In the Mean Time...

    In my last post, I explained how I built the trims that will frame the camper sides, so now the big time-consuming task is to get them stained and polyurethaned.  When the big curved trims are laid out in the shop for finishing, it really limits what I can do in there, but there are a couple of details that I can go ahead and get squared away.  One is installing the exterior "porch" lights on the sides of the camper, and the other is to make a cover for the electrical junction box in the cabin.  Both are sort of fussy little projects that require minimal space and dust to complete.
    I bought the porch lights a long time ago when I was first trying to figure out how exactly the electrical system would work.  By the time I finally got around to preparing to install them, I realized that there were two problems with them; they are white (I have decided that everything on the exterior of the camper is to be wood  or black or silver, no white) and they have incandescent bulbs (all my other lights have more efficient LEDs).  So begins the saga of trying to rectify these two unacceptable attributes.  First, I searched for an LED version of the lights or something similar, in black, but could not find one that had the switch on it.  After deciding that what I was looking for did not exist, I opted to paint the cases and order LED cluster bulbs to replace the incandescent ones.  I received the LED bulbs, rigged up the lights to test them,.... they no work.  Luckily, Amazon is good about returning stuff, and after getting another set of LED cluster bulbs (exactly the same thing, different manufacturer) and testing them, they work fine.  I'm not sure they don't work a bit too well; I'll be the guy in the next campsite with the ridiculously bright light shining through the side of your tent.  At least I won't be the guy with the generator and television glow or the guy blaring "Credence Clearwater Revival's Greatest Hits" on repeat all night (Laura, you know what I'm talking about).  Too bright or not, incandescent bulb problem solved.  Now to make them black.  This too, turned out to be more difficult than it should have been.  I masked off the inside of the light, taped the switch and sprayed them with Krylon Fusion paint, specially formulated to bond to plastic.  Sounds great, right?  Well, in the process of installing and testing the lights, I found that the paint was really easy to scratch off.  This irritating discovery sent me back to the computer looking for an alternative again.  Literally one of the first things that came up on Amazon was a very similar looking, black, LED, light, with the switch on it; Where was this thing hiding the first time I looked for it !?!  The problem now, is that I have already drilled holes in my camper for the screws and the wires for the lights that I have.  Thoroughly annoyed, I decided to take the lights off, touch up the black, and spray them with a clear coat, as was suggested by a friend.  Hopefully the clear coat will be a tougher surface and lock the black down a little better.  If not, I may be revisiting this puzzle in the future.  For now, it will have to do.  I am done messing around with it.

The light masked off and ready to be painted (the first time)

Painted Black

The light installed, with LED bulb, and a shiny topcoat

The blue box is located just above the interior dome light.  Because of the low draw from the LEDs I was able to branch the exterior lights off of the dome light circuit.

     The task of covering the electrics in the forward bulkhead would be prove to give me far less trouble than the lights did.  I used a piece of 1/8" maple left over from the ceiling stock as the face of the cover.  After mitering a frame around the back of it I drilled holes through it, into the bulkhead.  Next, I installed posts in the bulkhead that would allow me to attach and detach the cover using cap screws.  Finally, I ran  a molding around the under side of the forward cabinet to give the whole assembly a finished look.

Here you can see the attachment posts and the mitered ends of the molding that will receive the cover panel.

The cover installed

Ta da! wiring, officially hidden.

     I know this episode of the "The Little Trailer Project" wasn't earth shattering excitement, but as the title of Primus's greatest hits album proclaims, "They can't all be zingers".  This is the reality of building anything.  There are some big steps that have a sort of instant gratification aspect to them, but mostly the end product is the accumulation  of lots of little chores, all of which require time and none of which is particularly noteworthy.  In fact, those "instant gratification" moments have many hours of not particularly noteworthy work behind them.  Those trims that I hope to get onto the camper as soon as possible, for example, will make a striking visual difference all at once on the day of installation.   That said, there will be countless hours of very boring and tedious sanding, staining, finishing and waiting, finishing and waiting, finishing and waiting, you get the picture, that will be undocumented and with any luck quickly forgotten by me.  This is all really just to say that, if you are thinking that this episode was lacking in "bippity, boppity, boo", I can assure you, it's far more interesting than "finishing and waiting".  Maybe my fairy godmother will visit me before my next post.

