This week is a little bit of melancholy as we progress toward the end of building and head into the very real possibility of actually spending a night or two camping in this project next weekend. We're running out of good warm weather to work and it won't be 100 percent done before we'll have to tuck it in for the winter but it won't take much in the Spring to finish the last details.
We have enjoyed figuring out each step and the challenges of making everything fit together. The need to think many steps ahead and avoid doing something at one point that messes up something else days or weeks later has kept my feeble brain from getting more feebler. There's no instruction manual for our specific camper, but there is plenty of good information out there on "the interwebs" and we've learned that this teardrop community is bigger than we knew going in. We look forward to the end of Covid and maybe taking a journey to a group meet somewhere.
So, last Monday evening before she headed West for work, Kim and I made a pattern for the hatch support ribs and cut out a template to use to make three more. Tuesday and Wednesday evening I cut out the other three and used the template to make them all the exact size on my router table. I decided we needed a 1/4 inch gap all around to allow the hatch clearance to open and close so I shimmed it all around with scraps of plywood. I glued in the top and bottom rails and had something that resembled a hatch skeleton all clamped in place to dry by Wednesday night. Friday evening we glued in the center two supports and called it a night.
Saturday we glued and nailed in the cross supports that lock everything together and again left it to dry overnight. I staggered them so I could brad nail through the support ribs into the cross braces.
Sunday morning everything was all dry and solid structurally so we removed all the clamps and popped it out of the galley to start adding the outer plywood skin. I doubled up the lower cross piece at the bottom before we did the plywood because I figured we'd be tugging on that bottom section opening and closing the hatch and that might add a bit of strength.
Here's a video in 5x speed (to avoid a yawn fest in real time video) of us gluing on the outer plywood skin. There will be a seam and a small strip at the bottom of the hatch as our plywood is 5 feet x 5 feet and the length of the hatch top to bottom is about 63 ish inches. Not a huge deal as we selected two plywoods that seem to be the same and should be the same color once the fiberglass cloth and epoxy is done. If not, we'll slap some bumper stickers on.
Test fitting plywood in progress
Clamping the edges. The el cheapo Harbor Fright bar clamps for some reason must outgass some toxic Chinese slime as they leave marks on the plywood that don't sand out hence the paper scraps. Kim alerted me to the missed paper on the bottom clamp. She keeps me out of self inflicted disaster much of the time.
We went with a 6 inch memory foam mattress and today we unleashed it from it's stangle hold in the box it shipped in. Because our front wall is curved we need to cut a matching bevel in the edge of the mattress and end up shortening the overall length to fit end to end. We tossed it in the camper and sliced open the plastic and marvelled at the darn thing puffing up to it's full 6 inch height and full length. In reality, it will take 24 hours or more to allow memory to recover so we went home and ate pork loin and green beans.
Starting to find it's full size. We'll cut the bevel once it's fully expanded. Probably next weekend before setting up camp.
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