More Staining and Shelves

Heidi has been getting busy with the stain again: lower shelf, longitudinal bulkhead, and trim piece are done. I've started putting in the shelves, there is another bulkhead splitting a few of the shelves to allow for varying heights and widths. That is everything up until the present, so everything from now in will be current information.

Hinges

These things have been giving me a world of hurt as they are right in the water channel for the door seal. I've mounted them on parallelogram shaped blocks with matching recesses in the wall in order to limit water pooling on the wood. The idea is that any water that hits the hinge blocks flows forward to a drain hole going through the block so it can continue down.

On the left the cutout for the hinge is visible, more trim clamping on the right

Staining and creative clamping

Heidi begins staining

 A warm weekend let us begin staining. Heidi worked on getting the vertical bulkhead done and I started working on the trim pieces. The clamping is pretty awkward,  but I've had pretty good success with clamping a stiff piece parallel and wedging in small column pieces at regular intervals.

Clamping trim onto the lowest shelf

Shelf-End and Compartment for long things

Vertical bulkhead with cutouts

The interior of the walls were made from 1/4" baltic birch, routed flush with the perimeter frames. Unfortunately, baltic comes in 5'x5' sheets, so we ended up with a seam on each wall. On the curbside wall, the seam was covered with a vertical bulkhead that holds the end of the shelves. The lower part of this bulkhead has some cutouts for shoes and anything else. The bottom shelf has a longitudinal bulkhead which creates an enclosed compartment. The front of this compartment is accessible through the vertical bulkhead cutouts, while the rear portion goes through the rear bulkhead into the galley with the purpose of storing long objects

Where the long thing compartment goes through the rear bulkhead

First Wall and Control Panel

Put the first wall up, due to being relatively thick (2") from the insulation the joint with the floor is quite strong. There is one section that purposefully did not have insulation in order to mount some electronics in an interior panel. It has a ammeter, 20A power switch, 12V socket with toggle, light switch and trimpot for light brightness. The panel is held on with some brass hinges and a pair of brass machine screws.

Framing up the walls

The walls were cut out of 1/2" ACX together with the jigsaw to keep the profiles identical. Then began the long and tedious task of putting the frames in the walls. The street-side wall wasn't too bad, just the window frame and the outline of the ceiling, floor, and bulkhead. The curb-side wall took several times as much time, due to the complexity of the door frame and the shelves. The major setback with putting the frames in was creating clamping jigs due to my reluctance to put screws through the exterior wall and provide a way for water to seep in. The door ended up being rather heavy as well from all the framing for the window, handle, and deadbolt. The photo below shows the door frame being routed out to match the wall.

Floor

The floor consists of and 1/4" ACX sheet, a layer of 1 1/2" insulation, and a sheet of 1/2" ACX. The frames where made from 1 1/2" square douglas fir, with half lap joints at the T's and corners. The whole thing was leveled with the laser and shims, although we had to utilize some rocks and welding tanks to keep the ply from springing up on the first round of frames. The frames and plywood, as well as the underside of the floor sheet, were painted with three coats of exterior paint in case of moisture getting in. Insulation was cut from a 4x8 sheet to fit in each rectangular section, then the whole thing was sealed up. It's pretty solid, just a little deformation if you jump on it. I did a few passes with a router to clean up the edges, and it was wrapped up in a couple weekends. I built the tarp shelter around this point to keep out any sporadic snow and rain.

Frame Assembly

The frame has been assembled without too much trouble. I used a few 2x4 sections with wedges along with a laser level to get the whole thing level. A piece of angle iron clamped across the diagonal kept it square as this was happening. The trailer was originally designed to fold, so one of the crossmembers was split into two c-channels and bolted along the rails on both sides. Also, the clevis pins holding the triangular front section on where replaced with bolts and nylocs. The wiring was pretty straighforward as well, although I did run independent grounds to each light after reading about some issues with using the frame as a ground. The only thing to give any bother was the 4-pin connector for the lights; it had a strange flange around it that had to be trimmed off to fit the vehicle connector. All lights appear to function properly.

Design

This trailer has been designed after considerable research by myself, and while originally kept as a SolidWorks model, is now documented in about 50 or so drafted drawings. I would have liked to keep an updated SolidWorks model, but unfortunately I cannot run it on my computer and using a school computer for everything is a little bit impractical. Anyway, lets get the basics out of the way. The trailer frame is a HarborFreight 4x8 utility trailer rated for 1200 lbs, which we shouldn't get anywhere near. The trailer is 48" wide, overall length 97" not including the 24" tongue box, and just over 48" tall without the solar panels. It is designed to sleep one person and have significant storage, particularly in the cabin. The galley is not insulated, in order to minimize the heating volume, while the rest of the trailer has 1 1/2" insulation sandwiched between 1/2" ACX and 1/4" birch plywood. There are two windows, one large triangular one on the street-side and one diamond shaped one in the door. Ventilation is achieved through a box fan and vent in the ceiling, and several passive vents in the front wall. There is a small tongue box with an access hatch to the interior to act as a wet-locker, as well as store the battery in a well ventilated place. We have constructed a tarp shelter under the balcony for the first stages of constuction. It is high enough to accommodate the trailer with one wall up, with the intention of moving to the garage for the second wall and roof addition.

Getting Started

Welcome all! This blog has been created to document the build of Heidi's teardrop trailer. It has actually been in construction for a few months but I figured that it is better late than never. As I am writing right now the shelves have just been put into the curbside wall, but I'll do my best to get this all caught up.