Drawers are finished

 

OK, I have a new found respect for cabinet makers. It took a long time and a lot of patience to make these drawers. In the picture on the top left you see the completed bottom part of the galley with all of the drawer faces on. There are two roll-out shelves in the left portion of the galley. The bottom shelf will hold the cooler and the top shelf will hold the camp stove. Both have heavy duty drawer sliders with ball bearings that are rated for 100 lbs. There are also four drawers and a cubby that fits the water jug. In the top right picture I have all of the drawers extended. This was taken before I put all of the faces on the drawers. To make the drawer faces I used the same sheet of 3/4 inch ply that I used to make the counter top. All around the edges of the ply wood I cut and glued 1/2 inch strips of poplar. They came out very nice and should look great when they are stained and varnished. 

 

In the picture above you can see the backside of the cabinet front that I made from poplar for the drawers. This was all assembled using pocket screws and gorilla glue. You can see some small metal L brackets that I used to fasten the cabinet frame in place. I applied construction glue also as an added measure when I attached it. After the cabinet frame was in place I built the drawer boxes of 1/2 inch ply with 3/8 inch ply on the bottoms of the drawers. The drawer boxes came out super strong. I had to put wooden spacers in place of various thicknesses before installing the drawer hardware so that everything fit perfectly. It took a lot of measuring cutting and glueing to get everything to go together but I think it turned out pretty nice. Now I can start working on the upper part of the galley.

The Roof and Front is Framed

As you can see I finished the framing on the curve that composes the front and roof of the trailer. For this I ripped 2X4s on my table saw to make boards that are 1 1/2" by 1 1/2" then I cut them all to the same length. They are spaced about 16 inches apart. I fastened them in place by applying gorilla glue to the ends and screwing a 3 1/2 inch wood screw from the outside of the trailer into the center of the board. before placing the screw I drilled a pilot hole and countersunk the screw hole so the top of the screw is slightly recessed. This way I can fill the screw head recesses with bondo when I finish the exterior. After these boards were screwed in place I can feel a significant difference in the strength of the whole unit. It now feels really solid when you grab hold and try to shake it.

I also started work on the galley. I will make a slide out tray for the cooler and just above it will be another one for the camp stove.  The compartment on the right side will eventually have three drawers and there will be a fourth drawer in the space above the water container. I have never made drawers before so that will be an adventure. The counter top is made from 3/4 inch plywood. I glued a 1 1/2 by 3/4 inch strip of oak to the front of the counter top to give it better hardness against denting. I will finish the counter top by applying a thick coating of transparent epoxy. This will produce a hard surface to protect the wood against scratches and dents.

I made a change to the shape of the trailer on the fly as I was building. Now I have applied the change to the drawing shown above. I made the trailer somewhat taller than I originally drew it. To maximize the use of my lumber I decided to make the trailer 1 1/2 sheets high (six feet) . I have corrected the drawing so now the photographs of the project look more like the CAD drawings. I'm 6'4" and I want to be able to sit up in the trailer so I figure I can use the extra height.

I should point out also that I spent a couple of hours today sanding the curves of the walls before I did the framing. When cutting curves with a hand jigsaw it is easy to deviate from the line by 1/16" or more. I bought some 60 grit paper for my orbital sander and worked the edges all the way around until I had sanded out all of the non-uniformities and made the curves smooth.

I have pasted below the drawing of the wall frames without the skin so that you can see the framing details for the walls. In this view you can also see the 14 inch square frame in the top for the ventilation fan.

The Walls are On

Happy cinco de Mayo! And I got the walls up on the Woodsman today.

These photos show the walls fastened to the base. Before fastening the walls I test fitted them to the base and made small adjustments. In preparation for placing the walls I finished the interior short wall between the sleeping compartment and the galley. I fastened this in place with gorilla glue and pocket screws. Having this short wall in place allowed me to screw into it from the outside of the walls to hold them vertical. When I made the walls I allowed the outer skin to overlap at the bottom the height of the base, about 7 inches. Just before putting each wall up I laid it flat and applied liquid nails to the inside of the overlap skin and to the top edge of the base where the wall will meet the base. Handling the walls is a two man job so I had to get my neighbor, Paul, to come over and help me place them. We set the first wall in place and I drilled a pilot hole from the outside into the side of the inner half wall. I also placed a few screws through the overlap into the side of the base to keep the wall in place. We repeated this for the second wall then, after Paul went home, I spent the next hour screwing the overlap skin to the base about every six inches. I will remove the screws after the glue has set and patch all of the screw holes. The screws are just holding the part together while the glue dries. 

Now its finally starting to look like a camp trailer! Cheri says it looks like something out of loony tunes. What's that they say, "no finer compliment ..."

Framing and Skinning the Walls

The above layout is for the frame of the walls. Both walls are framed exactly the same. I am using 2 4X8 sheets of 1/8 inch masonite to sandwich the frame on each side. The lower right section of this frame will be skinned with a full sheet. Imagine the top left of the door frame being the top left corner of a 4X8 sheet. The second sheet is split lengthwise into two pieces 2 feet by 8 feet. One of these will be placed in a vertical orientation to cover the very left (front) section of the frame. The other piece will be laid in a horizontal orientation to cover the top right portion of the frame. You kinda have to use your imagination because I did not get a good picture of this. The frame is made of 1X4 pine. Which is actually 3/4 inch by 3.5 inches. Note that the very rear section of the frame which has quite a tight curve was cut from 3/4 inch plywood. I have one sheet which I will be using for the counter top of the galley. I am using part of it for this part of the frame and to frame the galley hatch which you will see later.

