Monday, December 29, 2014

Wheels for the Egg!

The long-awaited time has come!  Today, battling the occasional snow-drift and a 5 am start, I drove to Abbotsford to pick up this lovely monster!  Ted and the crew at The Trailerman did just a bang-up job:


I really couldn't be more excited.  Well, there may be other situations, but those aren't for discussion here.

A brief weigh-in with each supporting member on the bathroom scale shows a base weight of 360lb, without the spare tire.  That's even a little below what I was expecting, and with an extra cross-member yet.  Walking around in the thing, I'm glad Ted put the extra angle iron in.  There is still some torsion, and it'd be worse with fewer supports.

Look at how shiny and new that beautiful thing is!  It stayed that way for another 20 minutes, until I started driving behind a calcium truck on the Coquihalla highway.  Now it needs a wash:


The suspension sure is chattery!  Ted tuned it for the final weight of the trailer, so it's a little, er, jumpy at the moment.  It spent a good deal of time airborne on the way home.  Only one solution for that: build a camper on top!

Onto the floor!

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Making clones

Today was a fun one: I got to finally make use of this template I've been fussing around with and cut out the side walls.  I just got the exterior ones done, but I'm hoping to get the interior ones done tomorrow.  Flush-trimming with a router is fairly quick and easy.  I was very careful to keep the material clamped close to where I was working in case the template sagged away, which might cause me to carve catastrophically through the middle of my wall.  That didn't happen, so, great.

Here's the gizmo hard at work.  I'm not there because I had to take the picture.  It's not on; I'm not that thick:


The process produced excellent results.  De-burring the edges left a clean, usable cut.  There were a couple of very minor divots where the template wood was soft or dented, but they won't interrupt the "flow" of the final profile, and they'll be covered by the exterior skin and the edge moulding.

All went well until the last door positive cut, when the router started to drag a little.  I pushed it for a minute before I realized that the bit was sparking and smoking.  I guess the pressure of working for such a skilled craftsman just became too much in the end:



Here come the clones, gathering their strength, multiplying and getting ready to take over.  The exterior walls are sitting upright; the template is on the saw-horses.  After cutting out the exterior walls, I cut notches in the template, which will transfer to the interior skins and allow the spars to pass through:


The rough idea is this: tomorrow, I'll go and get a new flush-trim bit (maybe one that isn't such a sissy), then finish the last door and cut out the interior walls.  On Monday, it'll be frame pickup day, assuming the sky stops snowing like is is right now.  If all goes as planned, I'll put the walls away for awhile and start working on the floor.

Fun stuff!

Friday, December 26, 2014

Filling time (and screw holes)

Christmas was a busy time, and there were few hours left over for the Egg, but I got a little shop time after the house cleared out today.  I spent it as any good teardropper would, carefully filling screw-holes and seams in my exterior wall plywood joins with Bondo:


The screws were for clamping the lap joints, and I took them out before filling the holes, since they really serve no purpose now.  Assuming I did a half decent job, the strength now comes from that expensive Titebond III.

I'd never used Bondo before, and it's quite fun stuff.  A little stinky, but easy and effective.  It cured to sanding hardness in 20 minutes, so I see why it's so popular for autobody work.  The purpose of the exercise was not to finish to "pre-epoxy, pre-primer" smoothness, but to just get rid of the obvious divots and do some of the major sanding while the thing was still horizontal.  

Here are the lovely, professional-quality results as promised on the package:


Terri got me a great work light and shop stool for the project, and they help tremendously.  The stool to make it easy to pat myself on the back for long periods, and the light to point out glaring errors in the finishing work.  Look at that cosy space!  My folks also got me a fine power tool guide for making many long cuts with the Skilsaw and router later in the project:


On Monday, I pick up the frame!  Before then, I'm hoping to zip out the walls with the router and start getting the floor ready for fitting.  If all goes well, maybe all this plywood will start looking like a thing we could pull behind the car!

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Giant holes cut and trailer frame complete!

While I've been busy hacking away at my template, cutting handsome-looking door-holes into it like this one ...


