We Can All Get It Wrong Sometimes.

I got a few little van things done this week.   First off I cut out the back shelf.   For the past couple of months as I have been using the van, the back side of my bed has butted up against some plywood crossing in front of the back doors.  The back (door) side of that plywood is the control panel where I am mounting all the electronics.  But at the top of that plywood there was just space, about ten inches of it, before the back door. To keep the cold out I put some pillows across the gap.   That helped for sure but still a lot of cold air was coming in.

From the Amish sawmill I had a six foot long, ten inch wide 5/4 walnut board.  Heck of a chunk of wood.  You could almost make a mantel for your fireplace with it.  It was rough sawn and ended up about an inch thick when I got it all smoothed down in the planer.  After planning I cut the board to length, then traced out the corners a bit.  Sort of rough sawing it to get it to kind of fit.  Eventually I got it so it was in place and from the very furthest point back on the door to my board was about two inches.   I took a two inch scrap of oak and used that between the door and my pencil to trace the pattern of the back doors onto the top of my board.  I think it took about three touch ups to get it perfect.  The hardest part was figuring out exactly where the latch has to swing.  Then, cutting that arc on the board.

Gluing on the strip of padauk.  I did all this
work to cut the back profile but now realize
I didn't take a single photo of the process.

Once cut to fit, I ran it through the jointer at the Maker Space shop.  Smoothing down and flattening the van side of the walnut board.  To that I glued a strip of  3/4” padauk.  The red/orange of padauk is an amazing contrast to the dark brown of walnut.  Great having a shop where I have all these clamps!

On to bigger projects. The first bit of the finished ceiling I put in with the help of number one son. We made a measurement error of about an inch because we didn't account for the curve of the ceiling where it meets the door.  Certainly coverable with some wide trim next to the floor to ceiling shelf. But that was also a small, less than 4ft sheet. The balance of the ceiling could then be done in one eight foot sheet but not by just one guy. I again called upon my friend Craigie to help me out.

Craigie works full time in the construction business, working for a small job carpentry company.  Doing… whatever the politically correct word for a handyman is.  Every morning he looks at the calendar on his iPhone(3!?) and the day's tasks are all lined up on there.  A very slick system! But he doesn't really know what he is getting into until he arrives. So it is a real think on your feet kinda job. 

I have a ceiling!  Woo hoo!

That kind of background has been invaluable for my van project which is small job after small job with a few unpleasant surprises in between.

But once in a while the best of us can get it wrong.  In this case I had planned to stop the ceiling plywood at the bulkhead.  I  didn't really plan on doing anything forward of that point. But Craigie pushed to extend the wood beyond the bulkhead wall up into the cab where in about ten inches we could tuck it under the material of the cab ceiling.

He had such a great idea a couple weeks before to extend the van floor out over the step.  This one I was less sure about but after some hemming and hawing on my part I went with it.

It was a complicated cutting job. We had to notch it on the side and end to go around the floor to ceiling shelf.  Also there were six holes for LED puck lights. I called out the measurements and he cut it all out.  But then it was time to install it.

We discovered a problem almost right away.   To get the sheet to fit into the space over the bulkhead we had to have the sheet nearly flattened horizontally.  Here is how our decision effected us.  If we would have just been stopping at the bulkhead, we would only have to bend the sheet a few inches to clear the sides of the floor to ceiling shelf.  But, because of the extra length of going in front of the bulkhead. But, we were more than a foot from having cleared the floor to ceiling shelf at the corner.  We had the bend the plywood A LOT.  And then, we were so close, just one extra little push we knew we could make it fit.

The problem with trying to apply too much bend.

The plywood tore, just at the corner where it meets the shelf.  First only a little bit, and then a jagged eight or ten inches.  We swore but all the pressure suddenly released it finally slid into place with ease.  Then we evaluated.   In hindsight I should have just stopped at the bulkhead.  This isn’t a make’r look perfect in the cab kind of project.  There wasn’t any real good reason to have any wood come forward of the bulkhead and actually given some thought I think it will cause a few problems.  But, I never said this is anything other than a learning experience type project.  Craigie was giving the best advice for the family van type project where you want everything to look the best everywhere.

