Flat pack trailer kit. pop top works, and we have a tent

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Flat pack trailer kit. pop top works, and we have a tent

Postby saltydawg » Thu Oct 08, 2020 4:00 pm

EDIT it has a name Tradgrans in swedish it means timberline or tree line.

Well sorta I am missing a few small panels that should be able to out of window and door cut outs, and the lifting roof panel to make. But I have a flat pack 12x5.5x5.5 teardrop kit sitting on my shelf.

I am doing the first of two bed platforms tonight, then I am out of foam which I am picking up tomorrow. Friday night I will make the roof panel but then I am out of epoxy, I dont need much more just the other bed platform panel and glassing the outside corners which I could not use the epoxy I have been for that as its thickened.

Plan for right now, tonight bed panel which is part of the structural paneling/framing, friday night the roof panel which is my last panel of any size, its 5.5 x 6 iirc. Saturday I will tear down the laminating table which is built on my frame. Sunday I will attach the axle and make/install the wheel wells, then monday Spend all day doing mva for a vin, inspection then title and tags. I am waiting on the adhesive to attach the panels to frame, then tues thru friday panels go on the frame. By the end of next weekend I am hoping to have all the panels on the frame. Thats when I will be posting a bunch of pics. I took next week off to do the panels but if the adhisive does not show up I am kind of stuck or not.

behold a flat pack trailer kit.

Image
Last edited by saltydawg on Sat May 08, 2021 1:56 pm, edited 16 times in total.
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Re: I now have a flat pack large teardrop kit

Postby CharlieL » Thu Oct 08, 2020 4:47 pm

wondering id anyone has used or tried MDO plywood. More expensive than normal, but already treated to be waterproof. You can get 1 side or both sides coated , super smooth. Used by sign companies for outdoor signs. I have apiece hanging around in my shed for 5 years, looks like new with no treatment of any kind.
Someday I will get off my rump and jump into a build, Thanks folks, for the info. and the things y'all do for one another

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Re: I now have a flat pack large teardrop kit

Postby MickinOz » Thu Oct 08, 2020 6:08 pm

CharlieL wrote:wondering id anyone has used or tried MDO plywood. More expensive than normal, but already treated to be waterproof. You can get 1 side or both sides coated , super smooth. Used by sign companies for outdoor signs. I have apiece hanging around in my shed for 5 years, looks like new with no treatment of any kind.

We have a perhaps similar product here called film faced plywood. We can get it in an outdoor rated "formply" which is used for forming up concrete pours.
I initially intended to use it for 3 reasons, its structural rating, waterproof glue, and the water proof facing.
In the end I didn't.
Two reasons again:
1) The stuff we get is super smooth so it releases from the concrete pour easily. This is a good thing when using it for its intended purpose, but everyone I spoke to said it was a bitch to paint. Required lots of sanding. That's before I read Tony Latham's posts on putting a 3M scotchbrite pad on an orbital sander. Brilliant idea, I reckon.
2) We just had a major (~750 million) plant upgrade here. There's a lot of form work in our scrap timber pile. It delaminates quickly in the weather. This isn't a surprise to me. Waterproof glues are a necessity obviously, but if you don't seal the cut edges the unprotected timber itself swells so much when wet that the glue can't help but fail mechanically. Well, really its the timber adjacent the glue that is failing, I guess.

So there didn't seem to be enough advantages to using this material.

Your MDO, which I had to Google, seems like a much better proposition. We might be able to get it here, but I hadn't heard of it.
Doctor Google says it paints well.
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Re: I now have a flat pack large teardrop kit

Postby saltydawg » Thu Oct 08, 2020 7:12 pm

Okay to take my own thread somewhere else. MDO does look like it could be a decent plywood. But the same issues with all wood, it will rot. Yes its made with water proof glues, but as soon as you have an overlap and the end grain gets wet and does not dry it will rot. For our trailers it might be ok if you sealed the endgrain, and did not have the end grain against anything. Like I would not want to have it sitting on a lip of a frame, or put a trim around the bottom of it for looks. If you used it for a roof top where two pieces come together at 90 degrees one of the two pieces will have an enclosed endgrain.