... Ted from Trailerman in Abbotsford has been doing something useful: that is, finishing up the frame that the Thunderous Egg will ride regally around on!  We're busy preparing for Christmas with 245 relatives (they say they're all related to us), so I can't pick it up until the 29th.

Ted's been a real pleasure to deal with.  I haven't seen what he's made yet, but he's done a good job giving me advice, and he's really stuck to a long-term schedule.

I don't have any photos of that grand event, but here are some more of the piece of wood I've been seeing in the evenings.  If you look closely, you can see that I've laid out the spars.  They'll be cut out of the inner wall, but screwed and glued to the outer skin.  So I'll use the template to zip out the outer walls, cut out the spar notches, and finally shape the inner walls:


It's quite a big door, really.  It's got a big window in it (better ventilation makes for happier campers).  It'll put a lot of strain on the hinges, so I'll need to make sure the whole thing closes and latches as precisely as I hope.  But that's for future Mark to worry about:


Christmas will be largely unproductive on the Egg front, though I do hope to get the walls cut out at some stage, and maybe get a start on the internal wall structures.

The pictures are pretty terrible.  I'm aware of that.  As a former photographer, it's fairly shameful.  But the blog was meant to be a quick easy update of progress, not a chore, and cell phone photos are by far the easy route!

Sunday, December 14, 2014

Cutting board (bored?)

If I do say so myself, here's a great-looking cutting board that will fit on top of the sink!  Along with plywood joining and some other little prep projects, things like this help make progress while I'm waiting for the trailer frame to get finished:


Here's the bottom.  Those feet are getting tough little rare-earth magnets glued into them so the board will snap onto the rim of the sink or any iron or steel surface.  Interestingly, it turned out that the sink is fairly non-magnetic, so there was little point.  A couple of rubber bumpers should fix it right up:


This fine looking beast is made of maple and cherry.  It wasn't too difficult to rip it up, glue it, and sand it smooth.  I expected to need the services of a friend's planer, but a belt sander and an orbital sander did the job just fine.  In retrospect, I might not round the corners like that again, but it looks fine as is.  Mineral oil makes a nice-looking and non-toxic finish.

It's really a strange thing to do to spend loads of time sanding and finishing something only to cut away at it with knives.  But it's definitely not the strangest thing we do as a species.

This post will have a slight "publish delay", because I made another two of these for Terri's birthday (I'll be damned if we're going to have a nicer cutting board in the trailer than in the house), and it's all a huge international secret.

Fin (2 3/4) knows this item as a "special surprise" because I knew he'd run straight upstairs and blab the whole secret right away.  There were lots of conversations like this:

  - "Mommy!  We have a special surprise for you!"

  - "Really?  What is it?"

  - (looking concerned, like she's gone thick in the head) "It's a special surprise."

  - * long silence *

We'll teach him the real name someday.  Finished on the 26th of Nov, to be published after the 13th of Dec.

Friday, December 12, 2014

Whipping this egg into shape

I cut out the template profile this last week, cutting large with a jigsaw and sanding to my carefully marked lines.  The whole process was fairly quick and painless.  Sanding a few mm off was short work with a belt sander, though the two inside corners on the hatch join required a little bit of filing.

Here's that nice looking spot where the hatch joins the body.  The final profile will be totally smooth(ish):


With the whole monster tidied away in the corner of the garage, it makes it easy to go and do a few minutes on this thing every day or two without a ton of setup and takedown.  I think that's important: it's fun to keep momentum on projects like this.  When we have motivation, we don't need discipline!

This looks weird, but it's just where the floor intersects the walls.  I decided it was easier to make a little tongue in the walls than in the floor.  It's dangerous as far as accidentally snapping off, but it's really just filler and it would be easy to fix:


Here's the shape of the thunderous egg!  It's cool to see it come to life from a CAD drawing.  (It's Aliiiiive!!!)  It actually mostly just sits in the corner, but it's pretty neat nonetheless:


Aaaand, another angle.  I'm like a proud Daddy.  I am actually a proud Daddy to a great 2 3/4 year-old little boy.  That was just a funny comment about how many photos I'm taking of this piece of plywood:


NEXT: Portals to other dimensions and/or holes for doors into the trailer!  Don't touch that dial!

