Complex Things Built Wrong

I know I start to sound like a broken record but every step along this path, when something major gets done I am just so happy.   Getting the table in.  Getting the floor all installed.  Even more stuff done in this post.  I am lovin’ it!

I sort of glossed over what we did while installing the floor in the area of the side door.  My van is one of the double door versions.   So instead of a sliding-family-van style door it instead has two doors on hinges.   I picked this type mostly because of the stealth reasons.  These are the types of cargo vans I typically see.   But I was also interested because I felt like there would be less energy waste.  Typically I would only open this door to slip in and out and so I felt having this smaller opening, less heat would slip out with me.

It is handy to have the larger opening.  Moving things in and out.   Having the hinged door was great on the summer camping trip with The Wife where we could just leave the door hanging open, a mirror mounted to it.   All that stuff was great.   But I didn’t really need the step in front of the door nearly as much as I needed the couple of extra square feet of floor space that covering it up bought me.  If I would have known I was going down this path earlier I would have run sub floor out in this area too. But really the wood flooring, 3/4” walnut is plenty strong enough to just hang out in space a little bit, but the outer corner did need some support.  

The quarter inch plywood
template.

To make this support piece I started with some paper and scissors and cut out a close approximation of the piece I needed.   I used that paper to cut out a template from 1/4” plywood.   Then I could really fine-tune the design and get it to fit just perfect.   When I was done with the template I transferred that design to some 3/4” walnut and I ended up with the ideal piece to fit in with my walnut floor.  I attached this piece with construction adhesive on the bottom and back.  On the top I used some wood glue and some two inch pin nails down through the flooring.  

The final piece glued into place.

While I was working in this area I also put a trim piece in front of the other door. On the front, I used just a strip of the 3/4” walnut about two inches wide. I finished the whole thing off with some walnut door stop to cover the last of the flooring end grain. 

It has turned cold again now but it wasn’t very long ago that I swatted two mosquitos in one night inside my van.  No mystery where they were coming in from.  I have an open floor vent to draw air from under the van while the ceiling fan is running.  It is about two inches wide and about six long.  I could just as easily be getting rodents as well as mosquitos and I really needed to build a screen to cover it.

Photographic evidence proving I did in fact
measure (at least once). Strange how the
pavement looks below the van, it must have
been late in the day to be so bright.

Now I’m not really very shy when talking about my mistakes.  I make them all the time.  I figure I have learned from other people’s errors, that’s the best way to learn.  The more I share mine, the less people will be making the same stupid mistakes I did.  So here is how I launched off to build the screen cover for my floor vent.  I took measurements, wrote them all down, and then went inside the Maker Space shop to build what I needed.

I didn’t want the screen up at floor level.  I thought having it there would just cause a hole to somehow get ripped in it.   I felt the best thing was to build a tapered box allowing the screen to be down below floor level.  Maybe I will put a heavier duty material up top with bigger holes.  Something I could actually stand on, sort of like a floor furnace vent cover in an old house.  That might come later though.  For now I just don’t want to wake up in the morning down a quart and be covered in bites.

I took some of the scraps left over from installing the flooring and cut them into some strips about an inch wide.  This will be the frame for the box.  I ran them through the saw a couple more times to cut a rabbit into the corner of the strip.  Then marked them from my measurements for length and width and used a power miter box to cut a 45 degree angle to make the corners.  Once the pieces were all together I clamped them together dry, just to hold them while I built the tapered box.   

Getting ready for the glue-up.

I have a stack of 1/8” plywood “hobby sheets” they are called at Johnny Menard’s stores.  Marked 18”x24”, no surprise they are 17-1/2” x 23”.  Johnny does keep making money somehow. <eye roll> On the short side of the frame I just built I measured the base of the rabbit on the inside.  From this I subtracted a quarter inch so the end panels will sit inside the side panels when the box is formed.  I decided to make my tapered box about four inches deep.  I cut some of the plywood into a four inch strip, then in the power miter box I set the cutting angle of the blade to about 3 degrees of angle.  I thought that would make it small enough at the bottom to stick out through the metal floor of the van.   I made two of these tapered ends.  Then two sides cut to the total length of the inside rabbit of the long side of the walnut frame.  

