Part Six: "The Sands of Time"

April, 2015

Building a Custom Camper takes a lot of time.  Even more when you can only work on weekends and have to travel an hour and a half just to get to it.  Time can really drag on.  But nothing drags on like the endless sanding it takes to make things smooth and even. Sanding, sanding and more sanding... That's the theme of this next post.

Let's refresh:

We now have the coach completely covered in a wooden shell.

 

Custom mounting plates were designed for the tail lights and mounted in place.  The custom lights have been dry fit and tested.

In case you were wondering, those lights are custom, one-of-a- kind.  They are the offspring of 1965 Chevrolet Impala and 1960 Chevrolet El Camino tail lights,  whose union created an original, unique design.  They are also retro-fit with LED circuitry. Let me know what you think of my Franken-stitched creation!

No matter how hard you try, when dealing with curves things don't always seem to go exactly right.  Therefore, sanding is involved to make the seams nice and level.  This is important because the next step in the process is covering the entire roof with Filon fiberglass.

 

She's not just a pretty face... She's an amazing talent!  The girl should be shaping surfboards on the coast of California somewhere!  I'm lucky to have her skills on this project.

The size of the Coach is realized from this perspective...

The seams were sanded level, then taped with fiberglass seam tape used in the boat building industry.  After the epoxy had set, we molded everything in with a special adhesion promoting filler to smooth it all out.  In this next picture you can see the license plate recess all molded in.

We've now completed hours and hours of sanding and filling, so we are ready for the final step before Filon.  Everything is coated in two-part epoxy.  This seals and protects all the wood from any kind of rot.  If you dumped it in a lake I'm sure it would float!  

And now the project is really starting to look like a camper!

 

 

Tune in again next time for the "Filon Finale!"  As always, feel free to comment, ask questions and follow our Build Blog!  We really would love to hear from you!

Happy Creations!

Michael & Carrie

Part Five: "A Roof Over Our Heads"

March/April 2015

Now that the walls are up and the ceiling is installed it is time to start putting on the outer plywood skin that will attach to the spars. But before we can do that, we need to frame in the front window and the rear windows.  

The front window is tricky because the front of the coach is curved and we have to get the radius exactly right!

 

And the rear windows...

Also, before we can put on the outer skin, we need to build plates for the tail lights to mount on as well.  

This is probably a good place to talk about the tail lights.  I wanted something really unique and vintage but they also had to be LED for the low voltage draw.  These lights are vintage but have new LED circuit boards and were made by combining multiple years and models into something that's one-of-a-kind.  They are one of our favorite parts of the coach!




We want the coach to be warm in the winter and cool in the summer so insulation is very important.  We used a 2" foam with an R-12 value that was cut and fit between each and every spar.





Now it's finally time to start putting on the exterior plywood.  We used 1/4" and some really big ratchet straps to help make the bends and hold it all in place while the epoxy dries.

Hey look!  She's completely covered in wood now!  We actually have a roof over our heads!  

Join us next time as we prepare the body of the coach for the Filon skin!  Don't forget to follow us and as always feel free to leave comments!

Happy Creations!

Michael & Carrie