1 Bored Clerk's Garage Built Camper

I took the weekend to clean, organize and declutter the garage...as well as clean some gutters, the driveway and do some trimming. Felt good as coming home to or working in a mess really sucks.

Anyway, I had to trim the front panel of the camper so that it would actually slide into the bed. It for the front of the bed but it wouldnt slide through the tailgate area. I'm glad I caught that now! It makes the sleeping platform narrower by about 3.5" but I think we'll be okay. It was never going to be 'spacious' in the bed of a Tacoma. Once I got that adjustment made, I did a test clamp to make sure I was happy with the setup before I glue it all together.





I think this will work. I'm going to groove out a piece of scrap plywood I have to hold the rear walls vertical and in alignment with each other while the epoxy is drying.

West marine was completely out of SIX10 epoxy. I was there a few days ago and they had 15 tubes of it. Someone started building a boat, I guess. So, I'm going to order some tonight or see if west marine has it back in stock. I'd like to glue on Wednesday.

 

Glue will be in stock today/tomorrow. The wait sucked but whatever. It's a long process so some time off now and again won't hurt.

 

Finally got my epoxy!

I'm pretty sure I used every clamp in the county.




I felt like I couldn't really go wrong using every clamp I could get my hands on. I tried to secure EVERYTHING and keep the wall straight. I probably overdid it but whatever.

I used West Systems SIX10 epoxy. It comes in tubes that you put in a standard caulking gun. Screw on the mixing tip that the tube comes with and go to town. Easy!

The minimum cure temp is 50 degrees for the epoxy and we're hovering around 53 at night. So, I may have to get some heat on it tomorrow after work to get it to kick.

I made the decision to put off insulating the ceiling of the garage in favor of building the camper. It seemed like a better idea to get an extra year of camping in rather than having a warm garage in the winter. We'll see how good of an idea that was when it's 35 out during the day. (Doesn't get all that cold here very often but cold enough for epoxy to not work) I have an idea for making a warm room inside the garage, I just haven't gotten there yet.

 

I'd be so lost doing this. Enjoying the process of it though.

 

Looking good. One can never have enough pipe clamps

 

Well, I don't fully understand what I'm doing so this will be interesting for both of us!

 

You always need more clamps haha

 

Pulled the clamps this morning. Excited to see it all stuck together! It's just a few pieces of plywood but still...


Time to get going on the drawer end and top pieces. Lots of woodworking left to do. Now is the start of the fussy stuff: drawer sealing, drawer sizes, top access doors. Trying to maximize access openings.

 

Typical 1BC progress!


This is the back wall of the camper. I'll be cutting the holes for the drawers after it's mounted in order to keep everything as stiff and square as possible while the epoxy cures.

I've also been working out as many details as I can about how the drawers seal and how the interior access panels work. If I get it wrong now, I'll be screwed later!

 

So, I realized I had no real reliable way to clamp the back face (pictured in the post above) to the camper box while the epoxy cured. I decided to lay the back face on the ground and drop the camper box on top and let gravity do its thing.


Gravity did its thing with all its might as I was trying to wrestle this pig into place by myself. But I got it! You may be wondering why all the clamps. Well, I used some 1/4" wall angle aluminum and clamps to stabilize the back wall and make sure it was flat because it would warp under the weight of the box without some support. Once everything was in place, I used a square to make sure everything was as square as possible. It looked pretty good so it just needs to not fall over or shift before the epoxy cures.

 

Just got up to speed.

 

More work done!


Cut more pieces


Then glued half of them in place


Then covered it with a tarp. There is an electric oil radiator heater under there to keep the temps up high enough to cure the epoxy. It's cold enough now that it will never cure without some help. Everything must be a bit of a distance from the heater so you don't burn the joint down but this works incredibly well.

I should be able to get the other two pieces glued in place over the course of today. It's slow going but I wanted to make sure these prices were as square as possible so it's a 'one at a time' sort of deal. Not fast but, hopefully, accurate.

 

In for this!

 

The other edge of the camper is now done and under its tarp. The epoxy is still just a bit tacky on this new half. Itll be good to work with tomorrow.

 

Still going! It's a little slow because we are having a bit of a cold snap here. Not unusual for many of you but it's unusual for here! So, curing epoxy is a bit time consuming.


I cut some stuff the old fashioned way. Sometimes a good hand saw is faster than messing with power tools. Especially for a little cut like this. Truth be told, I could have built everything on this camper with a handsaw but I'm not that ambitious.


Had to route a slot into a piece of wood that would end up 1.5" wide. If you don't have a routing table, the best way to do this is to route the slot first then cut to width. Never mind the boo-boo in the lower right part of the slot. For some reason, I am completely able to screw up this operation even using a fence! Oops. Haha. Nothing a little epoxy won't fix.


Here's the strip I mentioned above that's been glued in place. Then I went around and routed everything I could before going further. Fiberglass doesn't like to wrap around sharp corners. I'm pushing the boundary of what glass will wrap around here but I'm just going to have to work with it.


Here is the start of the ledge that the inside access panels will sit on. The panels will be supported on three sides and will be hinged with a piano hinge on the fourth side.



Routing everywhere! Every outside corner needs to be routed. Every inside corner needs to be filled with a thickened epoxy fillet.


These few additions have added a tremendous amount of stiffness to the box. It's really quite staggering what a few bits of wood in the right place will do for stiffness. This brings up a important issue that I need to deal with right now: squareness. I need to make sure this sucker is square and level and everything else before I go any further. I don't want to end up with a potato chip camper base that wobbles on the bed floor. Plus, the whole rest of the camper will be built on this foundation. I may switch to a table with shims fastened in place to give the camper a more sturdy/square platform. It's currently sitting on two adjustable sawhorses with a shim under one corner to get it eyeball close to flat. Oh, the little things...they make ALL the difference.

 

Making good progress

 

Thanks! I'm finding that holding things in place is getting harder. Nowhere to clamp and difficult to hold stuff square. Ive used blue painters tape to good effect a few times. So, I'm now in the jig building/rigging business now. At least I rearranged the garage enough to have the table saw out at all times. That makes cutting the smaller and more precise things much easier. I'll be back at it tonight.

I REALLY wish I had ponied up to get the roof of my garage insulated last year. I have a heater that will heat that space but it's pretty much useless without an insulated ceiling. Oh well...

 

Yeah , clamping large pieces can be awkward

 

All of the supports for the flush mounted access doors in the floor of the camper are in! The edges of the openings with no shelf is where the full length piano hinges will be.





Add in some sanding and I'm getting real close to starting all of the interior corner fillets. That should be interesting!

 

So, I've been thinking about mounts for this camper. What do you think about using four body mounts? This is, essentially, what I'm building...but with lots of tweaks:



I don't have a lot of room for regular turnbuckle/happijack/fastgun tie downs and I don't want to bolt it directly to the floor over concerns for flexing. Body mounts would give it some flex room...maybe just enough?

Thoughts?