Trimming up the Trim

     In my last post I talked about how I lucked into the material used to build the ceiling in the sleeping cabin, and how this bit of serendipity resulted in that part of the build being virtually free.  This post is going to be something entirely different.  Pictured below are the three sapele boards I will need to build the trims that will frame the exterior sides of the camper.  At $6.55 bd/ft, they were far from free.  I have mentioned in previous posts that I am using a set of plans that I bought from "Big Woody Campers".  I have departed from the text quite often, but this is one case when I did so not due to some stylistic consideration or as a result of preferred methodology, but because I really feel this way is better.  Their trims are cut from two sheets of plywood, sanded smooth, and finished.  This is much quicker, easier and cheaper than what I decided to do.  It feel that solid wood will make a much better trim.  For one thing, seeing that plywood core every time I looked at the camper (trust me, I wouldn't be able to help it), would really bother me; aside from aesthetic concerns, having the plywood core exposed to the elements, albeit protected by a thick finish, would make me a bit nervous.  More importantly,  the trim is the most likely thing to get dings and nicks in it, and solid wood will be much better to repair than a veneer covered plywood.  So, now that I have revealed something of my somewhat fastidious and worrying nature, we might as well get into how I went about accommodating it.

     The first step was to make a template for the continuous curved trim that will run along the edge of the roofline.  To do this I flush trimmed a piece of 3/8" mdf to the camper side template, then scribing a line 2" in from that to make the inside shape. I also added a bit of a curving taper at the bottom of the forward part to reinforce the movement of the circular line.  The next phase is what I like to call the "head scratching, staring at stuff on the table, muttering, grumbling, and bitching" phase of this particular task.  This is the part where I have to figure out how to get my curvy trims out of my straight boards.  Using strips of cardboard cut to the widths of the boards I have to work with, it was a lengthy process of trial and error to work out the sizes of the blanks and at what angles they would have to join each other so that the curvature of the trim would fall within them once they were all joined together.  In the end I came up with a set of six cardboard templates which would overlap 2" at each joint to account for the 2" half lap joinery.  Now that the figuring was done it was time to mill up the boards and make the blanks.

Curved trim template on top of the cardboard blank templates.

Templates on the left, rough-cut blanks on the right.

Here the blanks have been flattened, milled to 3/4", and cut to match the templates.  You can see the cardboard template sandwiched between a pair (left and right) of blanks.

     Now that the pieces are all cut, it's time to make the joints.  I will be using a 2" half lap joint.  This basically means that I will remove 1/2 of the thickness of the board on opposite sides of the joint, 2" in from the end of each board.  Then they will be overlapped and glued.  This gives you a good surface to  face glue  and thus makes a very strong joint.  If my explanation is confusing, it's okay; I have pictures.

First, most of the waste is removed with a dado stack on the table saw.  It takes a few cuts, but the pieces are cut by simply running the butt end of the boards against the fence.

Here you can see that the dado stack makes a scored surface on the face of the cut and a burnt edge.

To clean up the joint and to fine tune the fit I use a wide flat router bit in the table.  Here you can see the difference in the quality of the surface produced by the dado stack compared to the router bit.

Once all the joints are cut they are dry-fitted and screwed together from the back side.  This allows me to assemble the whole trim blank for a final check before gluing.  The screws will also act as my clamps during the gluing process.

Here the blank has been dry-fit and is being checked to make sure that the template falls nicely within its edges.

