Tom & Shelly's build

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Re: Tom & Shelly's build

Postby tony.latham » Mon Oct 08, 2018 10:05 pm

KTM_Guy wrote:I have a 22" on order. I look at the price and look like this :? Then I add up how much I've spent on camp stoves up till now and it's well over what one of these cost. And everything I've read is that these stoves will last a lifetime. And you can pass it down to your grandkids. And you can get rebuild parts.

The best story I read on these stoves was on Expo Portal. Some guy was saying people are nuts spending that much on a stove and bought a Camp Chef or Colman. Some point in a 3 month long trip he ended up ordering a Partner stove and paid for FedEx overnight shipping. And said it was still a deal. I guess some people really need their morning coffee. :lol:

This is the best prices I've seen on the stoves. http://www.elementoutfitters.com/Grills-Stoves-Fuel-s/3318.htm?searching=Y&sort=5&cat=3318&show=30&page=1&brand=Partner%20Steel

Todd


My little town has been called the whitewater capital of the world. Every summer there are about 20,000 floaters that come through here to float one of two backcountry rivers. No roads. The trips take five to six days. About half of these people utilize commercial outfitters.

Every river outfitter I know runs Partner stoves.

Tony
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Re: Tom & Shelly's build

Postby Tom&Shelly » Sun Oct 14, 2018 7:42 pm

We added a 2nd coat of epoxy to the back of our floor Saturday, and a few touch ups for parts I wasn't yet satisfied with on top. But we must have gotten the mix wrong. :x Going on 26 hours, and it hasn't really cured. It is cool down there these days--50's to 60's, so we were hoping it was just slow due to that, but I put the lamps on the touch ups, and also what was left in the pot, and it hasn't seemed to help.

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We tried mixing a smaller batch than we were doing, and marked smaller condiment cups the way we have been using beer cups. My guess it that since it's a smaller batch, it's less tolerant of small errors, and we must have made one. We'll wait a week or so in hopes, but I suspect we'll be hitting the plastic scrapers and vinegar next weekend. :cry:

To top it off, I realized the way I was going to attach the battery boxes to the trailer frame isn't going to work. Think I have a solution though. It'll be easier to show it in pictures, than to try and describe it, so when I have the parts fabricated, I'll take some.

I did get two coats of varnish on our front and bulkheads. Decided to use Helmsman satin finish, as I've had good luck with that before.

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The front is on the far left. That's the inside which will be the AC room and storage. The forward bulkhead is on the right in the left hand picture, and that's the head board side showing. The outlets will have USB ports and the circular holes in the center will be the AC intake and exhaust. The galley bulkhead (cabin side) is in the right hand picture. We taped the sides where they will insert in the walls, and the galley bulkhead has two stripes taped, where we will attach the cabin over-leg cabinets.

No more room in our garage/basement at the moment!

We will probably use at least four coats of varnish total.

So, a mixed weekend as far as success goes.

Tom
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Re: Tom & Shelly's build

Postby pchast » Sun Oct 14, 2018 8:53 pm

Tom

I'd suggest that you get in touch with the manufacturer...
I used west system in small batches. I found out from the
manufacturer that the specific epoxy I was using was the same
by weight as by volume. I mixed some by grams weight
with good result in that case..........
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Re: Tom & Shelly's build

Postby KTM_Guy » Sun Oct 14, 2018 9:34 pm

Don't they have pumps for the epoxy? I use West System with the pumps and It is so easy. One pump resin to one pump harder. This weekend I was mixing small batches of one pump each. No problems, one of the batches I could tell wasn't a full pump on the harder but is was still close enough to cure fine.

I've had mixed results with Helmsman. Out side in the Phoenix sun and heat it will last maybe a year. I started to use Epifanes varnish on outdoor projects and it is great stuff but pricey and time consuming. On my tear I used in the cabin Minwax polyurethane which I have been using for years. I used it in the galley and have notices some fading on the walls, I had a piece of plywood that was holding up the temporary counter top and took it out this weekend and noticed fading that I guess is from the sun. Now this is just from when I have the garage door open and the hatch open. It is slight but I have decided to do a quick sand on the galley and use few coats of Helmsman varnish back there. Should give enough UV protection for the amount of sun that it will get.

