What's that over head? Roof, Roof? No...

 It's the ceiling you stupid dog...

Alright, I know - it's one of the worst dad jokes, but that's where we are today.  The ceiling is in, and I'm working on things like wiring, blocking, and poking holes in the side of the trailer (truly an essay in courage, or my lack thereof).

First-up, I added all the blocking on the sides. I made use of the leftover bits of 3/4" ACX to CNC arcs of plywood that matched the arc of the wall.  Hey, once in a while even the blind squirrel gets the nut!  

A couple of pocket holes, a couple of screws, and a little sculpting with the jigsaw, and they were in.  I had intentionally left them a little proud, and once installed, I cleaned them down to the wall line with a pattern bit.

Next up, wiring for all the lights, MaxxFan, and I'm still not sure what else.  Some sort of little command center up front, but I still don't know quite what - so I'll run a bit of flex conduit and a messenger line in it - just in case I figure it out.  With the exception of the 3-way switches for the cabin lights, I'm home running most all of the lights, and using Wago connectors anywhere I have to join two wires.  No wire nuts or crimps to fail.

I'm not particularly proud of these, nor the reason they exist...  In my jumbled planning, I neglected to consider letting in wireways during the build.  As a result, I had to find a way to get wire down to the light switches in the cabin, and surface molding was not a consideration!

So I chose to make a template and hog out a wireway and switch box.  I CNC'd the templates out of MDF (a really bad idea, BTW).  It's really easy to cut MDF, and if you touch it with a router it will make a 1/4" dip.  Since hogging the wireways took a couple of passes, I had a couple of extra opportunities to inflict non-straight lines as I went along.   I also made a second template to cut in a cover plate on the outside so no weak spot in the aluminum right next to the door.

My porch lights are corner mounted, with  a pigtail.  I used a 1 1/2" Forstner bit to cut a pocket in the wall (a little less than 3/4" deep, and then came down from the top with my trusty Kreg pocket bit (it's just about 5 1/4") to provide a dropper.

Same bit chucked up from the inside of the roof, I cut another hole into that top down hole to get the wire to feed thru.

Obviously a little out of sequence, but it looks pretty good up there.

Finally, to fill in the wireways that I hogged out, I 3D printed a set of covers that snuggle in pretty well around the bundle of wires going down the wall.  Printed in 6" sections, and trimmed as necessary.

Yet another excuse to pull out the printer and tell my wife how much I 'saved' by printing my parts!

Wireway covers deployed (well - sort of).  I'll need to move them, trim to fit, and add a little dab of glue, but you get the idea.

Next up - more wiring, wiring the electrical panel, insulating the ceiling and installing the *roof*, and then starting on the dreaded galley hatch and lower front.  

Bending on the ceiling

 The walls are up, the spars are cut, and the ceiling is varnished.  Must be time to install the thing!

I very carefully cut, planed and milled the spars a couple of weeks ago - 59.5''x1.0''x 2.0'', milled out slots for wire to run, pallet wrapped them together and left them in the corner.  When I brought the 1/8'' ceiling home, I carefully slotted the spar between the walls, and - it was a perfect fit!  At which point the bad news hit me that it should've been 1/8'' shorter in order to still fit on top of the plywood.  So load them all up and back to the shop for a few passes across the planer, bundle them all up again, back in the car and head home.  And two-thirds of the 13 miles home, I happened to think that if I were semi-smart, I'd do counter-sinks on the drill press instead of needing to do each hole individually and freehand them.  64 operations later (16 spars, 2 holes each, 1/8'' thru-drill, 5/16'' counter-bore on top of it).  Re-wrap and head home.  

Once I got here that Kregs screws are closer to 5/16¨ diameter, and so quickly set up the pocket screw bit as a straight bore stop.  Sixty four more holes and we're mostly set - well except for the 10 holes I drilled in the first spar to ensure it locked the ceiling.

Once the first spar was in, the others were simply a matter of spacing the spars (note waste sticks ct to 8¨ as a spacer between the spars.  Pocket screws driven straight into the counter-bores sucked the ceiling right on into place.  And finally on the inside, I used a few 23ga wire nails shot at pretty acute angles to lock in the ceiling.

