The Poet Creek Express - Foamie Hybrid

[dales133]

I feel your pain with the masking tape thing, i did exactly the same thing when i masked up my hatch ribs to pmf the skin and took of 4 coats of poly.

[KCStudly]

Randy, here’s hoping you guys have a good time, and many more so that I can catch the next one.

Dale, the tape thing hardly bothers me anymore. Yeah, I could have sprayed all of the parts after a final assembly, or used clear epoxy instead of varnish, but at the time I didn’t go that way and couldn’t see any way other than the way I went. I’ll do another round of finishing and see if I can’t fix it so that it looks half way decent. If not, so what? I’m still going to have fun camping in it!

Yesterday I laid low and went and saw my mom for mother’s day.

Tonight I started fixing all of those broken screws that snapped when I took the hatch hinge off last. I took a slightly different approach, improving the process, taking another tip from Karl. Rather than gouging out around the screw shank to get the broach started, since the pilot drill could not be used to center on the broken screw, I made a small jig to locate off of the OD of the broach, using the two adjacent screw holes to hold the jig. Here you can see the parts and how my initial attempt to spot the broach in freehand did not work.


Here’s how it works. The screws hold the jig on location and the jig keeps the broach from wandering.


Because there is a step in the outside of the broach it only goes so deep before contacting the jig, but that is far enough to establish a cut.


From there I removed the jig, ran the broach down again to get a little deeper, and used a narrow screwdriver blade to break the core of wood from around the screw. Sometimes the oak wouldn't break all the way, but it would at least enough to get the needle nosed vice grips onto the screw.


Karl predicted that I might need to grind the tips of the (his) pliers and gave me permission to do so before it became obvious that it would help a lot (best friend). Sure enough, it really helped get the pliers in there to get a good grab without having to broach an even bigger hole.


By using a small adjustable wrench pinched down low on the plier jaws to turn the pliers it prevented the jaws from twisting out of position on the screws, and they turned right out.


Once the screw was out I used the screwdriver again to break out whatever may have been left of the core, and gave the edge of the glass a little swipe with a swatch of sandpaper to get this.


I just had to repeat that 6 times, and then I drilled out all of the holes in the seal trim pattern with a pilot for the upsized No. 8 screws, so that when I pot these in with filled epoxy I can have the proper sized screw waxed and started in the hole.

[Ned B]

Clever solution, well done!!!

[KCStudly]

Thanks Ned.

I have been inside of a mixer most of the morning and am going back in now after lunch, probably for the rest of the day... reassembling the swing arm geartrain after a rather extensive repair. Short story, rather physical work just to hang on to the auger and not take a digger, let alone turn wrenches. Not sure I will have the energy to go north at the end of the day, but we shall see.

[KCStudly]

It has been a slow week for TPCE. As mentioned I was beat after work on Wednesday. On Thursday my coworker took a turn in the mixer, so I had more energy, but instead of working on the camper I went and got a new lawnmower, unloaded it and got it put together… our old one had a serious rod knock.

Friday I did make it out to the shop, but spent the time catching up with Karl and strategizing the next steps for the build. In other words, I got nothing done.

Yesterday was the spring Unimog gathering, Mog Fest 13, which was a full day affair. I got to ride along in a 6 wheel Pinzgauer 712. That was pretty awesome, and we had a great time wheeling, getting stuck and unstuck. Truly amazing vehicle and a great candidate for a camper conversion. The radio truck version already has a built in gas heater that draws fuel from the main tank; a dedicated generator compartment; plenty of room inside; and is fully off road capable. It is lacking on luxurious accommodations, and only goes about 60 mph on the highway, but it has full selectable lockers on all 6 wheels and dual oil pumps so that it can operate at extreme angles. The gunners hatch over the passenger front seat makes for a great sun roof, too!

Today I slept later than intended and just as I was getting close to Mecca I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to bring my epoxy supplies. Drat. 40 min round trip back to the house to get them. The overnight lows are probably consistent enough now that I could just leave them in the loft, but I’m playing that conservatively for now, as we have still had some pretty cold nights.

Anyway, I decided that the front radius glass could stand to have a smear of thick along the top; despite the poor man’s peel ply there were a few spots that had a bit of an edge. There was a small area of foam on the roof near the curb side of the hinge that got abraded when I set the cordless drill down recklessly… the kind of “bark” where the foam splits open in several small but relatively deep fissures; and I still had that feather edge on the curb side of the galley wall and the hinge spar screw holes to repair. So I decided to tackle those first and see where I got before glassing the rest of the roof.

This area just inside of the sharpie mark was where the side wall glass was held away from the wall by a slightly proud area of the edge of the hatch. I mixed up a small batch of wet epoxy, sucked some up into a syringe and dribbled it along the edge of the wall. Some of it oozed in and I used a utility knife blade to stuff the rest.