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Re: Tom & Shelly's build

Postby Tom&Shelly » Mon Oct 15, 2018 7:47 pm

pchast wrote:Tom

I'd suggest that you get in touch with the manufacturer...
I used west system in small batches. I found out from the
manufacturer that the specific epoxy I was using was the same
by weight as by volume. I mixed some by grams weight
with good result in that case..........


Good idea! We may try that for smaller batches. We already have the product (Raka) so we could just measure the weight of the components of our next batch and use that ratio. (Not sure we have a scale suitable for weighing small amounts--a chemistry balance would be best.)

In the mean time, our lamps seem to have helped, the places they warmed have set up and seem to be close to being cured now. So hopefully by this weekend, we can sand and apply another coat, rather than scrape and wipe with vinegar.

Thank you for the suggestion!

Tom
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Re: Tom & Shelly's build

Postby Tom&Shelly » Mon Oct 15, 2018 8:14 pm

KTM_Guy wrote:Don't they have pumps for the epoxy? I use West System with the pumps and It is so easy. One pump resin to one pump harder. This weekend I was mixing small batches of one pump each. No problems, one of the batches I could tell wasn't a full pump on the harder but is was still close enough to cure fine.

I've had mixed results with Helmsman. Out side in the Phoenix sun and heat it will last maybe a year. I started to use Epifanes varnish on outdoor projects and it is great stuff but pricey and time consuming. On my tear I used in the cabin Minwax polyurethane which I have been using for years. I used it in the galley and have notices some fading on the walls, I had a piece of plywood that was holding up the temporary counter top and took it out this weekend and noticed fading that I guess is from the sun. Now this is just from when I have the garage door open and the hatch open. It is slight but I have decided to do a quick sand on the galley and use few coats of Helmsman varnish back there. Should give enough UV protection for the amount of sun that it will get.

Todd


Hi Todd, we have pumps, but we just use them to move the material to the calibrated (or possibly mis-calibrated) cups. We haven't trusted the pumps to give us equal amounts. We may experiment...

I used Helmsman on our indoor (house) cabin furniture, and also on a pair of Adirondack chairs that live out on the porch year around. After ten years, the chairs need to be scraped and recoated, but the indoor furniture looks fine. I made a coffee table a few years after the love seat and end tables, and we noticed it was slightly lighter for a year or so. They all have evened out now, evidently to a slightly darker color than originally.

Guess we'll see how well it works on the teardrop interior. We're planning on painting over the fiberglass/epoxy exterior, or possibly using bedliner.

Tom
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Re: Tom & Shelly's build

Postby Tom&Shelly » Tue Oct 16, 2018 2:38 pm

Hmm, looked at the Raka web site over lunch and I now notice they say 60 deg F is the lower limit for working with their epoxy. It may just have been cooler than that in our unheated basement shortly after we spread the batch Saturday evening.

We are now leaving the overhead lights on, the incandescent lights a few inches from the uncured epoxy, and have a thermometer in the room to monitor. I'm thinking we may have to invest in a heater this winter if the past few days are any indication. (Unusually cold--about what we expect in the worst days of late December and January.)

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Re: Tom & Shelly's build

Postby tony.latham » Wed Oct 17, 2018 10:38 am

Tom&Shelly wrote:Hmm, looked at the Raka web site over lunch and I now notice they say 60 deg F is the lower limit for working with their epoxy. It may just have been cooler than that in our unheated basement shortly after we spread the batch Saturday evening.

We are now leaving the overhead lights on, the incandescent lights a few inches from the uncured epoxy, and have a thermometer in the room to monitor. I'm thinking we may have to invest in a heater this winter if the past few days are any indication. (Unusually cold--about what we expect in the worst days of late December and January.)

Tom


That epoxy will (eventually) set up.

I've used the Raka pumps for at least three gallons without weighing and have never had a problem. I also swear by Minwax oil based poly* (and I haven't noticed any fading). I've got a can of Helmsmen that'll turn into sludge before I find a use for it.

Tony

*I'll frequently use their wipe-on poly for the last coat. It dries so quickly you get fewer dust nubs. Makes for a fine and hard finish.
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Re: Tom & Shelly's build

Postby Tom&Shelly » Wed Oct 17, 2018 5:57 pm

tony.latham wrote:That epoxy will (eventually) set up.