Oh, in the previous blog entry I mentioned the set back. I eventually settled on 1/8 inch masonite for the inner and outer skin. I would have preferred to use the luan for the wood grain but the luan plywood I got my hands on was junk as mentioned in the previous blog. The masonite will need to be painted instead of stained and finished but it should have good quality and structural integrity. The exterior is going to be covered with fiberglass and painted anyway so I did not care about the wood grain on the exterior but I will miss it on the interior.

I joined all of the pieces of the frame together with wood glue and pocket screws. I had never used them before. Here is the jig you have to buy to drill the pockets. It comes with a special drill bit, driver bit and pocket screws not shown. It works really slick.

Here is a picture of the frame fastened together and laying on the masonite in my basement. Sorry about the weird orientation of the photo.

And here is a picture of the frame after I have skinned one side and cut the foam insulation for all of the spaces. 

Its laying on top of the trailer. A few things to note here. I placed 2 inch pieces of 1X4 in all of the spaces so that I can have a solid glued link between the sandwich of skins. The frame and these blocks are all glued on both sides with a generous amount of gorilla glue. I like the gorilla glue for this application because is is strong and it foams up to fill in gaps so there is a continuous bond even in places where I don't have the gap completely closed. While the glue is still wet the masonite is tacked in place with #6 screws 5/8 inch long. I placed them about 6 inches apart around all of the edges and along each frame member to hold the sheet down while the glue set. I also placed weights on the entire frame after gluing to try to get a good seal everywhere and keep things from separating. I glued the foam insulation on both sides into the sandwich using liquid nails construction adhesive. The adhesives are costing about the same as the lumber for this project. Note also a set of wires running through a block of wood above the door opening. This will be for the "porchlight" which will be switched from inside the compartment so that you can see outside if you need to go out in the dark. 

Well, I feel pretty good about the progress so far and these frames seem very strong when the sandwich is built up. The are considerably lighter than using 3/4 inch plywood and the insulation should help a good deal in hot or cold conditions. 

In a week or so I hope to have some nice pics of the walls mounted to the trailer. That will be a real milestone because you will have a taste of the 3D shape of the project.

First Set Back

Here is a side view of the plan. I posted this so that you can see the shape of the compartment and the interior cabinets. The center portion of the cabinets will be for a laptop to play videos and possibly a car stereo unit for music. On both sides of that there will be cabinets for storing bedding, clothing or whatever. There will be doors on the cabinets but I have not drawn them in yet.

The first set back was discovered today. I special ordered 16 sheets of 1/8 inch plywood called "luan". I had planned to use it for the interior and exterior skin of the walls and the roof-ceiling. It looked like beautiful stuff. The "A" side is a very nice white verneer of maple or something similar. They don't stock in in either Lowe's or Home Depot so I had Lowe's special order it from a plywood company. Today I used small piece of it and discovered a serious quality issue with this material. Look closely at the second photo above. I noticed a crack in the top layer of the plywood and some blistering so with my fingernail I removed all of that bare area you can see peeled away. I went in and looked at the rest of the sheets and saw more areas of blistering. Now I've got to take all these sheets back and then locate another material that is light, flexible, and durable to take its place. I will let you know what I come up with. The silver lining is that I discovered the quality issue before I built much of it into the project. That would have been much worse.

Making the base

Sorry about the pictures being kinda small. I'm still trying to figure out this blogging business. If you click on the pictures you will see a bigger picture.

There are a few special things about this base that I would like to point out.

1) Where the bed will be located I created a frame on top of the trailer which raises that platform up the height of one 2X4. This is done because the bed extends out over the wheels and the wheels need that much clearance for the travel of the springs.

2) The rear part, where the galley will be built, steps down to rest right on top of the frame. I did this because when you are standing back at the galley you want the counter top to be about normal height so I needed to make this part as low as possible so I could fit the cooler, camp stove, etc... under that counter top and not have the counter too high to comfortbly work on.

3) You can see some black stuff painted on the inside of the wood framework. That is the black jack tar junk that is used on roofs. It is nasty sticky stuff to work with but I painted it on all of the 2X4s before I bolted them to the frame. I painted all of the exposed wood on the underside of the frame before I laid down the plywood and each peice of plywood was painted on the underside with black jack before I fastened it in place. This will waterproof the wood to prevent rot that would occur from rainwater from the road being splashed up onto the wood and into unprotected crevices. You can see that there is plastic on the floor to protect my garage floor and that the levis I used for this phase came out pretty badly. They went straight into the trash at the end of the day.

4) There is a 6-inch deep box in the floor with a trap door cover. This will be used for storage however I also have an idea, if it works out, that this may be a place to set your feet when I stack the cushions from the bed into a bench in the front. That idea remains to be worked out so for now it is extra storage space.

Preparing the trailer

The Woodsman is build on a 4X8 trailer from Harbor Freight. It is rated for 1700 lbs and I reckon the fnished teardrop will come in well under 1000 lbs so it should be plenty strong. I painted all of the parts with primer before I assembled it. The primer should help to ward off rust and also provide a good bond for the finish coat. I did not assemble the fenders because they will not be used in the build. Painting and assembling the trailer took one Saturday.