Flight of the Silly Goose

Here's a really cool boat that a friend of mine is building.  Quite an interesting thing: part rowboat, part sailboat, it breaks down small enough to stow in your jacket pocket.  Well, in the back of a truck anyway!  It's a neat project, and a lot to take on.  May we wish him well!

Monday, December 8, 2014

The profile layout was just like a day at work!

As a day job (when I'm not in my cape and mask by night as THUNDER-EGG MAN), I'm a mild-mannered land surveyor.  So, the task of laying out the profile and door was right up my alley.  Instead of fiddling with the base geometry (particularly since many of the curve centres are a long way off the trailer edge) I opted to cut the template sheet to a known size and pull offsets at even inches, like so:


Worked like a hot damn.  It's not as tedious as you'd think.  I worked in millimetres like a good Canadian ... even so, you can see some effect of rounding errors in shallow parts of the line.  I don't think it will cause a problem: I'll cut it a big big and sand to the line, so that will let me "BS" the very small errors out.  Here's the layout in full swing.  I even tested out the camping lantern when the power went out:


"Hang on!" a voice in the mob shouts.  "I thought this was a quality product we're building here!  That's just boring old standard plywood!"

Not so fast, sir.  This is merely the template!  All 4 wall skins (2 inner and 2 outer) use this as a guide.  No need for repeated measuring, cutting and sanding.  Naturally, they're all fashioned from the highest quality Baltic Birch.

* Crowd murmurs abashedly, shuffles feet * 

And here's a fine-looking door, whose shape I'm still warming up to.  There are three outlines here: one for the hole, one for the outer skin, and one for the inner skin, which is smaller to make room for a seal system:


I've got this arranged along the wall of the garage, so I can work on it whenever I have the time.  Cutting and sanding to taste won't make too much dust, so getting this tuned up will be a nice little mid-week project.

After it's done being a guide and mentor, the template will get chopped up and used to make spars, ribs, and various internal supporting members.  Shows what respect our society pays our elders.

Friday, December 5, 2014

In the news: impatience triumphs!

I was intending to leave the "dimensional stuff" until later.  All the stuff that depended on the real-world size of the trailer frame (that I still don't have).  But I talked myself out if it for 3 reasons:

  1. I really want to make something now
  2. If the trailer is slightly the wrong size, I can fairly easily "fudge" to fit.
  3. If the trailer is a LOT the wrong size, then it was a cock-up and the dude needs to fix it.  But I don't think this is likely.  People can use measuring tapes.
I'm going to lay out the profile on the template tomorrow.  Depending on how it goes, I'll think about cutting out the walls in profile too.  Fine-detail stuff, like the galley, really IS going to wait until I see this trailer frame.  I promise.

Wordsworth said, "To begin, begin."  That sounds super-wise to me.  That is, until you think, well, that can be applied to anything.  To cook, cook.  To be a millionaire, be a millionaire.  To jive, jive.  Then it sounds like the rantings of a damp Vancouver hipster.

If only things were so simple.

Friday, November 28, 2014

Planning ahead (so I don't have to do anything right now)

I put together another live spreadsheet with my construction task list:

Thunder Egg Construction Schedule

It was a good exercise, because it forced me to think about the logistics and timing of the build.  It's all well and good to have a nice design, but if it doesn't come together in some kind of doable way, we still don't have a camping trailer at the end.

There were even some design changes: for example, I decided that I need an exterior paint that will still look nice when applied to a vertical surface, since I'll need to install the spars (and make holes in the external walls) while the walls are up.  This leaves me leaning further towards an epoxy finish, or even a full fiberglass.  We'll see when the thing is together.

