Overhead cabinet

I have made a slight change to my plan in terms of the overhead cabinet for the galley. I had planned on creating an ellaborate shelf system, but after my success with creating a laminated curved piece of plywood I decied to try remaking the overhead cabinet. The orig was in rough shape and my first attempt to bending baltic birch did not come out as nice as I would have liked.

The trick to making these is all about gluing up more than one piece and shaping them on a mold. I had the mold already built, so I bent two sheets of baltic birch with poly glue holding it all together. Loads of clamps and bars to hold it in place, but after 24 hours of drying I popped it off and voila, a curved piece that held it's shape. I crafted the end out of a 3/4 piece of ply and the slide rails out of birch. Loads more glue and staples to hold it all together and then a layer of birch veneer to make it look nice.

I made the sliders to match the base cabinet. Here are some pictures of the unfinished overhead cabinet. Needs a bit of sanding to get the odd bits of glue off, but overall I'm pleased with how it came out.

rebirth

Out of the womb at GSM :)

Just pictures

Colin and company are nearing completion on their part of my project. He and his guys do some very nice work. Here are some pictures.

Update from GSM

Colin & co are making good progress on our project. The latest project is the brakes. The original ones were rusty, filled with cob webs and missing parts. When I towed it up there last fall, I did not even connect the brakes since I knew they did not work. Keep in mind that the trailer was empty and the interior was taken out, so I figure it only weighed around 1900 lbs +/- 100lbs.

Rather than repairing the brakes, Colin suggested replacing the backer plates and entire brake assemblies with new ones. I'll put some pictures up later, blogger seems to be having some problem uploading this morning.


Doug

Wet Bath

Holy crap that's expensive! That's what I said to myself today as I was adding up the costs to use a macerator toilet versus a standard traveler china toilet and a new tank from tankdepot. Here's the details, the macerator toilet (low boy) was about $800 plus another $160 for a tank. The traveler was $139 from VST and $160 for a tank from tankdepot... The other added cost for the wetbath using a gravity system is a couple pieces of king starboard and some good epoxy, so add in another $250.

So, $960 for the fancy toilet versus $550 for the gravity system.... Colin is again right, Sh*t rolls downhill and it's a hell of allot cheaper ;)

D

The beginnings of a shower

The caravanner did not have a shower originally, but just a sink basin and a small one at that. I'm not sure I am going to put a sink basin back in or not, but I am going to install a shower. I have a brand new tub from a friend of mine who is a wiz at firberglass, but I keep going back and forth on the idea of using it since it is very tall.

I like the idea of using the tub since it's already water tight. I won't have to go through an extensive process of building a wet bath, but in order to use the tub I'll need to use a macerator toilet. These toilets are nice, but expensive. One of the other issues/benefits of using it as a wet bath is the height of the tub, 14". It's not much to jump over but in such a confined space I don't want to make it more labor intensive to use the loo. The other more obvious point, is that the tub was not made for my rig specifically and I would have to cut a fair amount back to make it fit.

So assuming I use the tub, cut it back and drop it only on the front, I'll need to re-face it. Last night after dinner, I dug out one of my moulds and modified it. Just a couple screws. I then took 6 pieces of 5" baltic birch 1/8 ply wood and glued them together. I then took the piece and bent them around the mold. Clamped them and let them sit. Before work this morning I popped it off the mold and the piece looks awesome. A nice 90 degree bend with a total thickness of 3/4 inch. The purpose of this little experiment was to determine if I cold create 3/4 inch thickness bent 90 degrees, which could then be used to wrap the leading edge of the tub, giving it a more finished, almost barrell look.

Here are a couple pictures

Another Update from GSM

Colin offered to to build me a tank yesterday.......I think he was ribbing me about how much crap I wanted to put in the trailer and very gently saying "That's a whole load of crap!". This is one of the good things about working with Colin, he gives it to you straight, not candy coated. One of the things about renovating or re-designing a trailer is scope-creep. It's a term used in the software industry, and likely others, that indicates that the scope of the original work has slowly expanded and the work is no longer just X. You know, the "While we're at it" items. Colin has a good way about telling you, you're in scope-creep....... but I still want the fancy toilet... period ;)

Here are a couple shots he sent me yesterday.