         Now that all of my parts have been made, assembled, and checked against the trim template, it's  time to take it all apart and glue it back together.  I simply remove the screws, paint up the joint with glue, and screw it back together.  Because the screws go back into the same holes, the joints register themselves, more or less, automatically.  I allow the glue to dry overnight before moving on to the final shaping process.  The next day I start by sanding the assembled blank, front and back to the point that the entire surface  is evenly sanded and I can't feel any of the joints as I run my hand across them.  Next, I lay the template on top of the blank, trace it, and cut outside the line with a jig saw.  The final trimming is done with a flush trim router bit.  Due to the linear nature of wood grain, it is always tricky to rout curves.  There is always somewhere along that curve that the wood just wants to tear out and throw a big chunk of your workpiece across the room.  You can mitigate the tendency of the wood to tear out by carefully nibbling away at the material, running the router away from the cutting direction.  I say carefully because if you allow too much pressure the bit will grab and take off on you.  It just requires a little patience.

Rough trim blank glued up.

Sanded and ready to be cut out.

Template traced onto the blank.

In the process of cutting away the waste.

The next step is trimming.  Here you can see the trim on top, the template screwed to the bottom, and the half lap joint.

Trimming process.

The sad truth is that when all is said and done, there is as much wood on the floor of the shop as there is in the finished product.

           All of the grunt work is pretty much done.  I have neglected to mention the lower horizontal trims because they are  fairly basic; 2" wide boards, cut and fit, that's it.  I mention them now because they are integral to the next part of the trimming process; the fitting process.

Here you can see the trim clamped into place flush with the edge of the camper sides.

The bottom edge of the blue tape represents the top edge of the lower trim.  I use it as a reference to mark my trim piece for cutting.

It's a bit unwieldy, but this is how I trimmed the ends of the upper trim.

     Fine tuning the fit of the trim took a bit of back and forth; cutting a hair off the bottom, adjusting the angle a bit more or less.  After going to all that expense and spending all that time to make the trims, the last thing you want to do is cut it a little too short.  When all of the pieces are sitting just as they should, there are the finishing touches to attend to.  The bottom of the lower trim and the inside edge of the upper trim will get an 1/8" round to make the edge less susceptible to dents and dings while the outside edge of the upper trim will get a 1/16" round; just enough to break the sharp edge.  The top of the lower trim will be beveled away from the trailer to more easily shed water.

Junction of the forward section of the curved trim and lower trim

Rear and lower trim

     It may seem strange to deal with the trim before there is a proper roof on the thing and there are still so many parts of the camper, as yet unresolved,  but there is a reason for doing it now.  I don't want to put any fasteners through the trim once it's finished.  At this point I can still screw the trim to the camper from the inside where the screws will be hidden.  There will be more about that when I get to installing the trim, but before I can do that one more chore remains.... finishing...did I mention how much I love finishing?

A Ceiling Over Our Heads

    It has been a couple of very busy  weeks since my last post. The family and I have had a really great holiday season.  Santa got word of my travel plans for this Summer and brought me a bunch of camper and road trip related goodies, and we  logged a lot of miles  enjoying good times with family and friends.  Busy as it was, the time off from work did allow me to make some headway on the trailer.  In this episode, we will be working on the ceiling for the sleeping cabin.  One thing that I can say right from the start about this particular piece of the project, and that I will likely not be able to say in the future about about subsequent pieces, is that it was virtually free.  About two years ago, we dismantled a kitchen that my boss had installed in a customer's home 28 years earlier in preparation for the installation of the new one we were to build.  I saved some of the larger boards from the dumpster and they have stood, twisted and riddled with nails in the corner of my shop ever since.  I have often considered using them for one thing or another, but invariably,  they would be just too gnarly to bother with.  For the ceiling of the camper I needed relatively short boards thin enough to bend.  Maple is actually a terrible choice for a bending wood, but I figured if I bring it down to about an 1/8", I could make it work.  Besides, the maple will match the rest of the interior.

These are the boards salvaged from a customer's previous kitchen.  There was a fair amount of waste to get around all the defects and nail holes, but it was free.