As a logistical consideration to keep the project flowing, I'm going to try to do most of the major cutting, sanding, and other messy things on the weekends, because that's when I can find the time to clean up the garage.  I'll try to ignore the little fiddly things until weekday evenings, when I can do them in the comfort of my little downstairs shop area.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Plywood joining and dust making

Plywood was on sale at Windsor Plywood in Vernon, including their Baltic Birch, which I'm going to use for most of the trailer body and skin.  I didn't have a vehicle large enough to get the wood home (my trailer frame is still under construction), but the discounted prices covered delivery to the safety of my garage, which saves me a ton of work.

The nice thing about Baltic Birch (besides being quite a nice plywood to cut and finish) is that it comes in 5' x 5' fun-size sheets.  That's really handy for, say, a 5' wide camping trailer.

Now I can start making a mess!

This is a little dangerous: I have to resist the temptation to just start hammering the whole thing together until I see the frame.  There might be little imperfections to adjust for, or some as yet unknown reason to perform a redesign.

I started joining the plywood into 10 foot sheets.  I need to do 2 x 1/2" external walls, 2 x 1/8"internal walls (on the other side of 1" foam lamination), 1 floor, and 1 wall template.  I'll save the roof skins for later since they'll be unreasonably long and awkward.

Here's the template, my practice piece, in 1/2" standard:


I looked into doing a scarf joint, which seems to be the way that boat-builders and other fancy people join plywood, but that seemed like a lot of sanding.  I opted instead for a 6" lap joint, which was quite easy to cut out with a router.

After fine-tuning the depth to 1/2 the sheet thickness, I ran 3/4" dados.  I put the whole operation on the floor and knelt on a straight template board to make the cut.  It's important to get all the material out with each pass, because the router won't have a sheet to ride on once the next row is cut.

This whole process makes a tremendous mess.  After doing 2 sheet joins, I was knee-deep in coarse sawdust.

Here's a closer version.  The joining 2' 6" sheet was cut the same:


Aaaaand here we are clamping the joint using every heavy thing within reach.  The glue is Titebond III and in my experience it makes an alarmingly strong wood joint.


Here's the finished 4' x 10' plywood sheet, good as if I'd bought it that way:


I repeated the process for a sheet of Baltic Birch without incident.  The only thing different was the clamping method: I decided to use small screws to hold the joint instead of a pile of all of my belongings.  I'll probably take the screws out later, as they really don't add much strength to the joint:


For the 1/8" wood, I intend to use a butt joint with a 6" backer.  The backer will recessed into the foam core.  The join will be at the foot area of the cabin where it joins the galley, in pretty well the least obvious area of the trailer.

Sweeping time ...

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Here's a small picture of the big picture

Let's have a look at the whole instead of the parts.  Here's a quickie side view of the old T-Egg, v. 1.1:


Now that's a nice looking trailer, if I do say so myself.  Or, future trailer.  Erm, assuming all goes as planned.  * knocks on wood *

The doors were sexier once.  They really flowed with the shape of the sides, echoing the jaunty exterior curves and drawing the eye towards the more pedestrian shape of the windows.  But then I looked at the logistics of building, and worse, sealing them, and they wound up looking like this:  barn doors in a space ship.  I keep referring to them in plural because, obviously for such a small trailer, there's one in each side.

The windows are apparently ready to be picked up from the factory in Summerland.  My wonderful Mom is doing that on her way through for a visit.  I got the door latches in the mail today, so I'm busy making sure they'll work.

On a side note, left-right RV latches were hard to come by in Canada.  I'm told that RVs always open on the passenger side, and that's just the way it is.  There are a few other things that are tough to source up here, the next being hurricane hinges.

Enough chatter.  Let's see this fine looking beast from the back, she said suggestively:


Replete with a hatched galley for outdoor cooking and all the kitchen you can fit in 5 feet.  I'm looking forward to doing the galley -- I think that'll be a fun part.

I've decided to get the plywood before the trailer is done.  It's risky business, because the next thing I'm going to want to do is start building the thing without first making sure that the trailer is the size I think it is.  The risk with waiting for a more sensible time is insanity: I'm busy poly-coating the cabinet door handles as I write, and I can only do so many coats of that.  If this keeps up, I'll be polishing battery terminals and sewing frilly window drapes.