Prior to having mixed the epoxy, I waxed 6 of the #8 screws and started them in the hinge screw holes that had been hogged out to remove the broken screws.


Then I mixed some thickener into the remainder of the batch, loaded it into a zip bag and squeezed it in around the screws. The trick to making sure there were no air pockets or voids seemed to be to squeeze it into a single spot on one side with the tip of the bag down in the hole and let it extrude around the screw and up out of the hole. On the hatch side I cleared the bench and set the hatch up on to get a little help from gravity (rather than working with the hatch on its side).


Then I squeezed what was left in the bag out along the top of the front radius, squeegeed out the bag and squeegeed the thick along the ridge.


There was a little thick leftover so in addition to that spot on the roof previously mentioned, I smeared it on various locations, like the area above the street side front clearance light where the glass cloth fibers had been upset where I pulled the wires thru…


… and a couple of spots where the wall layups had some slight low spots between the seams. This will all need a little bit of sanding to clean up later.


By then it was 3pm and I had to decide if I was going to go several more hours to do the roof layup. Other options were to glass the doors or the taillight nacelles… picking something smaller, but in the end that’s where I decided to call it quits for the day.

Throughout this build I have gone thru periods of great motivation and progress, as well as periods where my motivation has flagged and progress has slowed. I need to get back up on the ball and get things rolling again.

[Atomic77]

I think the ebb and flow of build motivation is a normal process. I think you taught me the build is a journey not a destination...
Looking fantastic. Any thoughts on a finish? (Coating)

Michael

[KCStudly]

At the moment I'm back to thinking latex primer and paint, mostly because, as close as it seems to the end of this project, the further away it is when you start making a list in your head. It would be all too easy for me to get wrapped up in body work. Whereas I could have the thing painted with latex in a matter of days.

Karl is pushing me to use high build filler primer next, but I figure there will be some spot work with the 410/epoxy first. I would really like to avoid spraying in the loft.

Thinking about everything that is left to do, obviously refinishing the polyurethane damaged by the tape can wait, but there is still so much to do that it can get overwhelming. My internal mechanism for stressing about getting done by July is to admit defeat to myself in my head too early and get depressed by it; which slows things down like a deer in the headlights. Catch 22, much?

I need to try and get more sleep, too. Less than 4 hrs a night just isn't enough.

[Ned B]

KC!, KC! , KC!... Everybody now... KC! KC! KC! The finish line is So close! You can do it!

Phew, hope that helps... latex sounds great! And dare I say it will be easy to touch up down the road?

[GPW]

Finish this they way you always intended (or you’ll never be Happy) .... Then the next one can be more “compendious” ...

[KCStudly]

Ned, thanks for the enthusiastic support. It does, really, help... really.

GPW, I originally intended to use canvas and latex paint... and for the build to take about 2-1/2 years. Never intended to body work the whole thing, nor use automotive/boat grade paints. Yeah, I want the lines to be clean and smooth, but I don't want to put in the work that it would take to make it "glass smooth".

I guess Brad's visit was a wake-up call to what so many have been telling me; "it's a camper", "wait 'til it gets its first scratch", "you are not going to get that thing dirty, are you?". Seeing some of the "rough edges" on his camper, yet the functionality and adventure that he is having with it, I want to get to that point.

Don't worry, I haven't abandoned my desire to make it turn out nice (tho some times that is the stumbling block). I'm just trying to be realistic and stay/get back on target. TPCE has always been intended to see rough service, at least on the outside. That said, I haven't totally abandoned the idea of an epoxy filler coat and some block sanding, but then again, a nice semi flat gray and white polar camo paint scheme would hide many sins.

But there are still many things to do first before I can get to that point.

[GPW]

Don’t know about hiding sins .... What Sins ? It looks SUPER !!! I’d paint it like Fine old Luggage . ,schmaybe’ a distinctive Leather look ... Show it off !!!

[GPW]

RE: Motivation ... We as an Artist, experience creative ups and downs all the time , some days Magic , others , not so much ... In the recent experience of painting that old railroad Cafe ( See Album) , there were days that were just smooth painting all the way , other days we faced seemingly “impossible” tasks , but once started were able to complete them surprisingly easy ... All a matter of perseverance and enjoying the journey ... That really is the FUN part ... When I;’s done , you’ll, be thinking of building something else ... It is our ”curse’ as a “maker of things “

[KCStudly]

Thanks for the encouragement, GPW.

[KCStudly]

It has been a long time since I have posted one of my marathon progress posts. Well I have the ball (train?) rolling again. I’m getting to bed earlier and not posting as often, but the pictures are stacking up, so it’s time to get caught up!

Let’s see if I can piece things together again from looking at the pics to tell the story.