Four Drawer Chest - Restoration 3

M wasn't feeling well last night, so after I read to S I headed down to the shop to putter around. Turned into a late night, but I was able to finish installing the pop locks on the four drawer chest. I had to notch out the inner drawer using the table saw but that wasn't too noisy so it did not wake up the household.

Here are couple pictures.

Love those handles from rejuventation.com. Keep in mind this is the original chest frame that I re-veneered with birch. Looks pisser ;)



This one shows the poplocks in the closed position on the two top drawers and in the open position on the bottom two.




This one is of my new poplar drawers with birch bottoms. Still need a bit of sanding and a coat of poly. Just need to get a warm day outside to spray them.

Update from GSM

Colin called today. It's always good to chat with him, but it's a bit like sitting on Santa's lap at the local JC Penny when you're a kid. But in this case, my wallet dictates how much I can wish for from Santa ;)

The belly skin is in process and a couple custom options are in place. Colin does these nice tire carriers slung under the rig and I had him add in a receiver on the back so we can carry bikes. The other thing Colin is working on is our door. He's re-habilitating it and replacing the door handle with a nice replica from VintageTrailerSupply. I have a feeling I'll be ordering loads in the coming months from Steve.

Sometime in the next month or so, I'm hoping to make the run up north to Colins and grab the rig.

Here are some pictures.

Old bed pictures

This is a follow up post to the one below. These are pictures of the old bed. Disregard the green cushions, the trailer was being used to store them for the prior owner.

Doug

busy weekend

This was a good shop weekend. M took S out for errands on Saturday and then S and I played during the afternoon in what was left of the snow. Sunday was another good day since S had a birthday party at the local Papa Jinos. Before I continue, kids birthday parties are insane compared to what I did as a kid. Trips to museums, girlie dress-up parties, tea parties, gym parties, animal parties, bowling parties.... you name it. So I was pretty pleased with S when she told me that the pizza party was the best party of the year, so far. I'm glad to see that eating pizza and cake, as well as hanging out with her friends makes S happy. M and I are plannning something low key for S's party this year. We're not falling into the big party parade that seems to be going on.

Ok, now on to the airstream stuff.

Over the last couple weekends and the occasional after dinner time, I've been working on the rear bed for the caravanner. This has to be one of the most visually interesting bunks I've seen in airstreams, less the overhead bunks like the one Robs is putting in his SOTR. Robs bunks are pretty cool. I really wanted to keep it, but like all the other cabinets it had water damage on the base and parts were just worn out. The biggest issue was a break in the frame that was mended some time ago. Not sure when, but the l-brackets used cost 7 cents.

The first part was to figure out what parts were salvagable. The second part was to repair or rebuild the parts in the most need. The base was rebuilt using new 3/4 ply stock and covered with an alsacorp fx sheeting, brushed aluminum. The next part was to repair the main bed, This was a combination of reinforcing it with 1/2 ply and filling all the holes with west epoxy. (love this stuff). Once all that was done, I re-veneered the outer part with psa birch veneer and built a vent.

The vent came out awesome and the pictures show a partially built version, since I had yet to poly the frame. I chose to use a vent versus putting a drawer back in since I want to use the underbunk space for gadgets and storage. I built the vent from a single piece of birch and used a stacked dado blade to make the cuts. I then used my trim router with a bevelled bit to shape the rear vertical parts. Then sanded the crap out of it....this was a bitch to sand... but it looks good in the end.

Here are some pictures..

So Happy NOT to have my trailer

Ya right! It's one of those funny things, I cannot wait to get the rig back from Colin and start in on it but the other side, my more conservative side, says take your time, do it right. Any ways, in the meantime I have been researching and refining my plan. Some changes to plan so far, such as skipping over the precision temp junior. I thought this product was very cool and came packaged pretty well but the overall cost is a big hurdle to get past. I don't think the smaller vintage trailers were really ever their target market, but it would be a neat option. I think I'll look at other options for heat and hot water, but I HATE the idea of cutting open the side to slide in one of those rv water heaters.

So my research goes on. The one area that I have spent a bit looking into is Semi Truck Sleeper cab products. There are similarities between sleeper cabs and our old rigs, but the nice part is that there are way more packaged solutions for the trucking industry to choose from. Check out www.aap.com. They're a specialty shop and have some very cool, yet expensive, component based systems.


Get ready campers, hibernation is almost over!!!


D