I’m Mike in Baton Rouge, building my first teardrop. I am mostly following Tony Latham’s book, but it’s going to be part woody. I built a wood strip kayak a few years ago and plan to translate those techniques. If you’re familiar with the cover of Matt Berger’s book, you’ll see kinda what I have in mind…the exterior sidewalls will be aluminum sheathing on the bottom, and fiberglassed wood strips on the top half. I plan the whole hatch to be a wood strip design. Still don’t know about the roof exterior….but I know I can avoid a lot of upkeep if I don’t go with wood up top.
I started out by building the Paulk workbench on rolling casters....it is so nice to have a big workbench that I can rollout outside or break down as needed, as I have a shop with a one-car rollup door. Space is always a consideration.
I have already built the sidewalls, finished the interior side, and am now stripping. I couldn’t find any 1/8” Baltic birch anywhere around here, so the interior walls are poplar ply. I found a shop in Houston that gets the 1/8” in, and hope to find 10 sheets or so to do the headliner and roof and make the 4-hr trip over next month. I plan to build the cabin first and then the chassis later (though I’m not a welder).
Here are a few pics
Looking forward to being a part of this forum. There is an incredible amount of info here...the key is being able to figure out how to access it efficiently....! I have studied the build journals of Tony, JoeGrz, and GarthB...impressive!
Mike