There's still a lot to do on the ceiling - cut and secure the blocking, route the cabin and front end wiring, add insulation, and a host of cosmetic blems that I'm probably the only one who will notice. 

One of the biggest potential blems is the ceiling butt joint.  I wrestled with it for a bit, but I think it's going to get a very thin cap of cherry to cover it (same as I'm 'finishing' other not so tight seams.  I think it will look great.

The rearmost spar is a 2x2¨ bit of laminated oak.  Siwek, my local hardwood merchant has shorter random lengths of wood - usually not 4x4, usually not completely pristine, but certainly usable.  I picked up a piece of oak that was nearly 8'' wide, and probably a touch over 3/4 thick, I was able to rip it, laminate it and finish mill it to 2x2.  It's straight and stout - perfect for hanging the back door!

In an earlier post, I mentioned AC going up in the front box.  I made a duct for it, and am printing vents to match.  But today I brought it back from the shop for a test fit.  The idea is to redirect the AC output upwards along the wall and not have it blow right at our heads.  I think it'll work OK.

Lots of electrical work inside this week since it's forecast to be cold and rainy all week long 😞

Fairly square!!!

 

I've been looking forward to this day with more than a little fear and trepidation, and a bit of giddy excitement too.  It _should_ have worked.  Everything was cut by CNC - it really should be identical.  The base is square.  The walls lined up on the ground.  It should have fit...

And it did!  It's glued, screwed and plumbed, the top and bottom are within 1/16th of an inch, the front-back is pretty much dead square, and it's ready for the ceiling and spars.  

Fits and starts

I was hoping to report that the walls were up and the ceiling was going in this weekend, but alas- not so fast...

The interior is in, and the left wall has been dry fitted, adjusted and should be ready for a Monday afternoon installation, but we just ran out of time and resources yesterday. As one of the professional trailer builders mentioned in their blog, just because everything is CNC'd doesn't necessarily mean it will all fit together.  Play the game of millimeters, and eventually they'll come back to bite you. And it was just that - millimeters.  

• Finding a inset cut is .71", and maybe should have been .72" for a true fit.  
• Learning the difference between 15 and 16 degrees on a glue-up (should've made a better jig)...
• Measuring 14 times and still being off by a .0625"

These are the kind of things that tend to accumulate and drive you starkers when trying to get a 110lb wall panel perfectly positioned to bolt down.  At least I didn't get cocky and lay down PL yet!

Now that the center partition and shelves are up, I can also start doing layout for the galley and utilities.  One of the first things I discovered this weekend was that my assumption that the Propex heater would be on the right and my power bay on the left was wrong - unless I wanted the heat coming out only against the right wall...

Actually, it works out a little smarter than I hoped - I want an external 11lb propane tank on the outside left wall, and that means I now have short runs to both the heater and stove, instead of going cross-trailer to make it work.  (vertical partitions are just in there for reference.  Now that I can actually measure them, I'll cut and install.  

The "electrical bay" is now on the right, between the central bulkhead and the refrigerator, which will sit in the tray in the foreground, running on heavy duty slides.  The blue in back is one of 16 50AH LiFePo4 cells, giving me a total of 100AH, 24V battery.  I'll work on that as I have downtime now that most of the major bits are here.

All the major bits of the electrical (plus solar cells).  I'll do a full post on the electrical, probably after it's installed.

The basic specs:

100AH 24v LiFePo4 battery pack with BMS

100W flexible solar panels (x2)

20AH MFFT charger

24v 5A AC charger

2500AH Pure sine inverter

20A 24-12v DC converter

AC Transfer switch for shore power

The charge rates for both solar and AC are probably lower than optimum, but they should recharge the batteries from a completely depleted state to full in <24 hours without stressing batteries, charge circuits or wiring.  The typical draw excluding the AC is <250 watts/hour, so it should have plenty of headroom to run the AC for an hour or so if needed.  Mostly the AC is for campgrounds, and we'll use the MaxxFan, but I promised to include it!

Hopefully Monday night I'll be showing off the left wall glued in place, bringing the ceiling panel and stringers home from the shop, and getting it all in place!