At this point I had all my pieces.   This is a small part with lots of surface area of glue joints.   I didn’t think it needed any nails.  I just used lots of glue and clamped the whole thing up.   Great to have a shop with tons of clamps!   

Gluing up the tapered box.

The next day I came in and admired my work.  It was great!  Solid as a rock.  Really strong with no flex anywhere.  I cut a bit of window screen to lap over the tapered end.  I secured it with some glue, then on top of the glue I wrapped one later of aluminum tape.  My thought was this would protect the edges of the window screen from fraying.   I had just used fiberglass window screen so I thought it might be susceptible to fray.   In my house somewhere I know I have some metal screen that wouldn’t have had this issue but I couldn’t find it when I was home for the weekend.

With the screen in place I had built the perfect part to answer all the needs.  I knew it was going to look great and as soon as I felt the glue was likely setup under the tape I walked out to the van to drop it into place and admire my work.  Totally prepared to pat myself on the back, I tried to drop it into the floor vent hole.  My beautiful part was about two inches too long to fit!  As near as I can tell I must have used the outside measurements to mark the insides of the miters I cut. But it wasn't exactly that either.  The moral of the story is measure twice, build complex parts requiring multiple cuts and glue ups once.

No fit-ski.  Damn.

It’s always depressing to have something like this happen but it is inevitable.   I chucked my floor vent cover up into the cab for a couple of weeks, disgusted with myself, and tried not to think about it.  But then I was about to go on the first camping trip with The Wife.  I knew she would get vocal about the mosquitos so I dug it out and had another look.  My fix was to run the table saw blade almost all the way up and using a miter fence set to 90 degrees, ran the box through the saw and cut about two and three quarters inch off the end of it.  I still had a little bit of the walnut strip left.  I cut a short chunk and drilled through it to attach it to my tapered box.  Another little bit of the 1/8^th plywood taper cut for the end.  More glue and clamps.   

When I was all done, the box, maybe to a true craftsman might have looked odd with it’s 45 degree joints on one end and 90 degree joints on the other.  But the important thing was it worked.  It keeps the bugs out.  Maybe someday I will replace the fiberglass window screen with some “no-see-em” mesh as someone in the shop suggested to me.  For now though I am happy!

Not quite deep enough, I pull this
one and and drill a touch deeper. 

In other van projects I have finished the ceiling insulation.  Now I am going back through and countersinking the screws holding the wood strips. These screwheads have to be under the surface or the plywood going over the top will not fit tight to the ceiling.   To countersink them I have been, one by one, removing the screws and drilling out the hole with a 1/2" drill bit.  Then, re-inserting them and moving on to the next.   In a few cases of course I have been drilling too deep, going all the way through the quarter inch.  When that happens I just move over a couple of inches and re-drill.

Then after I got those screws inset I was able to install the first sheet of plywood on the ceiling!   Woo hoo!  I guess this is the post for mistake admission.  When I marked it and cut it, I didn't account for the curve in the ceiling next to the back door. The sheet was about an inch short at the floor to ceiling cabinet.  Sigh.  I guess that is what wide trim is for. 

Pay no attention to all that mess in the background.  It was
the maid's day off.

If this were a real camper I would have a water tank filling port mounted right on the outside of the van to fill up my fresh water tank.  But things like that make people, and particularly parking enforcement police officers, take a second look at my van.  I don’t want that.  I don’t want people like that taking even a second glance.   So I had been looking for a good way to get water into the tank from the inside, thinking maybe some sort of short hose.   But what I saw at my local big box lumberyard was this bendable funnel in the clearance section.   Perfect!   It flexes at the end so I will be able to keep the pour-into end up while shoots-out-of end can be at 90 degrees, into the fill hole of my tank.  Best part?  The funnel came with caps at both ends so I will be able to keep dirt and wee-beasties out of my drinking water tank!