The Poet Creek Express - Foamie Hybrid

[KCStudly]

Thanks for the input Tom. Mine didn't come with gaskets. I could make some, but I figured I'd either use a small bead of putty and/or a bit of sealant; perhaps leaving a small area at the bottom unsealed.

I was hoping that I wouldn't have to seal the inner pull plate to the inner door skin, mostly because it is just another opportunity to make a mess with the sealant, but maybe a small "worm" of rolled up putty to bed it in would be a good idea.

[kudzu]

Just wanted to say I think things are coming along so well with your trailer. I peek in now & then to check the progress. It's looking so good!

[KCStudly]

Kudzu, Thank you for sticking with me on this. Couldn't do it without all of my TNTTT friends!

[aggie79]

Thanks for the input Tom. Mine didn't come with gaskets. I could make some, but I figured I'd either use a small bead of putty and/or a bit of sealant; perhaps leaving a small area at the bottom unsealed.

I was hoping that I wouldn't have to seal the inner pull plate to the inner door skin, mostly because it is just another opportunity to make a mess with the sealant, but maybe a small "worm" of rolled up putty to bed it in would be a good idea.

KC,

I just used a light duty latex sealant on the outer plate only. I didn't seal the inside plate.

[KCStudly]

Okay, cool. I'm thinking a paintable grade latex window caulk.

Just to be clear, when I said I would epoxy inside the latch pocket I meant that I plan to paint neat epoxy on the raw wood inside the hole in the door where the latch mechanism goes. That way if any water does get in thru the latch it won't dry rot the small chunk of 2x4 fir blocking there.

No progress tonight. The Ford is in for service and ended up staying overnight: 90k service including all drive line lubes (engine, transaxle, transfer box and rear diff), cracked ABS tone ring (manifested as a slight clunk or wheel slip feeling when coming to a stop while braking softly), brake job, new battery (OEM lasted 8 yrs with no issues, but they said it didn't pass the load test), and checking out the HVAC to see why there is never any heat directed toward the foot well (probably a blend door issue from new).

[KCStudly]

Just to prove that it really got done I’m posting some redundant appearing pics to prove that progress has been made on the doors.

From earlier, the curb side door centered in its opening with the 1/16 thk SS shims.


Last night I laid up the remaining two sides of the street side door edge. The creases in the glass tape took some persistence again, but I stuck with it for about 90 min until the slow hardener tacked enough to grab, and was able to push them down until they stayed.




The cloudy looking areas in the above pics are where I had put down some filler previously.

I spent some time measuring and drawing the bolt opening in the door edge with details of the TriMark paddle latches (on the right) to figure out the details of the latch plates that I will make (on the left). As far as sketches go it’s a bit of a mess, but this is part of the process and I don’t mind having it accessible here so that I can find it again later if need be.


Today I trimmed, washed and sanded fair the lay up shown above. When washing the amine I splashed too much water on the rosin paper and didn’t want to leave it to soak on the poly that the paper was protecting, so I peeled it off and applied a fresh piece.

I couldn’t decide whether to do a final fairing on the outside face of the door now, or finish the edge first, so I put a fresh piece of 60 grit belt on the long board and ran it over the door to check for high areas of foam. There was a bit in the main panel under the window but the rest was pretty good, although there were plenty of lows from the OEM scores and some dings, etc.

That was when I decided to lay up the next two edges on the curb side door. The glass tape for this had been laid flat since I discovered the creases (or maybe these strips hadn’t been creased as much) so the layup went much easier. I decided against trying to get all three remaining sides since it is so much easier to stand the door on edge and work down, and I didn’t want to rest the door on a wet edge.

Tomorrow I will repeat the process and get the last side of the curb door laid up, maybe even get along with the outside skins.

[tony.latham]

KC:

Looking great as usual. Thought I'd throw out some old pics to keep your compass true.











Tony

[KCStudly]

Love that bull grass.

