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As regards covering the under-galley surfaces, there are a couple of reasons why this may not be necessary.
For one, the galley itself is a sort of insulating layer, particularly against the deep radiative cooling you get on clear dewy nights that drops the temperature of surfaces exposed to the sky below dewpoint and creates condensation. The galley floor and the galley contents should be a sort of buffer with a temperature about halfway between that of the inside and outside.
Also, the condensation you get inside the camper is the moisture that you’re breathing out. When you have the overhead exhaust fan pulling outside air from the rear vents forward, your stale air goes straight of the fan and doesn’t reach the footspace under the galley.
Savagemi-
Sorry to hear. You might want to post about this on CLC’s Boatbuilders Forum. It’s pretty active and everybody there does fiberglass/epoxy work.
I was pretty spooked myself when I heard about the galley-flat problem. I used extra-long FG tape, which might or might not make any difference. More usefully I spent a ton on a lithium battery which greatly reduces the weight on the flat and also makes moving the battery around much easier for my aging back. I don’t regret it.
Ida set us back and then we had to scamper out to Colorado, so we couldn’t stop in Illinois this trip.
I have been telling my wife I’ll finish the TC and we can drive to Colorado in it next week, We had been thinking about passing through Cave in Rock or Shawnee Forest. There’s a bit of work to do and the interior will only be partly done, but hopefully the rest will be in good working order.
I took over a TC project in mid-stream so I’m unfamiliar with the terminology before page 188. Reading the Hymnal I see that what I was calling the ‘arch’ is the bottom edge of the bulkhead, the ‘wall’ that receives the shelf tenons. As you say it’s flat beam-wise. In my build sequence the galley flat was already installed so I could use the router to round-over the 90⁰ joint where the bulkhead and flat meet. That gave a nice gentle transition for the FG reinforcing tape to flow starting on the flat, over a bit of the bulkhead, across the fillet joining the bulkhead and onto the bottom of the shelf.
I too was unkeen to gaze at end-grain plywood every night so I built up a combination facing/fiddle out of butternut hiding the shelf’s edge. Butternut’s very soft and lightweight. Visually it’s bland and looks pretty much like Okoume when finished.
I’m working way out of order. I waited to fillet the shelf’s sides until after I had put in the door sills. The sills do take in the pucker of the shell a little but not much near the seam where the shelf is fitted.
Mike –
I installed the shelf and things went pretty smoothly. The galley wall is an arch with a flat midsection. I routed the middle to a 3/8″ radius round, holding the router vertically. This worked well. I went a rout too far when I rounded the arched section to 1/4″ – I set the bit just a tad too deep and notched the arch a little, but after some remedial sanding it looks fine. (This only happened because I didn’t double-check the bit depth.) I covered the whole 40″ (the Hymnal preaches 31″) length of the flat section with FG tape covering the edge of the galley flat to the shelf with no difficulty. This has got to be easier than plastering epoxy-soaked tape upside down on your back per the Hymnal. I combined sanding and weave filling for the tape and the bezel FG.
For whatever reason, after gluing the long edge of the shelf to the arch, there were ~1/8″ gaps between the cabin walls and the shelf ends. (I may have trimmed these but I can’t remember). I just clamped strips of HDPE underneath and poured wood-flour epoxy soup into the crevasses. I’ll fillet these over today and then repeat on the other side once I set the cabin right-side up.
Two things to consider:
- Be sure that the cabin is secure – it’s round and will want to roll. I pushed snow tires under the round end and supported the galley flat with a saw-horse.
- If you, like me, skew towards the senior side, escaping from the inverted camper can be interesting. If there’s plenty of clearance you can walk out on your arms while lifting your feet over the threshold. In my case I parked a table saw outside the door so I could lift myself upwards and out. Either way, no need for the gym to build upper-body strength!
As I advance in age, counting the number of pumps has become less reliable – was it 10, or just 7, or…? So I always weigh, write down the exact weight, and do the arithmetic for the second ingredient. A little gram scale can weigh out very small mixes, so little patch jobs don’t use a full 1/2 oz batch. Other advantages: I can weigh out a dab of fast hardener from a pint as needed, and scavenge those last few mLs that the pump can’t reach.
According to the Hymnal, the shelf install is followed by an ugly episode with upside-down epoxy-soaked tape. Although I didn’t see it mentioned, in the pictures it also looks as if the galley-flat edge needs to be rounded before taping. At this point I still have the shell upside down and I’m going to try and rout the galley-flat corner edge to 3/8″, install the shelf, fillet the shelf bottom seam, and then apply the tape from ‘above’. Once it’s right side up again I’ll fillet the top edge of the shelf. (I too had a conflict with the door sills so I trimmed the shelf a tad.)
I’ll report back when the damage is done.