At that point it was dark. We were sweaty from the struggle.  The mosquitoes had found us.  Craigie asked me what I wanted to do.  Because we hadn't attached it yet, we could have ripped it out. I didn't have another sheet, but one could have been bought for another night.  At the time I was only thinking “god, do I want to go through that again?  Hell no!”

We dropped it down enough to slap some construction adhesive in there and nailed it up.  We put some wood glue in the ripped spot and fashioned a brace to hold it in place until the glue dries.  Then it was going to be a wood filler job.

A great older pickup camper which could be the excellent
base for a remodel project.

In other news, the wanderlust has struck Craigie as well.  When I pulled into his driveway sittin’ there on stilts was a used pickup camper.  I guess he and his wife went through three and half degrees of hell in the lead-up, show-up, and post arrival of the camper she opposed.  These things happen. If I have given the impression moving my own wife from my initial words “I'd like to buy a van” to the point of actual purchase as being some sort of panacea I want to correct that right now. That's my own problem though.  Being an accomplice to Craigie's whole deal put me in an awkward spot.  Lucky for me they had both declared peace the day before.

Cuz I gotta confess, I might have tipped him over the edge.  Talking to him about my own van after the first camping trip with The Wife I said to him, “Craigie, we’ll never sleep in a tent again” and I think at that moment all six foot seven inches of Craigie was on board.

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!

May I Have The Floor Please?

This morning for a change I am sitting not in a bar but in the new coffeeshop  recently opened in my little town.  When we first moved here we came from another little town in a different state.  That little town had two colleges.  Nothing supports a coffee house better than college students.  What I referred to as “quality layabouts” who could spend the bulk of the day lounging, sucking up the free wifi and dollar refills.  Here in this town in the coffeeshops have struggled.  Finally though, this one has opened and seems to be doing pretty well.   At least it is very busy on this fall Saturday morning.  Hopefully they keep enough business through the frozen season to still be here in the spring.

I love my new table.  This design is really perfect for everything I want and I am starting to think about what to build it out of.   As I see it, the table is going to spend the majority of its time in the down position with the leaf folded up.  So thinking about that I want to have it look it’s most attractive in this position.  Building something attractive out of wood (affordably) means another trip to the Amish sawmill close to my house. 

The mockup legs along
with the wood to build the
new ones.

Initially I thought it would be cool to incorporate some birds eye maple in the design.  I even thought it would be really awesome to get a couple of sheets of birds eye plywood for the ceiling.  I could put a lite stain on them to bring out the grain pattern and have this beautiful ceiling.  Mentioning this to The Wife, she was less excited.  She is more of a painted wood girl these days.  She felt like it would darken the interior to have wood up there.  And, she is probably right about that.  What really sealed the deal though was the price of birds eye maple plywood.   Six hundred dollars a sheet!!!!  Wow!  I had no clue.  Paint it is then, honey.  Great idea!

I still wanted some figured wood someplace though and hoped my Amish friend Herman could help me out.  The Wife donned some conservative (for her) clothing and off to the mill we went.  I was in luck, Herman was there and I told him what I was looking for.  I was thinking some quarter sawn oak for the table legs.  Then some 5/4 birds eye maple for the top.  He did have some some, but when we were looking at it he was telling me about some really attractive curly maple they had cut just a few days before.    As it turned out, he wasn’t kidding.  The birds eye stuff was ok but the curly was really quite outstanding. 

Cutting the mortis into the table leg using
and old school wood chisel.

Amish mill prices, for just a touch over a hundred dollars I came home with enough wood to build the table including the legs and some extra oak to use as a trim piece next to the bed and a couple of other spots that could use the attractiveness or strength of oak.

