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I used a Dremel Saw Max mini circular saw and a straight edge where I could and finished off with a jigsaw. I was surprised at how much cleaner the jigsaw cuts were. IF I ever built another one I would start one of the straight runs with a tiny thin circular saw cut and do the rest with the jigsaw with lots of patience, I would also tape down each section as I did it as I had some issue where the tension in the plywood shifted as it cut and I got some unexpected waves I had to try and sand out. No one else really notices but I do.
If you look at the pictures you’ll see that the filets are quite a bit darker than the plywood. If you can make perfect ones they look really great. If you are a novice, like we were, you make your mistakes early and your mattress and liner cover them! The bulkhead, galley, galley door, and galley inserts are really the only visible filets once complete. We were much more practiced and spent a lot of time on those. Except the galley hatch which everyone says they don’t notice 😀
I cross mine over which lifts them a few inches. The right chain to the left connection point on the hitch and vice versa.
I’ve kicked the idea around a few times. Maybe be a 5 or 10 gallon that mounts under the camper. I’ve not run across the perfect solution yet. And I need to get the electronics done first 😛
Comccoy, from what I read it looks like you left out the white backing plate
I definitely had them on but the 7/16″ rubber foam would not seal. I added the suggested additional 5/16″ and that sealed perfectly.
We did out first test camp this weekend and as I burned some midnight oil on Thursday night I ran in to an issue with Bill’s design. I am not saying in any way it is a flawed design. I think it is a great design. But I ran in to a huge issue.
When I went to insert the threaded rod, on 2 of my vents the rod got partway through and they bound up. It would not go forward or reverse out. I used pliers to try and twist and free it and the 3 plastic support rods that hold where the nyloc nut is, sheared off from the twisting I tried to do. This happened on 2 of my vents. I ended up knocking the broken vents out with a mallet, replacing them, and going this weekend with the CLC screw on original design. And I have to admit I was pretty irritated at having to get out to open and close them.
When I believe happened is that some of the nylon sliced off as I threaded the rod in and then slid up and bound the threads so tight that they could not move. My theories for this are:
- I did not clean the ends of the rod I cut properly. I admittedly know very little about this so I tried to angle them like the screws I have. I uses a small file then some sand paper to smooth it out.
- I screwed the rods in from the inside. This means I hit nylon first. It is quite probable that once they hit the metal threads it was not aligned with the nylon ones it dug in first and cut some nylon off and pulled it in to the threads.
- I have cheap nyloc nuts from lowes. quality from lowes tends to be iffy so the nylon may be of suspect quality.
- I just got unlucky twice.
To be clear I still think it is an excellent design. I still plan on going with some version of it. Maybe even the same but with me trying to screw the rods from the outside in and educating myself on how to shape the ends properly. I also might try and figure out a way to not use nyloc as once a piece gets loose and binds that glued in nut the vent is pretty much toast. The $12 for a new vent is not terrible, but the time it takes to clean the sealant off the hole and start over is several lost hours. I am still very excited to get this working.
If we plan to extend our camping season to cold weather I would add one of these:
It is 12v and my plan would be to put it down under our feet and let the heat build up and fill the cabin. To really winterize it you would want:
- The headliner kit or other insulation
- Some insulation on the floor (as catcamper mentioned we did interlocking floor mats from costco, and with a 4″ mattress the 1/2″ it adds is right at the limits for my foot size under the galley flat)
- Insulate the transom/quarter panels as the headliner does not
- Insulate the bottom of the galley flat as the headliner does not
- Insulate the bulkhead, as again the headliner does not. I would lean towards doing this on the galley side as I would not want to lose shelf space or the pretty wood look.
I looked at even small ceramic 12v heaters and they draw a lot of amps and would take a lot of amp hours to cover a weekend. I think if you insulated as well as you could, which would be WAY more than a tent, you might be okay. Especially in a sleeping bag; in which you can toss a Hothands warmer down by your feet.
As catcamper said, we will likely add a layer of foam to the transom and quarter panels, but at this point the galley flat and bulkhead will not be insulated as I doubt we’ll sleep in that cold of an environment.
That is what we did. Our townhouse has a 1st floor bathroom right inside from the garage we built in and the sink was relegated the last 4 months as our epoxy storage and pumping station. We also store the marine varnish/CA glue/etc in there and only took it to the garage as needed.
A few other heat related ideas as we built for weeks with it in the high 90s here:
- If your garage door is not insulated get some bubble wrap based radiant barrier rolls. We get full sun on a metal garage door for the hottest part of the Maryland day and this dropped our temperature by 10 degrees! I considered adding some foam boards with radiant barrier as well and only didn’t to save time as the extra weight likely would mean I needed the tension adjusted professionally. The weight of the double thick bubble wrap sandwiched between 2 radiant layers did not effect the garage door.