Although it might be the best plywood you can get for our type projects.
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Re: I now have a flat pack large teardrop kit

Postby OP827 » Thu Oct 08, 2020 7:15 pm

I am interested to learn what materials and glue did you use for the panels and how did you laminate them? Thanks for sharing!
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Re: I now have a flat pack large teardrop kit

Postby saltydawg » Thu Oct 08, 2020 7:33 pm

OP827 wrote:I am interested to learn what materials and glue did you use for the panels and how did you laminate them? Thanks for sharing!


Skins are .055 thick gel coat and fiberglass sheet from a company in south carolina ( they make it for the rv industry as well as others ). It is similar to filon, but much much stronger. Cost is about 1.20 a square foot but I did do an 18 hour round trip drive to save on shipping. Core is 25 psi dow xps foam. They are glued together with us composites thick epoxy glue, I added a commercial flex agent to give the epoxy some flex. The most epoxy is brittle, and it only gets worse when thickened.

I did the lamination on a melamine coated plywood table I built on top of the frame, and used a pvc pond liner as a vacuum bag/top with weather seal and lots of clamps and bars to seal the edge. I bought a used vacuum pump from craigslist.

Video is the original sawtooth guy doing his new one, same procedure. In fact the skin is from the same place. I did a few things differently than he did, due to some of the minor issues he had. I had the plan of doing it this way 8 years ago, but he did it first.He filled a lot of the blanks in on how to do it, I filled in some of the issues he had for mine. Like he had spots that did not adhere, he thinks it air bubbles, I think his epoxy was too thin combined with air pockets, thats why I went with thickened. But that meant I had to find and test the flex agent to find the proper amount to use.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qcoO3Gd9GQ&t=314s
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Re: I now have a flat pack large teardrop kit

Postby OP827 » Thu Oct 08, 2020 8:54 pm

Thanks for the info. I saw the video and I suspect that another reason for cavities in his panels could be from uneven surface of foam after manual roughing the surface with an orbital sander that can eat into foam very quickly. Instead of doing that I would run the xps foam through a planer like I did for my roof panel to achieve precise same thickness. I am thinking of doing similar skin outside for panels of my next build (in design phase now). It saves a lot of time and money with instantly achieved finished surface.
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Re: I now have a flat pack large teardrop kit

Postby saltydawg » Thu Oct 08, 2020 9:03 pm

OP827 wrote:Thanks for the info. I saw the video and I suspect that another reason for cavities in his panels could be from uneven surface of foam after manual roughing the surface with an orbital sander that can eat into foam very quickly. Instead of doing that I would run the xps foam through a planer like I did for my roof panel to achieve precise same thickness. I am thinking of doing similar skin outside for panels of my next build (in design phase now). It saves a lot of time and money with instantly achieved finished surface.


From my tests I think the flex agent lets the epoxy "eat" into the foam a little, I did not sand the foam. The skin epoxied with the flex agent when pealed off the foam took more foam with it, than just the straight epoxy did. I accidentally dripped some of the flex agent on a bare piece of foam and "dissolved" the foam a little. Which make sense because its a commercial flex agent used to make various polymers more flexible. It does that by limiting the length of the polymer chains. So it would make sense for it to attack the foam a little. The ratio of the flex agent is 150 grams to 32 oz of epoxy resin then either 1 to 1 or 2 to 1 depending on which hardener I used, so very very little. I would not be surprised if the foam did not have the flex agent in it already to help with the flex.

here is my thread about testing the flex agent.
viewtopic.php?f=65&t=73093
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Re: I now have a flat pack large teardrop kit

Postby tony.latham » Sat Oct 10, 2020 6:54 pm

But the same issues with all wood, it will rot.


Salty:

I disagree. You can build anything out of wood, and if it's done correctly, it won't rot.

I'm sitting in my wooden house which is well built. It'll be here many decades (or even centuries) beyond my lifetime.

Your philosophy may be based where you live. Here in central Idaho, about the only way you can get wood to actually rot, is if it is in contact with the ground. So the two of us may have been down two different trails.