Thanks Tony! Yes, it does seem to be getting there slowly. I've spent many happy Christmas vacations wearing several layers of old clothes woodworking in that shop, but maybe it's time to invest in a heater.

tony.latham wrote:I've used the Raka pumps for at least three gallons without weighing and have never had a problem. I also swear by Minwax oil based poly* (and I haven't noticed any fading). I've got a can of Helmsmen that'll turn into sludge before I find a use for it.

Tony

*I'll frequently use their wipe-on poly for the last coat. It dries so quickly you get fewer dust nubs. Makes for a fine and hard finish.


Interesting. I've also used Minwax oil based polyurethane, with good results, but the can says it's for interior use only, and recommends their Helmsman spar varnish for exterior. (Am I thinking of the same stuff? :thinking: ) Anyway, I've got three coats of Helmsman on the sides I've been working on now, and it looks okay; don't think I should change products now. Think I'll add a fourth before turning them over and doing the other sides. Guess we'll see how well it holds up in camping conditions.

I used to solve the dust problem by using the spare bathroom for a varnish room (as long as the project was small enough to fit). But, now that we're married, Shelly won't let me use her bathroom anymore! :lol:

Tom
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Re: Tom & Shelly's build

Postby tony.latham » Wed Oct 17, 2018 7:54 pm

...but the can says it's for interior use only...


I missed that you were using it for the exterior. Spot on. You'd be refinishing twice a year.

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Re: Tom & Shelly's build

Postby Tom&Shelly » Wed Oct 17, 2018 10:05 pm

tony.latham wrote:
...but the can says it's for interior use only...


I missed that you were using it for the exterior. Spot on. You'd be refinishing twice a year.

Tony


Yes, we're varnishing the wood (baltic birch) walls and cabinets in the galley, but also the cabin walls and forward storage. Figured we may as well use the same varnish for all.

The floor is epoxy over AC plywood, so we plan to paint it, probably with Rustoleum copper colored hammer finish, right before we assemble the sides. We need to paint the galley floor, but will probably do the cabin floor and even the forward storage floor while we're at it.

We're going to fiberglass over the walls, roof, and outside hatch. We plan to use either paint or bed liner over that. Right now, I think a white hammer finish, perhaps with some black trim, would look nice, but not sure how well the rustoleum product would hold up. If we can make the surface as smooth as the floor came out (so no need for a hammered finish), we might pay to have it painted with good automotive paint.

I was able to sand some of the epoxy tonight, and that part had cured nice and hard. :beer:

Tom
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Re: Tom & Shelly's build

Postby Tom&Shelly » Tue Oct 23, 2018 8:16 pm

This past weekend I bought some 2" x 2" x 1/8" angle aluminum and made brackets to mount the battery boxes to our frame.

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Our plan is to have 1.5" x 1.5" angle iron welded to the frame (where I have them pinch clamped in the pictures), then the aluminum angle sits on top (held in place with quarter twenty screws, once I'm sure where to put them, and drill the holes). The boxes should be close to flush with the top of the floor. They do extend down further than the axle about a quarter inch, but hopefully we'll never get that close to rocks with the trailer. If we want to try a road like that, we leave the trailer back at a camp site.

Could only find an 8 foot piece of the angle aluminum at the big box store, so now I have more scrap to find a use for! :FNP

I also bought an electric heater for our garage. Took the 240 volt basement circuit I had the electrician install when the cabin was built, and wired in a 50 amp outlet. Could have used 30 amps for the heater, but didn't want to change out the circuit breaker, and we may want the 50 amp circuit some day. But that led to the problem of finding a cord with a suitable plug. (The heater came without a cord.) Found a 6 foot range cord that fit the bill, but it would look neater if it were a few feet longer.

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Think I may redo it with a longer cord, and maybe a switch, if I can find one that will handle 50 amps. Or maybe use the cord I have to a 30 amp breaker in its own box that I use as a switch, and 10 gauge (vice 6 gauge) wire to the heater.

The heater works really well, but sure makes the meter spin! Firewood is cheaper around here. We have a three car garage (if you parked them end-to-end) and in 15 minutes my head was noticeably warmer. The thermometer on top of the layout table went from 63 to 66 in that time, but I'm sure would have warmed considerably as the air warmed from the top down. Just right for our Winter epoxy needs!

We did put on two more coats of epoxy on the edge of the floor, and seems to have cured. Should be able to sand it soon, and be done with epoxy until we start the walls in a few weeks!