Today (Sunday) I cleaned up the glass layup on the top and latch side of the curb side door. Typical stuff: steak knife to saw off the excess flash; amine wash; 36 grit medium block to get the rough edge left by the steak knife close; the 60 grit on the small hand block to get real close; and then the 100 grit on the other medium block to make it fair. Next back to the 60 grit on the small block to flatten the ends of the lap seams and it is ready to glass the final, bottom, edge. (I didn’t end up getting to that today but will tomorrow.)

Next I cleared the bench, rolled out and cut the glass cloth for the outer door skins, four pieces in all. At first I considered piecing together the parts for the narrow sections around the top and sides of the windows, but that would take extra body work to fill and fair any laps, and I still have some glass left over, so I splurged. The doors are more than half the width of the cloth wide so it took 4 whole yards with about an 18 inch wide drop (not including what will be wasted from the window opening) to get all four plies. In the meantime I cleaned all of the little bits and pieces out of my FG scrap bin, leaving only moderate and up size pieces.

I know that doesn’t sound like much progress, but the passenger side door on the Jeep has decided not to unlock anymore and Karl and I spent some time fruitlessly trying to get that sorted out.

[KCStudly]

Last night (Monday) I finished laying up that last little section on the bottom edge of the curb side door. Also calculated approximately how much epoxy it will take to wet out each of the outer door skins.

I think I am going to try for a marathon layup on the doors. Probably the way it's supposed to be done in the first place: wet/fairing coat; allow to set up some 'til firm; first ply; allow to set up some; second ply; allow to set some; weave filler coat; cure to "green"; sand; sealer coat; set some; 2nd sealer coat; cure.

[GPW]

Two plies .... Brings to mind putting one of the plies on the Bias, for maximum thread strength in any direction...

[KCStudly]

That would be nice, but it consumes a lot more cloth due to the extra waste. The doors are pretty stable as it is now (although I have been careful to leave them laying flat this whole time) so I'm not feeling the need to go that extra step here. Although they don't have the weight of the windows in them yet, I'm still pretty confident that they will be fine.

Besides, Tony has been trying to keep me on target and to keep things in perspective, and some part of me has been listening. When I look at my overview list to completion (i.e. not detailed to ever last step) it is still pretty daunting. Part of the problem is the conflict from jumping ahead to campable, which would have me moving out of the convenience and weather protection of the loft sooner, vs. taking advantage of the convenience of the loft to do as much as possible prior to shipping and final assembly.

So yes two plies on the doors, the same as everywhere else over foam (hard edges of doors and door jambs only got 1 ply of 9oz tape, pine locker bump out only got 1 ply of 6oz with overlaps at the inside corners); but no, none on the bias for the doors. The hatch did get one of two plies on the bias.

[KCStudly]

Epoxy is pretty impressive stuff. I recently had a minor chip on the back edge of one of my front lower teeth. Today the dentist repaired it with, you guessed it, UV cured epoxy. First he roughed the surface (imagine that whirring high speed die grinder tool noise that everyone winces at, but w/o the pain… no nerves exposed). Then he applied a primer/curing agent with a small syringe, removed excess and dried it. Then the resin, which I assume is premixed and filled with some sort of thickening media (it color matches teeth). Stuff cured in seconds with a little light beam tool. Then he shaped it a bit, faired the lap edges and gave it a buff… just like what I have been doing… only different.

In the real world of camper building I got the bottom edge of the curb side door all trimmed and cleaned up, thus completing the basic glass work on the door edges.

Looking ahead on my list for a little something more to do tonight, skipping past door hardware, and doing the door skin layups, I revisited the idea of cutting rabbets along the galley wall edges to form the hatch seal mating surface. The idea has always been to keep the inboard surfaces of the wall edges closer/tighter to the hatch lip, with the outboard surfaces stepped down allowing more of a gap so that the seal is not over compressed. My thought was that the step would also act as an extra barrier that moisture would have to climb over in order to get in.

