angles and angels

The next step was to assemble the ledges and ledge runners that attach on the top of the box.

The ledges were easy as they are just 1"x12"s cut to the length of the box. The ledge runners, however, posed a considerable problem. They are 12' long and needed to have a 65 degree angle along one edge. Now technically we had the proper equipment to do this but what we didn't have was the room. Where the table saw is set up in the basement does not allow for 12' of clearance on either side, even if there wasn't a bunch of stuff in the way.

Thankfully a cousin of ours who lives just up the road from my folks came to the rescue. Jim has a beautiful woodshop and was kind enough to help us out. The fun part was getting the boards over there. Dad's truck only has a 5' bed so I had to ride in the back sitting on the boards to keep them from bouncing out...

That's me back home with the finished boards and rufus t cat coming to investigate.

The box with the assembled ledges on.

Now we got to the fun part; cutting out the plywood end pieces. I was really glad that I spent the extra money to get the templates. It was fairly easy to extend them in the middle for the extra foot we needed. It was also fairly easy to shorten them when we realized we'd miscalculated again! But eventually we got the fit right and got them on the box.

It's beginning to look like something you might actually camp in! We also cut out the top plywood end pieces (measuring very carefully this time) and tonight dad and I cut out the king posts from 2'x6's reclaimed from an old picnic table. Once those are on I think I can be reasonable sure that I'll be done in time! I'm so excited!!!

paint and misery...

Alot of paint in fact. And some considerable misery. I spent most of the week getting the base painted so we could move on to the next steps in construction.

The bottom of the vardo and the floor inside both needed painting with porch and floor enamel which takes longer to dry and and the sides needed painted with their final color before we could set the base on the trailer.

I've been using mostly mis-tint paint and what I was able to find in my parents basement. The green was one of those finds, I dig it. The inside is going to be mostly cream/off white so as to keep it as bright as possible in there.

And now for the misery...

What you see here is a base partially on the trailer, it was fully on the trailer untill we realized that the 3/8" plywood pieces had to go on the front and back, a fact we had not previously taken into consideration. We had made the box 1" too long. One measly inch, but it had to come off or else the gate would not shut once the plywood was on the front and back. Did I mention that we had used copious amounts of wood glue?

totally floored

It's been a busy week in vardo land... last weekend we started constructing the base using two sheets of 3/4" plywood for the floor and 1" x 12"s for the sides.

A standard sheet of plywood is 4'x8'. If we had been following the original plans we'd have only needed the one, but since my trailer is 5'x10 we

had to piece two together. Which meant we'd have to use...

BISCUITS!!!

I'm rather fond of biscuits and of getting to use the biscuit joiner.

We added a 1'x8' piece to the side and then topped that with a 2'x'5 to get the size we needed.

A close up of the juction...

Then we put the sides together and glued and screwed those puppies on!

Voila! It's a base!

Primed and waiting...

Work on the Vardo has been slow in the past few weeks. I've been working on getting the lumber primed and finding more goodies for the inside.

So far I have the six or so sheets of plywood primed on both sides using some old grey house paint I found in my parents basement (it's a scary place but full of useful things if you know where to look) I found several other cans of paint in colors that are useful to me as well.

I'm off to the evil mart of wals tomorrow to look for more opps paint to prime the rest of my boards with. I'm hoping to have everything painted and dry by saturday so we can start the actual construction. I have pretty much all weekend (including friday, woohoo!) to work on it except for a few hours on saturday for my ten year high school reunion *harmuph*

I will post pics of my progress just as soon as I figure out my new phone!