. There was some good progress here, and hopefully I can get some more time into this in the coming weeks. Next, I'll cut the remainder of the reinforcement blocks and tack them down with some Gorilla Glue, waiting to screw the light housings into them from underneath. And then there're many directions I could take: sand and polyurethane the headliner, cut out the ceiling fan section, work on the galley... you get the idea.

[g]

Getting Back to the Build

It's been... forever. Summer happens fast, and I've been busier than I ever have. Summer is an amazing time of the year in the Northeast US, as you suddenly find a plethora of outdoor activities to draw yourself into. I've been kayaking once or twice a week, mountain biking other days and otherwise grilling and chilling.

My networking and systems admin job is also busy for the summer, and all of this draws time away from building anything, but I carved some time away tonight. I've had two days of heavy work, and I just had to get away from LCD screens for a while.

I dusted off the tape measure and hand saw and cut insulation for the teardrop. It felt great.

In the first photo, I added the EPS to the angled portion of the headliner. The second photo shows the insulation along the sides of the fan frame and the section aft of that. Note that the left section is still bare to allow for the lighting that I'll install and work the insulation around that. The bare section directly to the right of the the right-most insulated region will host lighting fixtures as well.

The third photo is just a vanity shot in the shop. Kayko, the cat and my shop buddy passed on recently, and there was some level of acceptance by cleaning and organizing the shop a few weeks after. In respect, here's a photo of good 'ol Kayko:

The next step is to order my lighting and build the supports, fill the insulation around that and just build, build and build. But RIP Kayko, I miss her out here.

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Motivation

No, this isn't a photo from last week depicting the finished Teardrop II. It's an old photo, one that has been seen here before. I'm posting it in an effort to stir up some motivation and movement on the current project. This winter has been as cold of a winter as I've ever remembered. The garage is just some dark, smelly cold slab, cluttered with every afterthought of summer. As winter scuds by, you just seem to drop more remnants of of the prior three seasons wherever the hell they fall. Spending time in there to organize, let alone build, is brutal and lonely.

That's winter. I think we're coming out the end of the tunnel, however. It may be time to start organizing the junk or otherwise that's been hastily propped, dropped or jammed into corners and spare footage.

And this photo will help me remember that...

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