Here is the same pile of wood, flattened, re-sawn, and ready to plane.

The panels have been planed to 1/8" thick and laid out almost (the middle two are reversed) as they will be arranged on the ceiling.  The grain patterns mirroring each other is a result of splitting the boards along their length (re-sawing), and is called a bookmatch because you open the board like a book.

    

One lucky side effect of using wood that had the benefit of 30 years worth of New England seasonal climate fluctuations is that it had firmly settled into whatever shape it was going to take.  Often when you remove material from recently harvested wood, you alter the balance of stresses within the board, and it will bow, twist, or bend.  A common problem with re-sawing, is that you have to re-flatten two severely cupped halves after you split them apart.  This was not the case with this wood. Once I flattened and split them, they stayed dead flat.

     The next bit of luck came with a delivery of plywood at work a few weeks ago.  Cover sheets are usually either cardboard or uselessly ugly and unsound sheets of junky plywood.  What came on the truck that day were 4 sheets of 1/8" thick (perfect for bending) plywood with a clear and clean birch veneer.  While the quality would not be good enough for a finished surface,  it would do nicely as the backer for my ceiling panels.

  The picture above shows the finished backer panel with lines drawn on it to guide my glueing and stapling so that i won't end up with glue squeezing out or staples peeking out between my panels.   Shown below is the framing for the ceiling (notice the frame in the center for the ventilation fan), the backer panel glued and stapled into place, and a view of both after the ceiling had been trimmed flush to the vent fan frame.

      At this point the cabin has taken on a much more sheltered feel.  Not that you'd want to park the thing in a downpour and take a nap, but you can sort of get the feeling of what it will be like to go camping.  My mother would hate it.  If you are at all claustrophobic, this is not the bedroom for you.  I am not terribly claustrophobic and I do sort of like it, but all those staples and pencil lines do offend my delicate sensibilities, so I think it's time for a little sophistication up in this "beotch" (that's an emphatically pronounced "bitch" for those of you who are not sufficiently hooked on phonics).  Commence ceiling pizzaz. 

A 2x10 scrap bridges the fore and aft cabin cabinets.  Padded scrap wood is wedged against the ceiling to press the panels tight to the backer while the glue dries for at least 24 hours. 

The bridge is moved to the driver's side and three more panels are clamped in place.

Passenger side: lather, rinse, repeat.

Finally, the two edge strips are trimmed to fit and glued in, this time spring sticks are cut to wedge against the floor of the cabin.

All the ceiling panels are in.

     At this point the ceiling is looking much fancier than it did with all those pesky pencil lines and staples, but it is still missing something.  Every respectable bedroom needs a bit of crown molding... not really, but this one does.  The molding will serve two purposes.  It will hide the clumsy junction between the cabinet faces and ceiling panels, and it will provide a mechanical reinforcement to the glue at the steepest parts of the bend.

These are the moldings that will cap the ends of the ceiling panels with angles cut to match the pitch of the ceiling.

Because the roof is still open and the back of the cabinet face frames still accessible, I was able to screw these moldings in from the back which means that they would be pulled up tight to the ceiling and that there would be no nail holes.

The final touch to the ceiling installation was the dome light.

BOOM! Ceiling in,  Lights shining.

     It may not be a  roof just yet, but it is good to have a ceiling over our heads.  You can sit in this little box and feel... comfortable.  While it is small, it is beginning to take on a certain welcoming warmth and offering something like security.  One thing has become clear to me as I have talked to friends and family about this project and about the trip we are planning.  I have committed us.  As one family member put it in response to my raising the possibility that we may not be ready, "Oh you're going."  It was a simple statement that carried real weight.  Mostly because someone had given voice to an idea that had been rattling around in my head for some time; there is no backing out.  I feel like I've dangled the idea of this little adventure in front of my girls enough that it would be nothing short of child abuse not to deliver.  I still think I can get it done, but if this little trailer is not ready for the road by mid June, we'll just have to find another way.