:thinking:

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Re: I now have a flat pack large teardrop kit

Postby saltydawg » Sat Oct 10, 2020 7:43 pm

tony.latham wrote:
But the same issues with all wood, it will rot.


Salty:

I disagree. You can build anything out of wood, and if it's done correctly, it won't rot.

I'm sitting in my wooden house which is well built. It'll be here many decades (or even centuries) beyond my lifetime.

Your philosophy may be based where you live. Here in central Idaho, about the only way you can get wood to actually rot, is if it is in contact with the ground. So the two of us may have been down two different trails.

:thinking:

Tony


First the name is Scott.

I understand what your saying about a house, but until you put shingles and siding on a camper its not the same. We all know it can be done right, but what is right? Building techniques and building material makes a huge difference, As we know some woods are less prone to rot, some rot if you look at a glass of water and the wood with in ten mins of each other. You live in a dry area, you are the exception to the rule for wet weather. Google says Idaho get 13 inches of rain a year, the US gets 38 as an average. In maryland we get many rain storms that are 3 to 4 inches of rain in 2 hours. and 44 inches a year as a state average, 3 times what you get.

If you seal it up with fiberglass, or pmf and do it well you can stop it. But using pine strips, various caulks or other things that trap water is asking for rot. Look at all the pop up campers with rotten roofs and floors and thats from stuff made for the rv industry meant to stop leaks.

If you search rot here there is 594 posts about rot. yes some are threads like this one. Some are the one below, we can agree that the way that trailer was built was asking for a problem but thats the problem. Some think if they put enough caulk its sealed, some think if they overlap its fine. I come from the sailboat world, where thousands of boats that are fiberglass with wood for cores, or other framing still rot. Where people have been figuring out how to stop leaks for 200 years, yet they still leak and rot.

Even ifHoward had one of the holy grails of caulk, sikaflex, fail and let water in.

http://tnttt.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=73 ... t#p1267246
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Re: I now have a flat pack large teardrop kit

Postby tony.latham » Sun Oct 11, 2020 9:53 am

Even if Howard had...


Scott:

That build with the ongoing rot problem is because it was improperly built –-I think we both agree with that. A lot of the so-called rot discussions on this board are really about saturated OSB, not true rot. I cringe everytime I see that stuff here.

With my aluminum sheathed builds, I have sealed the wood with epoxy. With the last one, I fiberglassed (using epoxy) and then coated with Monstaliner.

I'm just back from this camp in the Clearwater drainage of Idaho where it gets about 40" annualy. (Just saying, my friend.) :frightened:

Image

It was a good three nighter.

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Re: I now have a flat pack large teardrop kit

Postby saltydawg » Sun Oct 11, 2020 5:33 pm

If doing wood, I agree as you did as yours, the only way is to fiberglass it. Its actually not hard to that at all.
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Re: I now have a flat pack large teardrop kit

Postby aggie79 » Tue Oct 13, 2020 2:38 pm

Scott,

I am looking forward to your project. I've been following Sawtooth's project on Expedition Portal and find it to be quite interesting.

Take care,
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Re: I now have a flat pack large teardrop kit

Postby twisted lines » Tue Oct 13, 2020 4:26 pm

I am trailing along and like the panels a lot, strongly considered that or a similar material to make the shape and do it seamless :thinking: looking forward as well
Racking up; And Rapin foam
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Re: I now have a flat pack large teardrop kit

Postby saltydawg » Tue Oct 13, 2020 5:13 pm

aggie79 wrote:Scott,

I am looking forward to your project. I've been following Sawtooth's project on Expedition Portal and find it to be quite interesting.

Take care,
Tom


Well You and twisted should like a few more pics. This was test fitting and final trimming of the wall lengths. Side walls, rear wall, 1/2 the bed platform, and the front lower panel are all cut to size. Tomorrow they get the edges routed to form the overlap for gluing and support. The front lower wall, and bed platform all lock the location and squareness of the side walls in the front and the rear wall lock the rear square, basically they all box each other out.. They are all going in saturday, so end of day saturday it will look like a camper. May even get the upper front in as well.

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