Patience, patience.  It's a virtue, some smug troll told me once.

Sunday, November 2, 2014

12v Electrical system start

I made a pretty smart-looking grounding block this evening from a piece of aluminium.  Here's it and some other 12v odds and sods that I've been gathering together:


That's a fine looking block, sir.  Just a fine looking block.  Beautiful job.

Thank you, soldier.  At ease.

It's a 6-channel block, similar to the 6-channel fuse box, also shown.  Of course, a grounding block can really just be a cluster of wires all twisted together on a piece of metal, but it's nice to keep organized, isn't it?  Besides, I can only source and research materials so much before I really want to go down and build something.

The 8-gauge wire is the primary line from the deep cycle battery from the tongue through the roof (or maybe the floor) to the raceway.  The 14-gauge is for the individual circuits (4 in use, 2 spare):
  1. Cabin 12v + USB outlet
  2. Galley 12v + USB outlet
  3. Overhead LED lights (cabin reading lights, galley hatch light)
  4. Vent fan

Want a closer look?  Sure, you bet, 


This thing will be fastened in the raceway.  The bigger bolt is for the more major 8 gauge connection back to the trailer frame and the negative battery terminal.

The 12v interaction with the 120v system is pretty simple: the battery gets a trickle charge when it's plugged in to shore power.  I considered more complex systems where the 12v gets a direct boost from shore and the battery charged as you drive, but they required a little more hardware and a lot more wiring.  The battery charger is about the size of a computer mouse.  I don't expect to run low on power over a weekend, and if we black out on a longer trip, we'll do what we've always done camping for years past -- use headlamps!

It could still be 2 months until my trailer is done.  There will likely be a whole lot more of little items like this manufactured in the meantime!

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

So where are we at now?

It was back in July that I emailed Terri a photo of a beautiful, finished wood teardrop camper in the glory of a misty forest campsite.  I told her, "You have to talk me out if this."

Her negotiation skills could use a lot of work!

The first order of business was to find a trailer.  The used market was very limited, and since we decided to go for a 5x10-ish design, a custom trailer seemed like the only way to go.  Trailerman in Abbotsford is doing the thing, and so far he's been very helpful and easy to deal with.  In Canada, we need VINs for trailers, so that eliminated a lot of the mail order ones commonly used for teardrop builds in the States.  The rest of the new models were too expensive and too heavy for what I hope will be a sub-1000 pound camper.

Lead time from mid September was 14 weeks, or early in the New Year.  We're at 6 now.  I'll use the time to plan the build, research sources for the many parts needed, and wait impatiently.

There's a lot to learn and buy, and I'll be happy to not have to run to the store every time I'm ready to begin a new step.  The forced pre-planning period will be good for the final product.

I've bought a lot of the electrical stuff, some odds and ends, and I've ordered the windows.  I've sourced about 80% of what I need, including some of the stuff that's hard to find in Canada.  The rest has been cost estimated, so we know a little of what we're up against.  I've got a decent design going, based largely on what I've seen and read, but with just a little original flair thrown in for good measure.

I've been keeping track of all expenses (down to the last nut and bolt) in a live spreadsheet.  I think it'll keep me honest, and it's very interesting to see how much money can get drained away in the little parts we don't consider at first.  Grey costs are estimates.  Once the trailer is complete, this will be an interesting record for a future builder, especially in Canada.

For the time being, I'm consciously eschewing some expensive options, such as:
  • Marine plywood substrates
  • CPES (Clear Penetrating Epoxy Sealer)
  • Proper marine enamel, like Interlux
  • Pre-made doors (though I am ordering windows)
  • Epoxy joints and surfacing
It's a cost thing, largely.  I think that the trailer will be plenty durable enough the way I'm building it, and I'm trying not to overkill it.