Now, IIRC I have at least 1/8 inch clearance between the wall (uncut as it sits now) and the hatch, and in some places perhaps a bit more. (Between the hatch “bumper” and the rear edge of the floor I only have 1/16 inch.) The D-shaped ribbed bulb seal has a free height of about 3/8 inch and the rule of thumb is to try to compress the seal about 1/3 of its free height, not more than half (although the seal bulb doesn’t collapse on itself until it is about 1/8 thick… i.e. the section thickness of the bulb wall is about 1/16 inch… and the closed cell foam it is made from can be compressed even further… doing so reduces seal life and can reduce effectiveness due to permanent deformation).

So that means my target rabbet depth is only 1/8 inch or less (3/8 x 66% - 1/8 (fat) gap = 1/8 inch or less). So if I err on the side of caution and start with a 1/16 inch rabbet, is that even worth doing? See what I mean? (Tony’s prompting to get this thing done is ringing in my head.)

Now after confirming that the doors swing fine with the 1/4 inch gap all around, and that the gaps there could have been, and would have looked even better if they were tighter, I’m thinking maybe I don’t want the hatch seal to be that same width, and maybe I don’t want the seal to rest flush to the edge of the wall where it will catch more UV rays. So what if I err on the super conservative side and don’t rabbet the wall edges at all? I can place the seal a little further in, centering it on the wall, and if it crushes too much and degrades, I can always come back later, cut the rabbet, apply some fresh epoxy, touch up the paint and try again.

With the rabbet it would not be easy to reinforce the wood grain on the wall edge with the glass tape due to the sharp inside step. Sure I could complicate the hell out of it, laying tape on each surface and even floxing the edge along the step, but I had resigned myself to just using neat epoxy, then paint. If I go without the rabbet it would be pretty easy to lay up the tape along the full width of the wall edges, and that wouldn’t prevent me from adding the rabbet later.

One last thing, before he retired Grant Whipp said that I could easily crush this seal down to 1/16 inch and he wouldn’t expect much degradation. As mentioned previously, the seal was shipped loosely coiled, with the roll being somewhat flattened in order to fit into the mailing envelope. That would have been fine, the seal was soft and sprang right back when I took it out of the package initially, but then I put it back into the envelope and stored it that way. So the next time I looked it had creases where the bulb had been folded back on itself. So I rerolled the seal and stored it laid flat in a bigger box from then on. Tonight when I looked at it again it had more or less recovered with just a slight wrinkle wherever it had been folded previously. So, yes it recovers over time, but no, it is not fully resilient.

I will sleep on it, but I am leaning toward the simplification of no rabbet. Regardless, there are still a couple of divots (one minor and one much more significant prior router oops) on the street side wall edge that need filling before either the router bearing or glass can be laid there.

Creeping along here, but have next week off thru the 5th, so I plan to make good progress shortly.

[Ned B]

KC, it sounds as if it will not hurt to simply install the seal and then the doors as a trial . as you say, you can always remove it and do the routing but it's awfully tough to put material back on. Apply the KISKC ( because you certainly aren't stupid I had to adjust the acronym a bit) principle, I think you are on the right track I trying it without the rabbet first.

[KCStudly]

Thanks for the input Ned.

Sorry if I caused some confusion by jumping back and forth talking about door fit vs. hatch to galley wall edge seal. For the side doors I'm using TrimLok brand TrimSeal, so no real concerns there (the compression is built into the permanent door seal flange shim), but I would have liked the look better if I had planned for a slightly narrower gap surrounding the door edge, something like a fat 1/8 inch to 3/16 would have looked slightly better than the fat 1/4 inch that I got when aiming for 1/4 inch.

On the hatch seal I had another thought and that was to put a dado groove down the center of the wall. This would keep the exposed gap smaller, but still prevent the seal from being over compressed. I know that I can stand less compression on the seal than I would have right now, but again don't want to over complicate things or overshoot.

Right now I leaning toward letting it be and seeing how it goes.

[Ned B]

Ah, I see... So long as you keep the elements out either way! I was confused, thought you were going to groove the door/opening for the seal. A fat 1/4 huh? sounds like a quilter is helping you ( the fabric people sell Fat Quarter yards...). It looks awesome... Continuing to cheer you on!