1 Bored Clerk's Garage Built Camper

Sure. It's a new project table for her sewing room. I'm repurposing some old IKEA crap we were going to get rid of. Now she'll have good storage and a sturdy table to work on. It'll never make it into moma but it should be a cool work table.

 

Finished the sewing table!



Now it's time for a full garage clean and re-org then back in on the camper. I'm ready to knock some work out on that. With the time I've had this week to think about it, I've got a decent plan for the next small push.

 

Cool looking sewing table! Being handy with wood seems like such a useful skill. I admire it.

 

Thanks!

It is handy and it's not hard to make something useful. Making something beautiful and lasting is the hard part. I'm pretty far below that skill level but I do enjoy working with wood.

 

Slides are happening!


Working out the hardware/anchor points on the very long slides.


Anchors epoxied in place. My method here is not up to boat building standards but I'm not building a boat. I chose to use tee nuts recessed deeply into the plywood then epoxied over. The hole that these bolts pass through on their way to the tee nuts is lined with epoxy. The idea here is to insulate the wood from the elements. This should be pretty good, I think. These mounts you see above are the spacers for the inboard slides. Once cured, these will get epoxied into the camper.

Now I have to do the same for the outboard slides. The difference is that the outboard slides do not need a spacer so that process should be quicker.

 

Epoxied in the first slide spacer and drilled the camper box for the first outboard slide.


First step is to pitch it up on edge so that gravity will hold the slide and spacer in place while the epoxy cures. There really isn't any way to clamp these so this is the option. It gives access to other areas that need fillets too. So, it's all good. I imagine it'll take all week to get the slides finished and as many of the fillets done as possible.


Here's the slide and it's spacer being epoxied in place. The slide is bolted in place because it's very flat and rigid. It should ensure everything works smoothly.


Here are the holes for the outboard slide. Drill oversized hole, fill with epoxy, come back when the epoxy is cured and drill the correct size hole. The hole will be epoxy walled and the wood should be sealed from moisture.


Overalll view of everything I just explained. This was just before I threw a tarp over it and my heater under the tarp. It's cold enough out that it'll need some heat to cure for more work tomorrow when I get home from work.

 

Flipped the camper on its other edge and got to work!


Other slide and spacer in place.

Not really anything else to show since it's just the same as the last post but on the other side.



I will show this though. I use blue painters tape to cover epoxy until it cures if it's in a place that's like to come into contact with something else...like my tarp or my sleeve/arm...or the dining room table. Haha. Also works really well for holding epoxy in place while you rotate the work to start on another area. Once cured, pull the tape and sand smooth. Easy.

 

Just got a reply on ExPo regarding my tape deal. Apparently, and 'duh' if you cover the epoxy with wax paper, you can easily smooth the epoxy so that less to no sanding is required. This makes total sense but somehow I never got there on my own. Haha! If you try to smooth the epoxy with a spreader or squeegee or something directly, it'll pull the epoxy and leave divots or ridges. Wax paper for the win, or so I'm told. I'll try it next time.

 

Clear plastic packing tape works well too and has the advantage of being able to stick to surrounding areas. Recently used it on a vertical surface where my router wandered. I filled the groove with epoxy and then quickly taped over it with packing tape to keep it from all running down.

 

Another good tip! Thanks!

 

Great thread here.

 

Good stuff!

Don't know if you have already gone through his builds before, but check out some of the threads Paul Jensen has started on Expedition Portal. His construction methods are similar to yours except he uses fiberglass mat and epoxy over the wood. Might find some nuggets tucked away in his threads for future reference.

 

I've seen some of his sprinter builds and the XV-JP build but I may need to do more searching to see what else has has done. Thanks for the reminder!

 

Finished embedding all of the drawer slide hardware this last weekend. This week is all about fillets. Laying in fillets on all inside corners using epoxy thickened with colloidal silica. It's pretty easy work and it goes pretty fast so that's nice.

My plan is to have all of these done this week then spend some quality time sanding. Then I'll start laying in some fiberglass, I think. I need the thickness of the glass in certain areas before I can build the hatch covers, drawers, and camper mounts (I'm working on camper mounts right now).

 

Finished all of the fillets on the interior of the camper box last night. Now it's on to sanding and laying in the exterior fillets. Hoping to get into laying some fiberglass tape in the joints as well. We'll see what the weekend brings.

Oh, and the weather report just got dry for the weekend so I'm going to have to really focus on camper mounts while I can. Doing that in the rain sucks bad since I can't have the truck and the camper in the garage at the same time.

 

Lots of sanding today. I'm pretty much done with that, I think. Except for a few corner areas I want to touch up. I'll do that tomorrow morning.


Lots of hand sanding along with my trusty palm sander. I tape my fingers to keep them happy. They can get pretty raw if you fold your paper over to make it stiffer to get into tough areas. There's probably a super pro way to do all of this but tape works for me. Keeps my fingerprints in tact and allows me a decent level of feel and dexterity.

 

Did some epoxy touch up this morning. There were some areas I didn't like so I smoothed them out.

I also did some measuring! Exciting!!


What you have here are the measurements for the bed side of my camper mounts and the plate on the back of the camper that my drawer seals will mount to. I've been sweating these camper mounts way too much, so I just said 'F it, I'm going with four body mounts...make it happen'. So I did. Well, I started at least. I'll get these into CAD probably tomorrow then out for laser cut/bend. Probably have them back in steel and aluminum in a week or two.

Doesn't look like much but it's much needed progress on this part of the project. Everything hinges on locating this bad boy in the bed of the truck!

 

Nice job,love watching your builds.

 

Thanks! I appreciate people hanging out long enough to see these through. Haha

 

No camper updates. I have been working on the camper mount files but not much to actually show on that.

But, I HAD to deal with my garage. My workspace had become so oppressively cluttered that I had to attend to it. So I did...and will continue tonight. Hopefully, I'll be back on track tomorrow for some actual work on the camper box. We moved in a couple of years ago and I've been working on the garage ever since. Getting rid of stuff, adding stuff, figuring out storage needs...it feels like I keep shoveling crap from one spot to another without making headway. Ugh. I think I made some good headway over the last few days so that's good. I'll post some pics if I have any good ones.