Can You Say Woody?

 

The oak side panels look awesome. I confess I'm relieved to have them installed on the trailer and to see that my plan actually worked out. When I started on these wall panels I had so many questions. Would the seams between the three plywood sheets be too noticeable? Could I get the seams to lay flat? Would the border color look OK? Would my fiberglassing job look acceptable?

One of the ideas that worked out nice was to temporarily screw a one by two to the bottom of the trailer wall to act as a shelf to hold the side panels in place while I fastened them to the trailer. Each wall panel is attached using 4 tubes of Heavy Duty Liquid Nails and about 90 of the fasteners shown above. These fasteners are temporary and will be removed in a week, after the glue has set. Each fastener consists of  a one-inch drywall grabber, a thick steel washer, and a square of waxed paper. I'm pretty sure the washer would need to be removed with a chisel after a week of being held against the partially cured epoxy had I not added the waxed paper. I placed fasteners every six inches around the edge of the panel and the door opening and several more were strategically placed in the interior regions anchored into the wall frame. Next week they will all be removed, the small holes will be filled with the appropriate colored wood filler, then the final coat of epoxy will seal the filled holes.

I just can't get over what a difference these side panels make.

Wood Sides

I finally decided to go with wood sides instead of a fancy paint job. I located some beautiful red oak 1/4 inch plywood at Lowes. The sides of my trailer are six feet tall and 10 feed wide so I needed two and half sheets per side. Then comes the problem of stitching the three parts together for each side. I wanted to make sure that the joints are flush and I was afraid if I just screwed them to the side of the trailer and butted them together the seams might have a little waviness. I decided to stitch them together with fiberglass before I  attach them to the walls. More on that later.

I masked off a three inch border and applied one coat of epoxy resin inside the masked area. The above picture shows the pieces after the epoxy has been applied and the masking tape removed. The grain of the red oak really looks beautiful after the epoxy has been applied. Next I stained the border by freehanding it with a brush just slightly overlapping the stain onto the epoxy. This created a sharp edge to the stain. If the stain had been applied to the wood before the epoxy edge was there I would have gotten bleeding of the stain into the grain of the oak and there is no way I could have made a clean edge. Even masking it off would have bleeding underneath the tape. I used minwax water based stain.

In the above picture you can see both side panels. The one closest to the camera is in the process of being stitched on the backside with two-inch fiberglass tape. The joints are screwed in place to a 1X4 to stabilize them while the backside epoxy is curing. After the epoxy was cured I turned the panel over before removing the screws to keep it secure. I removed the screws from below after the panel was safely flipped and placed in its new position. 

The farthest panel from the camera is further along in the process. The back has already been stitched and now it is sitting front side up and the fiberglass cloth has been wetted out with epoxy. After the epoxy gels the overhanging fiberglass will be trimmed from the edge with a razor and more coats will be added with sanding between coats until a smooth finish is obtained. 

I was dreading the fiberglass process because I'm doing this in the garage and I thought the odor of the epoxy would leak into the house. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this product is completely odorless. I ordered the UV resistant epoxy from Raka. So far I have not seen any blushing and the mixed resin is quite transparent. 

Outer Plywood

 

I attached the plywood today. As you can see there is a two-inch overhang which will be trimmed and sanded flush later. I used 1/4 inch plywood that is intended for exterior applications. It's the same stuff I used for the hatch in the previous post. It is glued with heavy duty liquid nails and then screwed in place with washers The screws and washers. will be removed after the glue has set.

I made two large sheets of plywood just the sizes I needed by gluing two plywood sheets together to form each of the sheets. In the left picture above you can see the two large sheets on my garage floor after I glued them together with a 3 inch wide strip of 1/8 inch masonite. These seams were glued with gorilla glue the same way as the headliner seams that are shown in a previous post. The masonite is glued on the inside so that it doesn't show, but you need to make sure it lands between the spars to you don't get a bump. It make a nice stiff joint so that when the plywood is fastened over the curve of the trailer the joint forms a continuous curve. Note the masonite does not extend to the edge of the plywood because it needs to fit within the walls so that it does not produce a bump when the plywood is attached to the walls. It worked out very nice. After the fiberglass and paint are on I don't think the seam will be visible at all.

In the right picture above it's a little hard to see what's going on. I have fastened one of the sheets to a spar of the trailer at two points and I have braced the sheet up so that I can check the fit before I glue and screw everything in place.

This week I ordered the fiberglassing materials from Raka. After the shipment arrives I will take a week off and get as much of the fiberglassing done as I can. So far I'm on schedule to finish the Woodsman in time to maiden it on memorial day.