Monday, October 27, 2014

The first part of the egg! (wiring the inline 125V breaker)

We're really cooking with gas now.  No trailer yet, no, but lots of little bits and pieces that will soon make something pretty outstandingly cool.

What did I choose to start with?  Why, this fine gizmo, of course:


This thing was a bit of a struggle until I went to my local Tobram electrical shop and got some advice.  It's an inline 10A breaker for the 125V (house current) circuit.  This circuit will be 3 plugs in a line, the first being a GFCI.  The 12V circuit only interacts with the 125V through a battery keeper / trickle charger which will plug into one of the outlets.

Why use a breaker?  Aren't we covered by the breaker from the source and the GFCI?  As I discovered, no:
  1. GFCIs only measure a ground fault, ie: a difference in incoming and outgoing current, not the level of current itself.  It won't trip until the wires are actually smoking and shorting.
  2. The 125V wiring will be 12/2 Romex, which can handle 15A, and I will make sure the extension cord to the plug can deal with the same.  However, we could potentially be plugged into a circuit that is capable of a lot more ... a good example would be at an RV park, which commonly hands out 30A or 50A service.  So we need a breaker that can protect our circuitry.
All the big-box stores wanted to sell me a full household breaker panel.  Too big, too bulky, too expensive.  I knew this type of inline breaker must exist.  It just took a face-to-face with a knowledgeable electric store clerk to find it.  She only had 10A ones, but that'll be plenty for what we're plugging in.  If it's not, it's easy to swap for 15A.  The whole arrangement was less than $25 and fits in a standard 1-gang box.  Slick!

Here's the thing all closed up and neat looking.  It'll be screwed to the wall in the electrical raceway:

Monday, October 20, 2014

Looking back, this will be the time when I didn't know any better

I like being outside, doing unnecessarily expensive and time-consuming things, working with my hands, and being frustrated.  Ooh, and spending time with my family.  That's the top thing.

I don't own a truck and I don't really want one.  My garage is normal inside, but uncommonly short at the door.  If you think that's some kind of metaphor for something, you might be disappointed by the lack of dirty content moving forward.  

"Wow," you're thinking.  "This guy should build one of those teardrop trailer things that you can tow behind a car."

Great idea!

So what's the point of this exercise?
  1. To get out camping as quickly as possible
  2. To camp in the most economical way
  3. To do such a great job that I'll open a shop and do this all the time
Dang, hang on.
  1. To have fun building it
  2. To show it off
  3. To go camping often with my family, hopefully with less hassle than now
Also, to keep a cap on the money side of things, because it is very easy to get carried away.  Please mention in the comments if you see me doing this.  It's hard to see in yourself.

How does adding an extra large vehicle-type thing produce less hassle, you might ask?  Well, maybe it won't.  But my hope is that with all the camping stuff stored in one large go-bag with wheels, it'll make getting ready to head out much faster.  Originally, I was wishing I had just a box to tow behind the car with all the camping gear in it so we wouldn't have to spend so long getting ready.  Then I thought, "Damn, we should just sleep in there!"  Then I looked that idea up on Google images, and an obsession slowly started seeping into my poorly-sealed brain.

Right now, the young person/couple with no kids is thinking, "What a glut.  I don't need so much stuff when I go camping.  I just grab my light fashionable bag and breezily leave the house."  To that family unit I say, go find something much more hip to read.  This blog is about how to easily cart around a whole bunch of things you don't need, including the kitchen sink.  Judge silently and from afar.

To be fair, let's look at the rest of the family's perspective's on project scope and ambition:

Terri:
  1. To go camping.  A teardrop trailer sounds awesome, really.  It does.  But the main point is to go camping.
Finlay:
  1. Are you making a campin' trailer?  For really?  Does it have a wheel?  Does it have a sink?  Can I be in it?  I can!  Daddy, I have a bite of cereal.  I can do a calculating for you.  Here ...
Okee dokee.  Let's try to make sure we're meeting everyone's goals through the long haul here.  Stay focused everyone, keep your chin up and be safe out there.  Hey!  Put on some pants.  You too, Fin.