The first thing I did was build the legs.  I took some of 5/4 oak and cut it into some slightly under 2” strips and cut them to length plus about four inches. (The planer always munges up the ends)  Then, I glued up the strips to make roughly a 2x2.  The next day when the glue had dried up I ran them through the planner to square them off.    I was shooting for making them 1-3/4” but I got a little carried away with the planner and made them 1-5/8”   While I was, there I planed down some of the 3/4”x6” oak to a little over half an inch.  These will be the cross piece supports between the two legs.  I cut this wood to length, about ten inches, then marked them to build a tendon joint into the legs.  The shop isn’t setup for doing easy dado work.  I just gave my pieces a whole bunch of passes through the table saw to make the tendon.  On the legs, because I wanted the figured wood to be prominent  from two different sides, I cut one mortis into the face of the leg toward the front of the van.  Then into the side of the other leg.  That way the attractive face of the quarter sawn wood can be seen both from the front of the van (the kitchen) as well as the end of the table.   …You know, it is the little things in life that make it worth living.

The mortis and tendon one side ready for
assembly.

I looked into the tool selection at the shop.  I thought of maybe using a half inch router bit in a table to cut the mortis into the leg.  But then, in the end, just cut them by hand with a chisel.  The tool was good and sharp and they had a well balanced chisel mallet to strike it with.  It didn’t really take too long and I had them cut.  I glued it all up and by the next morning had my set of legs.  I cut them to length and mounted them to the table.  But all of this, really for the last three posts, has been buildup.  With the finished table legs in place came the moment I have been waiting for almost since the beginning of the project.  I could finish laying the floor!

The floor has been on hold a bit.  I started out installing it, but had a realization after experiencing the effort and precision involved in building the frame around the floor vent.   One of my early design ideas was to have pockets in the floor the table legs would drop into.  This would keep the leg secure.  I wouldn’t need a brace going down to the legs.  Some time back when I was at Craigie’s house we built the wood frames for the legs.  Squares built out of walnut.  But my realization was, they had to be installed in *exactly* the right spot for the table legs.

A man has to understand his limitations.   One of mine is if I am going to build two parts that have to fit together routinely at a high degree of precision, I pretty much have to have those two parts in my hands at the same time.  But now, I have the table legs, I have the squares.  The van is loaded up with the walnut flooring.  There is just one thing missing…

I texted Craigie.   “Hey, I’m thinking I am ready to finish installing that floor, you be around at all this week?”

A couple of days later I was parked in his driveway.  The whole neighborhood has started to follow my project.  So yeah, we figure a job might take a couple of hours but we spend another hour giving progress tours and answering questions.  The floor certainly isn’t large.  Just 26 square feet.  I have some extra wood so I ran it back under the bed a couple of feet.  Lots of cuts though.  Most every board had to be cut at least once.  We had an angle square and we had to fit around some things.

The pocket holes ready to be installed.

The last time I had visited Craigie I told him what I was planning on doing around the door.   Basically building around the existing step for both doors.   He suggesting I just build right over the step for the secondary door.  That gives me more floor space.   I could actually put a chair on the opposite side of the table from the bed.  That idea had taken hold by this visit.  I was onboard.

Then we started getting close to the pocket holes.  When I built the original squares I left the tongues on the boards, thinking I would cut the floorboards with grooves so the flooring would still lock together.  Locking the pocket holes into the floor when it was all done.  Craigie convinced me this was insane.  The corners would have had to been hand carved with a chisel to some pretty tight tolerances.   “Just use some glue!” he told me.  

He was right, of course.  I did the measuring and marking.  He did the cutting.  I did the nailing down.  For most of the floor I used an air nailgun.  I had a flooring gun there but mostly couldn’t use it because of the close quarters.  You have to have room for the gun itself, plus room to swing the hammer that fires it.  Mostly I just used some 2” nails in an 18ga pin nailer.

One leg pocket in position, working on
getting the second one in place.

It was fully dark when we got done.   But *it* *was* *amazing*.  I have something twenty six square feet, the largest single object  of the project excluding the van itself.  Every time I touch it, step on it, sit on it or look at it, reminds me of home.  We are making it work.

The legs in position where they will be
when attached to the table.  Notice the gap
around the leg bases.  I left room for a
thin strip of padauk trim.

