The Shape of Things to Come

     After my last post, one of my readers asked me if I had any "conceptual renderings of the dream".  The short answer was no, but his question did make an interesting point.  Some of you may  not have much of an idea of what it is I'm building, so it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to try to flesh out the vision a bit before going on too much more about building things.  I sat down and made a half-hearted attempt at a sketch of the trailer.  Said attempt was half-hearted because I was feeling lazy and I knew that if I whined about not being able to do it, that my wonderful wife would do it for me.  She did. Thanks, Baby.  Kat's sketch below shows the basic idea for the camper; wooden sides, aluminum top, two wheels, two doors (with a sliding window each), roof vent with fan, cooler and battery on the tongue, and a hatch in the rear that opens to the galley, simple right?  If you want to check out some more detailed pictures of the campers mine will be based on, you can do so  at http://www.bigwoodycampers.com/.  

    The teardrop camper gets its name from it's distinctive profile.  The rounded front and sloping tail make for an attractive and aerodynamic design that gained popularity as early as the 1930's, and that I would argue has yet to be trumped.  Certainly, the bulk of campers on the road today fall pretty short where style is concerned.  The first step toward achieving that retro styling is to draw out and cut my template for the camper sides.  This is where that long awaited sawdust comes in.

Starting with a 1/2" sheet of MDF,  I drew out the shape I wanted (very close to the one supplied by Big Woody Campers).  The biggest visual difference  between my camper and one of theirs will be the shape of the doors.  I wanted my doors to be bigger and rounder.  Theirs have the look of a rectangle with rounded corners.  I like the look of a  continuous curve that blends a bit more subtly into the flat of the bottom of the door.  Once satisfied with the drawing, I used a jigsaw to cut out the outside contour keeping as true to the line as possible.  Some aggressive sanding was required to fine tune the shape making sure to remove all the little wiggles.  It is worth spending some time to perfect the template as any defects will be duplicated exactly on the actual sides.   I used a router on a swing arm to cut the radii for the long curve of the door and for the shorter, tighter one at the bottom, aft corner.  Since the Aluminum trim and weatherstripping to be used on the door require a 1/4" crack, I was able to use a 1/4" bit to cut the door and its opening at the same time.  Now that my templates were made, I was ready to trace them off and cut the real thing.  

The sides will be cut from two sheets of 3/4", veneer core sapele  plywood.  Sapele is similar to mahogany in appearance and is a member of the same family.  I chose it for a couple of reasons; it has a quite beautiful warm color that deepens with the application of a finish.  This darker color will hide the yellow of the polyurethane better than a lighter wood, and it's open and somewhat textured grain should disguise road dirt a bit.

After tracing the templates onto the plywood, the shapes are cut out on the outsides of the lines.

Next, the templates are clamped to the pieces and trimmed using a flush trim router bit.

Ta da! a pair of camper sides.

Here you can see the grain of the wood a little better.

    This method insures that the shape and size of my parts will be identical and that their edges will be uniformly and reliably square.  The next step for these babies is the dreaded finishing process.  I really am not a fan of finishing.  I find it to be a boring, labor intensive, sort of mysterious process that is really easy to foul up.  It is this dislike of finishing that caused me to look for the simplest process possible.  Throughout that search, I ignored all kinds of perfectly good advice from very knowledgable people.  I didn't want to hear anything about 2 step marine finishes or products that take forever to dry.  I settled on Zar exterior polyurethane.  Hopefully it will perform well and I won't wind up kicking myself for not doing something more elaborate.  I did not document the finishing process because, well, there really isn't that much to see, but when I was done I had sprayed the

interior sides with 3 coats of satin and the exterior with 5 coats of gloss.  It is not a perfect finish, but it is pretty good, and it seems to look better to everyone else than it does to me.  The best part about it is that it was done.  Did I mention I'm not a huge fan of finishing?

This picture shows the exterior of the camper side with the finish applied.