1 Bored Clerk's Garage Built Camper

Uh-oh. Be careful when 1Bored Clerk and ‘guidance’ are uttered in the same post. Unless it’s ‘1BC needs guidance’.

 

lol have the time its fake it till you make it. Looks like your doing an awesome job. Your two bumper builds are giving me some ideas!

 

I guess I missed or forgot the bed was aluminum and not steel. Figured there would be absolutely no flex with a steel bed.
Better safe then sorry if you can easily make them.

 

There’s always flex. The issue is whether or not it’s enough flex to matter.

 

Did four separate stints in the garage today. Ended up getting the entire exterior sanded! Not that you can tell from these photos...



Sanded every edge, seam and surface to get rid of all the shiny spots, ridges and lumps. A good cleaning and it’ll be ready for fairing goo!

 

For us newbs that know nothing about fiberglass.....what is "fairing goo"? Gotta dumb it down for a bunch of us.

 

I just found out about it recently too. It’s the same as everything else with fiberglass. It’s based in resin and you add various things to the resin to give it different properties. Adding silica makes it pretty strong but hard to sand. Micro balloons aren’t very strong but easy to sand. Mix those in the resin and spread it over the surface. Let cure. Sand smooth. That’s the idea, anyway.

 

Thanks

 

How crap, I have been in this thread for a while. Looks sweeeeeet!

 

Thanks!

 

Progress is progress anyway you look at it, even if we can't see it

 

I started with the fairing compound tonight. I took it easy since I have no experience with this stuff. It’s like Bondo: put on the LEAST amount possible as you will be sanding most of it off. We’re not frosting a cake here!


I did these two surfaces and the two flat surfaces above. The microballoons are red so you can see what’s going on with the fairing compound. That’s handy! Like I said, I took it easy here. I put on a very light coat and worked it around to see what happens. I’ll sand it smooth in a day or three and see where we end up. I may see about getting a much wider spreader than the 6” wide one i have. Should average out the surface better.

 

Look for a good mud spreader for sheetrock. That should do you just fine.

 

Hard rubber squeegee?

 

Maybe. It’ll be easier to find a mud spreader for Sheetrock, I think. I’ve seen videos of them being used for this exact purpose. Seemed reasonable. Is the rubber squeegee used for screen printing? That’s the only place I’ve seen rubber used like that.

 

Yeah, screen printing is the only place I've seen them used as well. However, that picture came from an aircraft website: http://www.aircraftspruce.com/

http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/cmpages/comptoolrubbersqueegee.php


Enjoying the build for sure!

 

There's a reason they're designed for screen printing and not much else...

Ask me how I know...

 

Well, I’m not sure where to put this: bumper build? Camper build? If I had a specific UTE Tray build thread, I’d put it there...but I don’t. Anyway, i have officially started my UTE tray storage saga...in CAD.


This is all you get for now. A crappy picture of a screen with some REALLY basic CAD modelling. This is how the process starts. Measure, think, measure some more, over think, more measuring, then...maybe...actually start. Here I am roughing in dimensions of the steel I’m going to get cut/bent and fitting my dummy shape for the storage box I’m using. I’ll go verify a bunch of measurements on the truck when it’s light out then finish up the CAD. This shouldn’t take long...it’s pretty simple. I’ll keep you posted!

 

Awesome!