Around the Table

I visited a chiropractor this past week.  It all started over the weekend with looking out Number Two Son’s window to see how bad the porch roof is.   I really needed to replace it this summer but of course I was a working on van projects.  Or, I was traveling in the van and having a good time.  Either way the porch roof didn’t get replaced.  I think my back went into pre-project sympathy spasms or something just thinking about all those rolls of half-lap shingles I would have to carry up a ladder.  I have been down and out for a week.  I tell you what, being 70 inches tall, living in a room with fifty inch ceilings, having lower back pain …sucks.  I didn’t tell the chiro how I am living.   I didn’t want him saying “…and he wonders why he has back problems, what an idiot.”  Today is the first day I would consider myself sorta cured of this bout.   There have been some rough, ice pick to the kidney, days though.

This is the second installment of a two part story about building a table for the van.  I didn’t mean to ramble on so, but the fact is, just like a family home the table is the center of all activity.   Eating, talking, drinking and work all happen here in this spot.  It needs to be big enough to do everything it needs to, but with so little space I can’t afford to waste any of it.  

Version one as it is folded up against the wall.
The gap behind the table doesn't look like
much in this photo but in context of van
space in real life it was huge.

The design I settled on was one thought of by The Wife.  It would have the ability to fold up against the wall, rather than down like my original design and everything I had seen before.  The legs would fold in against it.  And, because it folded up not down, it could actually overhang the bed slightly making a more comfortable table-chair relationship using the bed as a seat for working and eating. So this is the idea I started with as I built VAN_TABLE_VERSION_1.0.0.  The beta version.  —Can you tell work in IT?  :-)   

It was funny.  Back a couple of months ago when I first built the bed platform I did some estimates of how high the table needed to be off the floor.  I sat on some pillows, did some estimates.  I came up with 26 inches.  That’s what I used in my initial drawings and plans.   Then, once I had the mattress in place, forgetting all about the fact that I had already done this, I cut out a cardboard sheet to resemble the tabletop and made a mockup without measuring, I just set the height which was comfortable and measured after the fact.   When  I was all done and drafted it up I found my original plans.  The answer had come up exactly 26 inches both times!  Wow, I guess that is what it was meant to be!

Hinges on the backs of the legs allow
them to fold tight against the table.

Building this beta version of the table I cut the legs out of a 2x4 I ripped in half.  I just used a couple of scraps of plywood between the legs to hold them about ten inches apart.   The tabletop I cut out of the left over scrap from the plywood I used building the floor to ceiling shelf.  It wasn’t a perfect piece, it had a notch cut out of one side left when I cut out some reinforcement ribs building the shelf.   All I really wanted was something to use as a test to see if this design would work.

Initially I just cut the tabletop square.  But again, this table wasn’t really as long as I wanted it.  I made it as long as I could, figuring it would almost brush the ceiling in the up position.  But folded up, this put it on the outside of the frame.  In this position it stuck out into the room maybe four inches plus the thickness of the legs.   Far more than I had expected.  It was a good start, but it was really sub-optimal.   Here is where you have to start a game of balance.   You have to decide what is really important.  To me, the table sticking into the room so much when it was supposed to be in the folded up and out of the way position was a real problem.   

This is just a mockup so
it doesn't have to be perfect.

The only solution I could see to that problem was to cut the table shorter, so it would fit under the frame.  Shorter, it would nestle closer to the wall and take up less space.   But balance!  It was already too short!  So for the next few weeks I was caught up in this struggle.  No closer to any answer.  I did cut the table shorter.  I even cut an oversized rounded corner so it could really hug in tight.  Sure, that part of it was nice.  But the short table left me sitting very close to the outer wall when I wanted to type or eat.  I knew once I had the trim on in the upper corner of the fan I might have head clearance issues.  

WhatI really felt I needed was …as crazy as this sounds, a leaf or two for my table.   Having leaves would allow me to stretch my table out if I wanted it bigger.  I started looking into just what it would take to design something like this.  The only way I had seen something like this done was my kitchen table at home.  You get someone on each end of the table and pull it apart.  Drop the board into the middle.   To engineer something like this in my van though seemed beyond my abilities.   To make it strong, the wood is going to be heavy.  

Clamping the quarter inch
rim in place around the
table edge.

