Planning ahead (so I don't have to do anything right now)

I put together another live spreadsheet with my construction task list:

Thunder Egg Construction Schedule

It was a good exercise, because it forced me to think about the logistics and timing of the build.  It's all well and good to have a nice design, but if it doesn't come together in some kind of doable way, we still don't have a camping trailer at the end.

There were even some design changes: for example, I decided that I need an exterior paint that will still look nice when applied to a vertical surface, since I'll need to install the spars (and make holes in the external walls) while the walls are up.  This leaves me leaning further towards an epoxy finish, or even a full fiberglass.  We'll see when the thing is together.

As a logistical consideration to keep the project flowing, I'm going to try to do most of the major cutting, sanding, and other messy things on the weekends, because that's when I can find the time to clean up the garage.  I'll try to ignore the little fiddly things until weekday evenings, when I can do them in the comfort of my little downstairs shop area.

Plywood joining and dust making

Plywood was on sale at Windsor Plywood in Vernon, including their Baltic Birch, which I'm going to use for most of the trailer body and skin.  I didn't have a vehicle large enough to get the wood home (my trailer frame is still under construction), but the discounted prices covered delivery to the safety of my garage, which saves me a ton of work.

The nice thing about Baltic Birch (besides being quite a nice plywood to cut and finish) is that it comes in 5' x 5' fun-size sheets.  That's really handy for, say, a 5' wide camping trailer.

Now I can start making a mess!

This is a little dangerous: I have to resist the temptation to just start hammering the whole thing together until I see the frame.  There might be little imperfections to adjust for, or some as yet unknown reason to perform a redesign.

I started joining the plywood into 10 foot sheets.  I need to do 2 x 1/2" external walls, 2 x 1/8"internal walls (on the other side of 1" foam lamination), 1 floor, and 1 wall template.  I'll save the roof skins for later since they'll be unreasonably long and awkward.

Here's the template, my practice piece, in 1/2" standard:

I looked into doing a scarf joint, which seems to be the way that boat-builders and other fancy people join plywood, but that seemed like a lot of sanding.  I opted instead for a 6" lap joint, which was quite easy to cut out with a router.

After fine-tuning the depth to 1/2 the sheet thickness, I ran 3/4" dados.  I put the whole operation on the floor and knelt on a straight template board to make the cut.  It's important to get all the material out with each pass, because the router won't have a sheet to ride on once the next row is cut.

This whole process makes a tremendous mess.  After doing 2 sheet joins, I was knee-deep in coarse sawdust.

Here's a closer version.  The joining 2' 6" sheet was cut the same:

Aaaaand here we are clamping the joint using every heavy thing within reach.  The glue is Titebond III and in my experience it makes an alarmingly strong wood joint.

Here's the finished 4' x 10' plywood sheet, good as if I'd bought it that way:

I repeated the process for a sheet of Baltic Birch without incident.  The only thing different was the clamping method: I decided to use small screws to hold the joint instead of a pile of all of my belongings.  I'll probably take the screws out later, as they really don't add much strength to the joint:

For the 1/8" wood, I intend to use a butt joint with a 6" backer.  The backer will recessed into the foam core.  The join will be at the foot area of the cabin where it joins the galley, in pretty well the least obvious area of the trailer.

Sweeping time ...

Here's a small picture of the big picture

Let's have a look at the whole instead of the parts.  Here's a quickie side view of the old T-Egg, v. 1.1:

Now that's a nice looking trailer, if I do say so myself.  Or, future trailer.  Erm, assuming all goes as planned.  * knocks on wood *

The doors were sexier once.  They really flowed with the shape of the sides, echoing the jaunty exterior curves and drawing the eye towards the more pedestrian shape of the windows.  But then I looked at the logistics of building, and worse, sealing them, and they wound up looking like this:  barn doors in a space ship.  I keep referring to them in plural because, obviously for such a small trailer, there's one in each side.

The windows are apparently ready to be picked up from the factory in Summerland.  My wonderful Mom is doing that on her way through for a visit.  I got the door latches in the mail today, so I'm busy making sure they'll work.

On a side note, left-right RV latches were hard to come by in Canada.  I'm told that RVs always open on the passenger side, and that's just the way it is.  There are a few other things that are tough to source up here, the next being hurricane hinges.

Enough chatter.  Let's see this fine looking beast from the back, she said suggestively:

Replete with a hatched galley for outdoor cooking and all the kitchen you can fit in 5 feet.  I'm looking forward to doing the galley -- I think that'll be a fun part.

I've decided to get the plywood before the trailer is done.  It's risky business, because the next thing I'm going to want to do is start building the thing without first making sure that the trailer is the size I think it is.  The risk with waiting for a more sensible time is insanity: I'm busy poly-coating the cabinet door handles as I write, and I can only do so many coats of that.  If this keeps up, I'll be polishing battery terminals and sewing frilly window drapes.

Patience, patience.  It's a virtue, some smug troll told me once.

12v Electrical system start

I made a pretty smart-looking grounding block this evening from a piece of aluminium.  Here's it and some other 12v odds and sods that I've been gathering together:

That's a fine looking block, sir.  Just a fine looking block.  Beautiful job.

Thank you, soldier.  At ease.

It's a 6-channel block, similar to the 6-channel fuse box, also shown.  Of course, a grounding block can really just be a cluster of wires all twisted together on a piece of metal, but it's nice to keep organized, isn't it?  Besides, I can only source and research materials so much before I really want to go down and build something.

The 8-gauge wire is the primary line from the deep cycle battery from the tongue through the roof (or maybe the floor) to the raceway.  The 14-gauge is for the individual circuits (4 in use, 2 spare):

1. Cabin 12v + USB outlet
2. Galley 12v + USB outlet
3. Overhead LED lights (cabin reading lights, galley hatch light)
4. Vent fan

Want a closer look?  Sure, you bet, 

This thing will be fastened in the raceway.  The bigger bolt is for the more major 8 gauge connection back to the trailer frame and the negative battery terminal.

The 12v interaction with the 120v system is pretty simple: the battery gets a trickle charge when it's plugged in to shore power.  I considered more complex systems where the 12v gets a direct boost from shore and the battery charged as you drive, but they required a little more hardware and a lot more wiring.  The battery charger is about the size of a computer mouse.  I don't expect to run low on power over a weekend, and if we black out on a longer trip, we'll do what we've always done camping for years past -- use headlamps!

It could still be 2 months until my trailer is done.  There will likely be a whole lot more of little items like this manufactured in the meantime!