- Radiant barrier is good all year round so I plan to maintain it going forward regardless of the project.
- If you can get some air conditioning in your garage over night you can often to the epoxy etc early the next morning before the sun is in full effect. We cooled by leaving the door open in to the house and blowing air in with fans. From my memories of living in El Paso years ago, that might not be viable with Texas heat!
- Epoxy especially does not seem to need a super slow cure time so we would let the temperature come up after epoxy applications and often it was not tacky after 4-6 hours and in 12 we could even sand it.
- Make sure every place you can do the fiberglass/epoxy in multiple steps that you do it! We did the top/left side/right side in 3 steps over 3 days. This was great with maybe 3 bubbles! It fooled us in to thinking we had this. We did the bottom in one step, as the hymnal never mentioned splitting it up and we were naive. With the heat rushing the epoxy that was a HUGE mistake. In hind site we should have spread that bottom glassing over 2 days and it would have been MUCH better. Bubbles all over the butt block. Hours of grinding them out and filling them. Luckily this was the bottom and we painted it.
- The trickiest part we had was with marine varnish. It is supposed to be applied between 60-80 and even at 78 we has issues with being able to tip it. If we build another one (yes we had that much fun) we have talked about a supplemental AC just for the garage at that stage. We might end up having to get creative and put a unit on our balcony disguised as a planter with a disguised in/outlet running down due to our HOA!
Timing is critical. With the varnish we rushed on 3 coats with only scotch bright clean up between them to make our trip this weekend. No one noticed, but we did. As the temp drops over the next month or so, we have enough varnish and we plan to wet sand and do 2 more to get it more beautiful. Maybe 3…
They addressed that in the FAQ:
http://www.clcboats.com/shop/boats/recreational-vehicles/clc-teardrop-trailer.html#faqshaq
No harm in asking. If they get enough interest it just might happen!
Stop-loss kit was VERY useful.
- It fits the quart perfectly
- You can pour out exactly what you need with virtually no mess.
- I was able to keep the roller fairly dry by putting a few tablespoons in the tray at a time
- I am sure we used ½ the varnish amount we would have as pouring over the can edge I would have put much more in the tray and struggled with dipping too much and having lots of leftovers.
- When finished it only took a few seconds to squeeze the air out and cap the bottle for hopefully a perfect preservation
- I think we have enough left for coat 2 from the first can.
I highly recommend the stop-loss bags/kit.
All great advice!! We definitely have the wrong scotch brite pads. We need to run down to clc for another can or two of varnish anyway. Would their stop loss kit be better than plastic wrap in the can?
<p style=”text-align: left;”>All great advice and much appreciated!! I think we’ll dash out to Sherwin Williams this afternoon.</p>
I used a layer of the 7/16″ Frost King weather seat that CLC supplied, and on top of that I used a layer of 5/16″ frost king weather seal
Interesting solution! 10′ of the seal tends to run less than $5 so I’ll give that a try. Thanks!!
I got the Rockler 5 star knobs. On the top of the knob I removed the aluminum disk it came with, put a wide flat washer in place and capped it with a nylock nut. On the bottom of the knob I have it locked in place with a standard nut and lock washer.
The only issue I have so far is that that clc recommended ¾” wide 7/16″ high seal is not tall enough to connect firmly to seal against the white shield. The standard ss nut I glued in place stands about 5/32 higher than the highest part of the white plastic. The threaded plastic part of the mushroom cap where the rod screws in comes in to contact with the nut right as the seal touches the white plastic. Not enough to actually seal.
It seals great without the white plastic shield but I like the extra protection it will give. I am going to look for a taller weather seal. ¾” x ¾” perhaps.
Did you not run in to this issue Bill? Maybe if I’d glued in a low profile nut I’d be ok.
Has anyone actually tried a temporary mounting of the headliner yet? That removable tape looks interesting.
We just did our final inside epoxy job tonight and will be moving on to varnish this week and then the headliner. We have a test run trip coming up next month but I won’t have the electrical done so I want to be able to remove the headliner panels to neatly run wires. But I don’t want the headliner falling on our heads in the middle of the night in a rain storm!
Not mention our initial accuracy on things is not always great so being able to dry run them and adjust will be a huge benefit!
Another afterthought would be to make the rod long enough to extend past and out of the other side of the knob and then sandwich the knob between two locknuts, I think DD did something like this.
I think this will be the way I go at least initially. The more I think about gluing it, I feel concerned that if I need to remove the cover for maintenance or repairs I would be stuck. All great ideas and thanks for the answers!!