I found a company where I could buy aluminum runners instead but they made them for kitchens with real kitchen table sized tables and leaves wider than my whole table.  To buy from them I would need, you guessed it, cu$tom $ize$. But say I did do it.  If I spent the money.  Likely 90% of the time I wouldn’t be using the leaves, I would have them out.  I would have to store in the van two 6”x26” table leaves.  Where am I going to do that?   It doesn’t seem like much but they would be cumbersome and I don’t have extra space.  I had to give this idea up.  More time passed. 

Here’s where I discover it takes a community to raise a van.

Number One Son’s good friend wanted to stop over and see my project.  He had been hearing about it for months but the timing never really worked out that he was around when I was.  He is a sharp kid.   Literally brimming, chock full of ideas.   Genius, illegal, immoral, profitable and impossibly not, all those ideas are in there.   Over the years I have know him I have had a great time listening to them all spill out in his youthful enthusiasm.  Helping him sort them into those categories.  I explained to him my dilemma and he had an idea immediately. 

The leaf as it folds down into position.

In fact he gave me two ideas the day of his visit.  I will cover the second one in a few weeks as it pertains to a later project.  For my table what he suggested for the table is to build it with a double top.   The upper layer of the top would be split and hinged on the side next to the wall and on the outside end.   The normal position would be to have the two layers stacked, forming a double thick tabletop. But here is the genius, to extend the table would be a simple matter of folding up the one piece against the wall.  Then fold the other piece out into the room.  In effect the table would have built in, self storing, leaves.   Sweet!  Two days later I had built Beta Version Two.

Since I had spent a bunch of time hacking on the first version to get it to fit tight to the wall, I decided to scrap it and start over.  I had another hunk of plywood and cut it 24”x26” to form the tabletop.  Initially my plan was to make the upper tabletop the same way using 3/4 plywood.  That didn’t really work because the hinges needed something thicker.  I cut the top to size, then to increase the thickness I added a 3” rim of some quarter inch scrap to make the top roughly one inch thick.  It didn’t have to be pretty, this is just a mock up.   

The leaf supports in the swung out position.  In the final
design these should change to longer, thinner, slide outs.

The final design will have to incorporate some supports underneath the leaf.  I envision maybe some slide out 3/8” oak strips.  But for now what I did was just use a couple of drywall screws to hold two little hunks of scrap plywood.  When the leaf is not folded out, these scraps can be rotated out of the way.

After building this design, one issue I discovered is the exposed hinge on the outside edge isn’t very attractive.   Additionally the edges are quite sharp.  To counter this what I will plan to do in the final version is to make this hinge a little shorter.  Then I will cut a thin strip (~3/8-1/2”) of some attractive wood, paddock perhaps, cut a groove on the inside to cover the hinge.  I will mount some magnets to this strip and it will stick to the hinge.

This design is an amazing improvement on the original.  It answers everything I need.  Having a table small, yet large, folding up and out of the way when not needed but being the center of all activity when it is down.   When the leaf is out, amazingly I could likely seat four (really good friends) around a table of this size.   I love it!

A Place to Bed Down

I am sitting in a dentist office writing this today.  Lucky for me, I am just here for transport.  Not so lucky for Miss Root Canal though.  She’s back in the back and likely will be for an couple hours.  I have irrational dental fears.  My favorite advice columnist Dan Savage, talks about relationships having a “Price of Admission”.  My price to The Wife is she must accompany me to the dentist.  She sits at the end of the chair, holds my foot and maintains a steady stream of distracting conversation. —Something she does quite well just naturally so that part isn’t a huge burden on her.  At the end of it, she forgets that she saw me quivering and drooling in the chair.  This was my time to offer to do the same for her since root canals are much more serious than the variety checkups.  She turned me down, thankfully, but still I am here in the waiting room.  You scoff, but even this is a big deal.  Usually I am out standing in the parking lot while she is seeing the dentist at our six month appointments.

The terminals on the isolator.  I wired it
before I attached it to the firewall.

A while back I very briefly talked about installing the battery isolator.  One thing I wanted to clarify because a couple of people have asked.  The function of the battery isolator is to prevent the electricity usage in the back of the van from affecting the starting ability of the engine battery.  It lets the engine charge my house batteries, but doesn’t allow house usage to strand me.  The isolator itself has two big terminals and two small terminals on it.  It is a pass through device, one side of the big terminals connects to the battery (via a fuse) and the other end connects to the house batteries (via another fuse on the house battery end).

