Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

Agreed, that people try to be helpful here. That's why I come here for advice.

And when one reads or writes, it's important to remember that one can not see other persons' faces, and that the choice of words may be different than what one usually hears. Since I was a research scientist, I usually try to write plainly and with fewer words, and little or no exaggeration. In person, I'm quite a bit different.

Here's some progress on the mortise & tenon joints of the deck frame. . You might notice that I've clamped the rails in the workmate. This protects from blowing out the mortise while fitting the tenon.



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if the weather holds, maybe I can glue up tomorrow. The glue-up requires a couple of practice runs, to be sure that all parts fit and align square and level, and that all necessary tools and clampling apparatus are at hand.



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The glueup went easily.

First, I placed two old 75" steel bedrails in the workmates (two workmates are much handier than one!) and carefully leveled them with a digital level. Then i laid the straightest cedar 2x4s across them, and then wrapped them in plastic to prevent gluing the deck frame to the 2x4s. i then dry-fitted the crossmembers into the mortises of one rail, and then for the other side a daughter helped to spread glue, insert the tenons into the mortises, and then measure the diagonals to ensure squareness. After the first rail was glued up, the second rail went easily also. A check with my digital level shows that one crossmember is 0.1d off-level, but the rest are level. After two big thunderstorms in two days, the frame is still straight, square, and level.

As it is now, the cedar 2x2 grid weighs ~50lbs. Now I'm thinking about routing a ledge around the spaces of the frame to fit the the 1" rigid insulation flush to the surface of the 2x2s. After that, i'll probably skin the top with a quality underlayment and then canvas the entire frame.

I can't do much more work until the trailer chassis comes back from the shop. I had decided that the chassis might need some reinforcement to the tongue, and so I took it to a professional builder. He really liked my homebrew Harley strut/spring suspension, and estimated that after the modifications it would easily carry 1500lbs. Aside from adding the reinforcements, he also offered to weld all of the bolted joints and the jack for $240, labor and materials.

I picked up the modified chassis from the welder. To reiterate, he attached 2" tubes from the platform frame to the tongue, and welded all of the corners. He liked the homebrew Harley-Davidson strut suspension and estimated that it could carry 1500 lbs. He told me to bring it back when I'm done to add some niceties, such as welding the jacks and the coupler, and adding light & license brackets.

I attached the cedar deck frame with 14ga. joist hangers, with 5/16 stainless steel bolts into the frame and appropriately treated screws into the longitudinal cedar spars. Although the deck became very stiff after I glued in the foam panels, the forward end flexed more than I liked, and so I made another cedar crossmember and tied it to the deck frame and chassis tubes. (more pics to come). The total weight is now about 270 lbs.

Nice !!!

Here I'm part-way through filling in the deck spaces with foam panels that stiffen the deck a great deal. I see now that I could put in footwells in the third space from the rear, either fixed or as a trapdoor. This would allow a comfortable sitting position. But I think I'll put that idea away for now.

Question: Do I really need to place a plywood deck on top of the frame? Or would glued canvas be stiff enough, considering that the place will be almost entirely covered by the 60x80" mattress?

About the tools -

The Japanese pullsaw (Vaughan-Bushnell BS265M Pull Stroke Handsaw $25) is very useful for precision cuts and trimming of wood and foam. I have also cut 10ft lengths of 1/4" lexan plastic and 3/4' ply with this saw. They are extremely sharp and make excellent finish cuts. In comparison, the Harbor Freight version is not nearly as good, but it is ok for rough cuts. I won't buy the HF one again.).

Between the saw and the handplane (another useful instrument) is a sawguide (Vaughan 569-00 BS/G Bear Saw Perfect Saw Guide) that guides the saw for both bevel and miter cuts. It's pricey at ~$100 but I was fortunate to get an 'open box' return for $25. It works quite well indeed, and may be worth the $100.

The handplane (a Sargent Hercules 4-1/2 size) slices away gorilla glue blobs with ease, and scarifies the foam. It does not blow dust everywhere, and I think it may good for preparing the foam for the canvas covering.

By the way -- >when handsawing or handplaning wood, things will go much much easier if the tool surfaces are clean, shiny, and have been waxed with bit of candle or paraffin wax< This makes a huge difference.

Interesting method of adding extra gluing area ...

Cool.

Wax is a good tool lube but makes for terrible glue adhesion.

The wax used on the tools has never ever been a problem for me. I think it is mostly absorbed into the dust and shavings. After planing with a very sharp handplane, it's occasionally necessary to roughen the surface with sandpaper for gluing.

It took me a long time to appreciate the utility of handplanes, but for non-factory woodwork they can be very efficient in removing material, fitting joints, and general smoothing. It's necessary to learn how to sharpen, when to sharpen, and how to set and adjust the plane, but they require very little maintenance, parts, no electricity, are very portable, and occupy very little space. For most common household work, a yardsale Stanley No.4 can do 80% of all work, and a No. 60-1/2 can do most of the fine trimming.

Ditto for the Japanese pullsaws - my handheld skilsaw almost never comes off the shelf anymore.

It seems that I have created a situation for myself. I thought that I'd upend the chassis to inspect it and paint where the new tubes were welded on to frame, and maybe paint the underside of the deck. That wasn't necessarily a bad or a good idea. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and so I picked it up by the tongue and did the Iwo Jima maneuver (with a respectful remembrance of the USMC).

But bringing it back down might be more excitement than I want. A fractured skull, collarbone, or foot would not improve my personality. It's time to go find a helpful neighbor or two, or rig up the come-along,.

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Yes. do please be careful !!!

Is that suspension going to induce trailer sway?

With the axle attached to both sides and short swing arms I would suspect that setup could generate a lot of sway.

When it was a boat and utility trailer, it tracked very well and without swaying. The struts appear to be in good shape, both the adjustable springs and the shocks within. I'll have a look at the spring adjustments again after all is completed and test-driven (on a quiet Sunday morning) The trailer builder considered the sway issue, but thought that it won't likely be a problem, but that is yet to be demonstrated with a cabin on it. If it becomes a problem, I can change the suspension back to the original design, or unbolt the cabin from the chassis and move it to another trailer (or plant the cabin on fixed stilts somewhere upstate for a season or two).

About lowering it back to the horizontal position, a neighbor came over and we got it down easily. He was surprised at how light the trailer is so far. He has a business delivering new vehicles for 200-500 mile distances using his F-350 dually pickup and a fifthwheel 3-4 car trailer. There is enough space in front of the trailer chassis for me to build a teardrop-sized sleeper cabin for him, and he's thinking it over.

The deck is done, and I just received a shipment of 11.5oz artist's canvas from Big Duck. Here I'm shrinking the 84"x 7yd piece for the top on the hot driveway, underneath breathable black landscape cloth. It's pretty toasty today for Michigan (90F) and so I think it will be hot enough to shrink the canvas under the landscape cloth. Today or tomorrow I'll shrink the 60"x7yd piece for the sidewalls. The cost of the canvas including shipping was $108.