Finally, this has nothing at all to do with teardrops, it's a different hobby entirely, but I was in a consignment store this weekend and ran across this 16 inch aluminum sphere

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The sign said "whatever this is, it's $19.99." I knew immediately what it is: it's a calibration target for my homemade radar! I have no idea what it used to was. Any guesses? (the clerk had one and my response was "yes, and you should see the size of the angel on top!")

Not sure how it was made either. Which is really why I'm posting it here--anyone have any ideas about that? It is lightweight so the wall must be thin. It's so thin it's dented in spots, which messes with the radar calibration, but I think I can find a good hemisphere. The surface is grooved latitudinally, but I can't see evidence of a seam. There is a small hole at the North Pole where there is a string, like a Christmas ornament.

Tom
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Re: Tom & Shelly's build

Postby Tom&Shelly » Sun Nov 11, 2018 7:23 pm

We finally have the floor ready for a test fit on the trailer!

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We're using 8 3/8" bolts--hope that's enough. I'd really wanted four more, on each corner, but we didn't have the trailer builder put in angles for us to mount there. I'm hoping the full camper box will make it strong enough not to matter. I am real pleased that I traced the bolt holes in the floor back in August and this is the first chance we had to test the fit. Close enough that a roofing hammer took care of any minor misalignments. :shhh:

Not easy to see, but we have round headed bolts that take an Allen wrench. Should be smooth enough not to tear the mattress fabric.

The battery cases fit real nice

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One might notice a little goof in sanding the wood to the front of the cases. We evened that out with epoxy, and, once the floor is painted, it will never be seen again. Always good when one can cover up one's mistakes! (Ask any politician.)

The cases are just a little lower than the bottom of the axle, but hopefully that'll never be an issue. In any event, it's all 1/8" inch or thicker aluminum. I'm hoping if it ever hits a rock with too much momentum, it'll shear the aluminum flange at the quarter-twenties holding them to the steel ledge. That would avoid damaging the battery.

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Tom
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Re: Tom & Shelly's build

Postby Tom&Shelly » Tue Nov 20, 2018 7:02 pm

We started on our walls! For the outer skin I cut some quarter inch Baltic birch and routed the edges to match. The blanks for each skin will be about 5 feet tall and 12 feet or so long, made out of three sheets, with seams designed to go on either side of the door, where the skeleton will eventually support it. Our intention is to fiberglass each skin and then use the template to cut them to 4 feet tall by 10 foot 2 inch long tear drop shapes.

I took three sheets of plywood and screwed them to the layout board using drywall screws. Was surprised how much they bowed! (You can see it on the end of the first picture.) Guess we should have laid the sheets flat after buying them a few months ago.

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We originally planned to glue them together (butt to butt) with epoxy and put a coat of epoxy on the wood at the same time. Decided instead just to glue them together as a first step, weighing the edges with whatever we had. We started the heater a few hours before and it reached 60 as we were putting on the epoxy. We'll leave it on and hopefully the temperature will climb and the epoxy will cure. Then, once it is cured, we'll take the weights off, epoxy the surface, and let the temperature drop a bit to (hopefully) suck the epoxy into the wood instead of letting bubbles out.

Then we'll try laying the fiberglass, leaving an inch on each side so we can get the screws out when finished. Oh yes, I did remember to put waxed paper under the seams.

Tom
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Re: Tom & Shelly's build

Postby Tom&Shelly » Sun Nov 25, 2018 12:30 pm

This is how we spent our Thanksgiving vacation: Spread a coat of epoxy on the 1/4" Baltic birch, laid the fiberglass, added a coat of epoxy to hold it down, then two coats to fill.

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We are a little concerned that the edges of plywood that we joined, that tried to stick up, are still trying, but hope that, once attached to the skeleton, the panel will be flat enough. I will wet sand the skin after that, and could add a coat or more of epoxy at that point. Probably will never be good enough for automotive paint, but Rustoleum hammer finish or a bed liner like Monstaliner should hide our inexperience. :worship:

On the other hand, we now have the plywood for the next panel flattening on the trailer floor under some cat litter (in the background in the picture) and, if that flattens it to the point it comes out much better, we may do a third panel and call this first one practice. (Plenty of other projects that we could use it for.)

Anyway, we hope to be ready to start building the walls over Christmas break!

Tom
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