The small terminals may or may not be marked for the positive and negative side.  Mine were not.  Their purpose is to run the relay that internally either connects or disconnects the two big terminals.  When power is applied, the relay connects them.   If the terminals are not marked positive and negative then it shouldn't matter.  One side attaches to ground, I just ran a short wire and attached it to the body with a self taping sheet metal screw.

A piggyback in place.  The red wire runs off
to connect to the isolator.

The other end attaches to the fuse panel on some circuit that only is powered when the key is turned on.  The easiest way to do this is to buy something called a fuse tap, or piggyback.  Ask for it at an auto parts store and they will be able to help you out.  The way this works, you pull a fuse and stick this in it’s place. The piggyback has two fuses.  One, the original you pulled out and a second fuse for the circuit the isolator is one.  It is an easy install but important to know what wire goes where.

This week I was looking at the amount of rust on the propane box I had my son’s friend build.  He told me back at the time I should throw a coat of paint on it.  But back then it was cold.  Then it was warm.  Now it is heading toward cold again and I am finally getting around to it.  Lots of rust had formed in the meantime.  I chucked up a round wire brush into the drill and took off the top layer of rust anyway.  Then painted it with some red rust preventing primer and on top of that a couple of cans of spray on truck bed liner.   —As a side note, this is the same paint I spray paint on The Wife’s “goth chick” boots so she can look all badass.

Over the weekend I insulated a couple sections of the ceiling.  I measure the space between the ribs and cut insulation to fit that space.  Then when I have two fit in place, I put a 6” strip of quarter inch plywood over the top of the rib, secured with some self tapping metal screws.  The strip will hold the insulation in place, additionally it will provide an air gap which allows me to count an R value of 1 for the foil lining of the poly iso foam.  Theoretically this gives me an R value of eight for air-gapped 1” poly iso and 1/4” plywood.  By house roof standards that is crap.   But, in my 63 square feet it is the best I can do.

The propane basket with some paint on it.

I realized, going back over my prior posts, I never talked about buying the mattress.   Originally, during the on-paper-design-phase of this project, I heard about something called a “small full” bed size.   It was very close to what I needed.  The width of a small full is 48” and the length just three inches longer than what I needed.   I thought maybe either this sized bed could be wedged in,  or not as fun sounding, maybe possibly I could cut the mattress to length.  I was hoping the wedging in would work.   What I felt would be handy though, I would be able to buy sheets and blankets in this size and not have a bunch of extra material.  I did all this research back in the first building days at the start of this project.   Perfect, I thought.  I went ahead and built the bed base 48” wide to hold this sized bed.

Fast forward to bed buying time.   It seems Small Full beds are a European thing.  That’s the trouble with doing research on a global internet.   Can you imagine the shipping cost of one mattress coming from  Luxembourg?  I know I sure can’t.  Same trouble with the sheets.  Doing a project like this, you have to be flexible.   I started to cast around again.   I looked into futons first.   My idea would be to buy a full sized one of the cotton batting variety, then cut it down.   The Wife was dubious of my ability to pull this off.  To answer this, I found a company in my Big City that will make custom size futons either of the spring or cotton variety.  Cotten futons are still expensive, the custom sized ones not surprisingly are more expensive yet.  For the size I was wanting I was looking at ~$900. 

Looking up at the ceiling, you an see the strips of
plywood running across and holding the insulation in place.

I spent a little time looking for used ones on Craigslist with no joy.  You might hear stories of the free futons being given away by people moving.  I sure couldn’t find anything being sold for less than a hundred.  The ones there were almost always the spring version.  None of them looked new.  The last thing I needed was a smelly bed bug infested mattress to start off with.  I was looking for the cotton batting version but even if I could cut it to size, they have issues when you try to use them this way.  You have to pull them out a fluff them up a couple of times a year and you should really rotate them every other time you change sheets.   My research  turned up they can develop mold because of warming cooling cycles of van life in the wintertime.