It must have been this past Monday evening that I removed the screws from the repaired hatch spars, washed all of the patch areas and sanded the highs down flush.



I was pleased to find that I had completed everything on my rolling To-Do list… mostly related to glassing the hatch, so I sat down and made a new list that should see me through the rest of the major glass work. That felt good to get organized and know what is prerequisite. Now I can pick off things from the list of various scopes to suit my available time and ambition, and still feel like I am making positive progress.

On Wednesday when I walked into the shop I was greeted by this, a circular laminated Poplar stair stringer. The treads will be inserted into the dadoes that were cut into the curved face of the stringer. Apparently this is a remodel job where Karl is tasked to take the old ornamental railing, where the pickets used to terminate on top of the treads, and refit it so that the pickets terminate onto a spiral flat bar fitted to the top of the new stringer profile. Anyway, it is an impressive piece of wood work (done by others) that I thought you all might enjoy seeing.



Laminated newel pedestal router details.


Tapered tread, and riser dadoes into curved face.


Please excuse the blurry photo. I was trying to capture the 12 or 15 layers of 1/4 inch Poplar. Later, Karl informed me that there is a rolled steel core of 3/8 inch thick plate buried in the wood plies.


I had thought I might break my “no lay ups at night” rule and do the roof on Wednesday evening, since the day light is running longer now; but was beat after work and decided that was more than I wanted to take on. I figured I could do a smaller layup so I got out the taillight nacelles, but found that they needed a little touchup spackle where I had gotten a drop of acetone on the foam. So I did that instead and cut some scraps of bias cloth for two plies each (stowed flat in a large zip bag to keep them nice).


You might also notice that I glued a couple of foam blocks under the nacelles as temporary risers, or churches, so that the glass can drape down around the edges neatly during the wet out w/o bunching up on the bench. The cans in the previous pic were used as gravity clamps. I used just a couple of blobs of TB2 to spot tack the blocks; hopefully they will break off easy later.



Another thing on the new list is to test fit the side doors and hinges to check and see if I have to trim the doors for the added glass thickness. Somewhere previously I mentioned that I would be using a jig to set the hinge alignment. The jig amounts to a 1x stick the same length as the jamb. I used the self-centering drill jig to get the screw holes exact, and clamped the lift off style hinge halves with the barrels of the hinges up tight to the edge of the stick. I just used 2 of 4 screws in each for now to avoid splitting the edge of the jig.

Self-centering drill.


Hinge halves screwed to hinge jig.


Here you can see the whole jig with just the post half of the bottom hinge.


Since the hinges are symmetrical and reversible, it was just a matter of flipping things around in the same screw holes and shimming the jig up to avoid splitting the inner skin with the screws.


It turned out that 2 pieces of the 5mm ply was just what was needed, but I also added a couple of swatches of cured 6oz glass (that I had previously peeled off of one of my test pieces) to compensate for the fact that the door hadn’t been glassed yet; whereas the walls around the door openings have. Using the top halves of the hinges slipped onto the posts it was relatively easy to align the jig to the edge of the street side door.


Again, just two screws for now, until the edge of the door is reinforced with glass.


That was a good place to stop for the night.

On Thursday I did some light sanding on the taillight nacelles, then went back to fitting the doors.

I taped some pucks of 5mm onto the door seal flange to match the seal spacing so that I could hold the door flat to the wall while shimming it into place.




With the hinge jig flipped around again I could fold the jamb side leafs out against the wall and make small tick marks with a fine tip sharpie marker.



From there I used the combination square to transfer the marks to the jamb.


Using the other set of hinge tops and flip-flopping the jig again I clamped the jig with the same spacers, less the cured glass slivers, onto the face of the wall. Slipping the hinge posts up into the upper halves I was able to plumb the jig to the jamb and locate the screw holes with the centering drill.




Here is a sequence of the jig going thru the motions as if it were the door…




…and the lift off feature of the hinge. There’s a small roller ball in the tip of the post that helps the hinge pivot smoothly.



And the money shot, the door hung on the hinges.


I have figured all along that I will have to shim the hinges off of the jamb, since the hinge leafs are only 1/8 thick (actually, only 0.118 inch, or 11 ga) and the door gap is 1/4 inch; so I wasn’t surprised to find that the lower radius of the door bound on the inside radius of the sill where it tapers up tighter to the bottom of the door. Without any shims this was as far as the door would close for now, but the gaps all appeared to be consistent, as far as I could see.


Here you can see that, although wide by the amount of the shim I need to add, the latch side gap is parallel, as is the header.


Whereas on the hinge side it is tight by the same amount.


Here is where it is binding, as proven by testing for the pinch point with a slip of paper (view from inside looking down between the seal flange and inside skin of the door (which is still covered with rosin paper and blue tape… argggggh, more blue tape on poly).


