Porches

All the liner boards are now attached for the front and back porches. Nothing really noteworthy here, much gluing, cutting, and screwing, liberally interspersed with swearing as the really thin wood cracked. I considered covering all the screwheads with fairing compound, but decided it would be more work, with all the hand sanding involved, than it was really worth for the amount of improved appearance I would gain.

Cover Up

As you can see, the top is now on, which also means that the bows and long runners have been attached. This turned out to be a multi-week event instead of just an afternoon of drilling and screwing stuff down. There were two main reasons. a) There is a lot of recurve in the lower two feet of the walls. b) I bent the bows to shape almost a year before.

Because I had put the shape in the bows so long ago, they had a lot of time to relax and lose some of the sharper curves, also they had not quite the amount of recurve even initally that the walls actually ended up with. I ended up attaching everything but the last 3' or so on either side and then wrapping the ends of the bows with plastic and wet towels to soften them up again. After several days of soaking we used a 2 x 4 to force the ends of the bows into the curve of the lower walls and used a lot of screws and glue to set them in place.

Vardo purists will notice that I used a hard shell instead of the traditional canvas top. If I lived anywhere else I would have used the canvas but living where I do in the land of sand and fog, canvas has a life span of maybe two years because of the salt, wind, and constant moisture. Rather than continually replacing the canvas I opted for 2 ply mahogany covered with fiberglass.

Learning Curve Note: It would have been much better to have kept to a modified horseshoe shape and not been so fancy with curved base, this would have also made the interior wall and furniture construction much simpler. Also it would have been best to take the bows directly from the bending frame to the wagon. That way they would have still been slightly flexible and still bent to the exact shape of the walls.

Final Movements

I had to hire a couple of guys to help me get the walls out of the garage and up on to the wagon. Glad to have them on for good because I put them on and took them off about a dozen times. In reference to the note on the previous post, if I had a taller construction space with a high enough door, I could have done all the construction inside, which would have let me build the end walls in place, and they would never have had to come off and on, and off and on, and.......

Out In The Elements

This is the roll out from the garage. From here on out all construction is weather dependant.

Note: Next time get RV sized garage.

What the Winter Brings

Waiting for the weather to improve.
In the meantime I've been working on the interior of the wagon. I just have to make sure I don't attach anything that will be taller than garage door height. As you can see, I've added the interior walls, and built in some cabinets, a sink, the benches and the sleeping area. When everything else is finished (after the wagon has moved outside and has a top) I'll add some nicer flooring.

End Walls

This is the window end wall, fully assembled with shutter tracks, shutters, and carved headboard. I am starting to primer it in the photo. Because my garage is not tall enough to fully assemble the wagon and then be able to get it out, I am having to assemble the end walls as seperate units and then attach them after the wagon is out of the garage.
They probably weigh in at well over 300 lbs and have been on and off the wagon more times than I really like to think about. I suppose that I could have used thinner wood for the beadboard but I wanted it to really hold up well to the wind hitting it at highway speed, so it's way overbuilt.

Learning Curve Note:
I used a jigsaw to cut out the shape of the end walls. Because of the curve and the thickness of the wood there was a lot of deviation in the vertical tracking of the blade. Because of this there will be a lot of fairing compound between the bows and the end wall to even it out. I should have used a plunge router mounted on a beam compass instead.

Bending the Bows : Part III

After soaking the wood for the bows for two weeks I drained the soaking tube and poured in about five gallons of boiling water. Then after agitating the wood to make sure it all got hit with the hot water I pulled out one of the pieces, laid it on the ground, and poured another three gallons of boiling water over it, turning it over, and working up and down its entire length.

Then moving quickly I took it over to my turning stanchions and bent it around, clamping as I went. Thanks to my lovely clamp girl, pictured above, for her assistance. I repeated this procedure with each of the pieces.

I let the bent bows stay on the stanchions for two weeks, covering them up at night to avoid the dew and fog. When I unclamped them they stayed pretty true to shape, but I tied the ends together to hold them in their curve until I was ready to use them on the wagon.



Learning Curve Note: I used thin PVC and it didn't hold up well to the boiling water. By the time I had done the last batch of bows it was severely deformed and had assumed a C-shape and an elliptical cross section. I would probably use the heavy, black, schedule-40 sewer pipe. It would be less effected by the boiling water. I would also use a larger diameter, that way I could soak more pieces at a time.