Eventually I had to give-up the futon idea.  I started looking into foam.   People were giving me tips about cheap sources of foam mattresses.  I was told Sears sold them but I think they got out of that business years ago.  From what I found there are a few different types and not surprising, you get what you pay for.  The softer foam is a little cheaper, but won’t be good to sleep on long term.  Soft foam allows your body to sink in and doesn’t provide you with the support you need for a comfortable night’s sleep.   The other thing, soft foam breaks down and needs replacement.  The lady at the foam shop told me I would need to replace soft foam yearly.  I doubt that.   Particularly since I only sleep on it four nights a week.

I also have heard a lot about memory foam.  This is a foam that reacts, softening, from the heat of your body.   It holds it’s shape and cradles you, spreads your weight on a long pressure point because the heavier parts of your body sink in deeper.  Lots of people love it.*   So I priced a 6” memory foam mattress as well   I had no idea what stuff like this costs. Twelve hundred dollars!

(*Do your own research.   Lots of people hate memory foam as well.   They say it is hard to climb in and out of and it is super warm/hot to sleep on.  There is no middle ground grey areas for memory foam users.  They either love it or hate it.)

What I ended up with is a pretty comfy slice of the best of both worlds.  The lady at the foam shop had me lay down on a few different examples of thicknesses and stiffness.  I ended up with a six inch thick piece of the second firmest regular foam.   The cost was $516.    I was pretty shocked that it cost this much.  I don’t know.  When I started this whole project, I just had it in mind I was going to be able to buy some kind of bed for at the most a hundred dollars.   So I considered this a way over budget item.

When I asked her about memory foam she suggested putting a thin memory foam topper over the top of what I had purchased.  The price on a 2” topper from her shop was another ~$400 but when I demurred, she looked around, leaned towards me and in a conspiratorial whisper said, “Just go to Target.  You can buy and inch and a half memory foam for about $30 and cut it down to size.”  Wow, very cool.  Thank you!

While I was a Target I picked up two sets of regular bed sheets.  Sure, they are a little oversized and floppy but I wasn’t needing to pay shipping from London so I was happy.  I had this all put together and in place in time for a Royal Visit.   The Wife came and spent two nights with me in the big city.  I know she enjoyed the investment because while I was hard at work, she was sleeping in the parking lot until almost noon.  As for me, what did I think of it?  Prior to this I had been sleeping on three layers of rock wool carpet padding.  I thought it was divine!

Look how I am sucking my gut in on this shot.  I must
really be trying to impress y'all.  But here, what I am
trying to determine is what the table height should be.

Now, with the mattress in place I was really starting to look into the design of the table.   The mattress had to be there because it forms the primary table seating area.  My original ideas and plans were for a bit of a wall cabinet built into the wall just behind the side doors.  The cabinet would be about six inches deep (out from the outer wall) at the top.  The width would be the same as that of the table, maybe 24-26 inches.  I was planning the top could have enough room enough for some cup holders.  Maybe there would be a napkin (more likely it would end up just filled with junk) holder in the top as well.  I was even thinking about trying to design in the way to hold a couple of folding chairs into the cabinet itself.  The tabletop would fold down against this cabinet base.

What led to the failure of this idea was math. Once I started looking at how long I wanted the table to be I realized it couldn’t fold down because the length of the table would be determined by its height above the floor.  I wanted it longer than that.  Additionally, in a folding down design, its edge would have to be beyond the edge of the bed.   Any stray bedding would get caught up in the table folding process.  I was bummed, as I always am when one of my designs won’t pan out.

The original table design with cup
holders.

The wife didn’t like the idea from the beginning.  She felt like the cup and napkin holders were wasted space.  She made a good point, “are you going to be drinking at the table when you are going down the road?”  No.  “So why do you need cup holders?  What are you holding? They will only collect crap!”   Ah she knows me so well.

What she proposed was a great idea.  Rather than fold the table down, taking up the prime space of the van, why not make it fold up against the wall?  The first thing to begin to test this out was to build a cardboard mockup.  We had some big boxes and cut out an initial tabletop.  Starting out, I just held this in place.  We had one side taped to the side wall.  Over the span of two weekends we toyed with a couple of versions of this mockup and could see it’s advantages.   The first being, it didn’t take up floor space when it wasn’t in use.  The length of the table could now be limited by the ceiling height (being greater) rather than the distance down to the floor.