Friday I sourced some 1/8 thk aluminum for the shims and moved over to work on fitting the curb side door.

Remember way back when you guys gave me a hard time for being 1/16 inch off on my door frame? Well that has turned into about 3/32 of an inch at the top of the curb side hinge jamb. The taper in the gap looks hideous, and this time Karl agrees with me that it must be fixed. To put it in his words, “it’s the biggest 3/32 inch you’ve ever seen”. The perspective of the pics hides it a little here. Sorry for the glare from the evening sun.


The latch side looks good against the shim.


As does the header.


The gap at the sill is a little bigger, but at least it is consistent.


The gap behind the upper hinge leaf is almost double, almost 1/4 inch.


Here you can start to see the taper and how the gap at the top radius is inconsistent. It looks worse in person and “has” to be fixed.


Much staring and contemplating ensued. Options discussed included: smearing thickened epoxy onto the jamb (but we figured that would not be easy to sand out true); gluing a tapered shim in and then capping with more cloth/epoxy (but that didn’t account for relocating the flox corner); smearing with thick and using a form with release on it and controlled thickness spacers to mold the proper thickness of filler (for less sanding); using a narrower wedged filler shim epoxied into place that would allow a new flox corner to be added on the outside edge, then glassing over that; leaving the jamb as is and modifying the as yet unfinished edge of the door (except that would mean that the finished inside face of the door would look different… but I may be trimming that with black gloss paint anyway… the previously mentioned blue tape issue); and various versions of adding what would amount to a scab to be worked back to the proper form with the router, ether on the door edge or in the jamb.

Anyway, I left that for now and won’t fit the jamb side hinges until after I decide on a fix.

By comparison, that big dip in the curb side wall doesn’t look so bad after glassing, or maybe it has just grown on me and I don’t see it as much anymore.

Almost a milestone, having the doors almost in place for a picture opportunity.


Finally we get to today, Saturday; time to glass the roof. The weather, and my procrastination, had more or less decided that I needed to use the slow hardener, and since Karl was going to be in the field today, meaning that I would have no help placing the large sheets of cloth, I decided to do this with both plies in place dry and soak the neat epoxy thru. With gravity working for me, despite being the largest yet, this would be one of the easier lay ups to wet out.

Here I have laid the first ply out, using blue tape (that I remembered to fold tabs back on) to hold the edges to my reference marks while I pulled and stretched it out straight; also to hold it and keep me from scrunching it up with the squeegee, at least until I get a good portion of it stuck down.



Then the second ply, also dry and taped. The pointy corners of the tape tabs on the first ply kind of held the second ply up a little and wanted to snag, but I worked around those issues w/o much trouble.



Next I keeled the cabin up onto the milk crate to make reaching the center of the roof easier, especially out in front of the vent hole.



After pouring the first batch of epoxy on and having it run toward the edge of the roof more than I was comfortable with, once I had the front section done I switched back to the “halfcocked” position, using just a couple of 4x4’s and 2x4’s to prop the cabin up, instead of the milk crate.

From there I was able to finish the curb side, then I lowered it back down level and I could get the rear by standing on the milk crate in the galley. Along the street side and the rest of the front I was able to get just using the step stool. I rough trimmed each side of the vent opening as I went so that I wouldn’t have to prop the cabin up again just for that, and things seemed to go really well. Once all that was settled all I had to do was go around the edges trimming stray strands; poke down a few small fisheye blister spots; and poke down a few small ‘pops’ (like tipping off). Another thing I did as I went was to wipe any excess drips and squeegee lines that built up along the roof radius edge. I didn’t want to have to try and sand these out again; the lap on the top surface will be relatively easy to sand fair, but the radius takes a lot more care.

Here it is after it started getting tacky. The spackle and guide coats of paint make it look splotchy still, but the cloth wet out nice with my best wet ratio yet, just a bit more than 1:1.



Here’s the vent hole trimmed rough for now so that the weight of the unsupported cloth didn’t lift the edges.


After taking a short break to get some fresh air (taking the respirator off and going outside for a few minutes to drink some water), it was still early, so I went ahead and glassed the taillight nacelles.

I used the fast hardener here, wet the foam and wood, and brushed around the inside of the hole, too. Then I wet the glass out on a separate sheet of plastic, peeled it up and placed it on the foam. From there I dabbed it down into place with the brush and trimmed the excess off around the hanging skirt, leaving just a little to trim after it cures (also so that it didn’t droop down onto the bench).



No need for a flox edge here as the nacelles will be glued to the hatch with thickened epoxy, then filleted with more thick.

It felt like I had gotten a lot done, so I finished up for the day happy.

[GPW]

Thar' be doors !!!