….Gosh, I’ve never done this before.  This post is getting long.  Lets continue this in the next installment.

Maker Space

Even our small town has what is called a Maker Space.   I have been driving by ours for years.   They have a sign, they have some model rockets hanging from the window.   I just figured it was some kinda hobby store.  Frankly, I was worried if I went in there I would be assaulted by scrapbookers.  I hate scrapbookers!  So I have driven past.   

It wasn’t until this past Sunday night I had ever given it a second thought.   Talking to The Wife, who is Scoutmaster for one of our town’s Boy Scout troops.   She and her committee are always looking for activities for the scouts to do and it was suggested there was a real nice woodworking class taught in The Maker Space.  I asked her, “They have a shop available there?” she whipped out her trusty Scoutmaster iPhone and gave me the full list of tools they have.   …And I mean to tell you, it was full.  The light went on in my head and I realized what these places really are.

Two nice table saws with full outfeed tables.

During my workday yesterday while in the process of waiting for something to finish happening, I did a little research.   My big city has two such places.  Both of them advertise their laser cutter ownership.   One of the web sites did have a notice posted saying the laser cutter was broken.  There were no pictures on the broken laser cutter place, but there was on the other.   The place looked huge and extensive.   Both places offer tours on specific nights and tonight was the night for the broken laser place.

It took me about an fifteen minute drive via mostly freeway to get to the place.   It is located within a small (~five square city blocks) older, industrial development inside a very desirable neighborhood on the south side.  Just exactly the type of thing that never works out if you are playing Sim City, and yet here it is working in real life.  —Who’da thought. 

This Maker Space is a older, single story building.   It looked a little rough on the outside. I walked in and the tour began.  Inside the front door the seedy 1950s era offices are hoped to one day become a computer lab.  —They had a ways to go.  In the corner there is a ham radio station. The basement is an art area with some big tables, drafting table etc.  I noticed a 3D printer.  A sewing room with a dozen vintages of machines.  There were a couple of other areas like this, I can’t remember it all.   

The reason I am really here.  Critical to the
building of a tabletop!

Then upstairs.  Walking into the shop it was split into four bays.   Maybe eight thousand square feet total.  One bay was storage where I would be able to keep a plastic tote nine of materials.  One bay was a welding shop.  One bay a machine shop with three metal lathes (one of which my guide guaranteed worked.) two vertical mills.  One of the mills was named Bridget. :-D Metal band saw, bending equipment, etc.   I don’t know that stuff well so maybe I am easy to impress.  I thought it looked good.   

Then the wood shop.   Two big table saws with full out-feed tables.   A nice looking Jet jointer (the tool that actually set off this search for shop space) along with a wide planer and two smallish lathes.  They had a CNC machine that was currently broken down.   I don’t even know what that is, I am just passing on what they told me.   They didn’t have a wide sander, which would have been a really cool thing for one of my planned tasks.  Otherwise it seemed like a very well decked out shop.  

The wood shop equipment was the newest in appearance the table saws in particular.  The other equipment, to me, looked pretty old.   But stuff looked well maintained.   My tour guide described the place as like a big crazy extended family.   It is volunteer run.  It sounds like some members are around a lot.

The welding shop.

Here is what really seals the deal for me.   This Maker Space is $55 a month, 24/7 building access.  The other place with all the nice pictures on their web site is $200 a month, three month minimum commitment.   Not a job shop.  I really can’t afford to spend that kind of money.   I don’t need high tech stuff to build a table and a few other custom van parts.  I really *wish* this was a drive-in shop so I could get the van inside for some of my stuff but the expensive place doesn't have that ability either. 

I think I will sign up and meet with the shop foreman next week.  Before I can work I have to attend an orientation. He wants to show me where everything is, and also I am sure, confirm that I am a low risk hazard for myself or his shop.

Ok and here is another aspect to the whole shop.  It is the corner lot of an industrial dead end street set in the middle of a nice safe south side of town residential block.  A place where a cargo van would be totally invisible.   Interesting.