What the fashion conscious teardrop builder is wearing ...

Well strictly speaking not this weekend as the weather has been extremely hot. But it came in handy in early May. Patch purchased from Warbird's business (see TCGB forums messages about the evolution of this design and info on how to order).

The garment, in the tradition of teardrop purchasing patterns was bought on ebay (army surplus and much needed in a barn with no doors).

Sbeaky progress post ...

Things have been going pretty well for past week or so since we have A PLAN. This plan involves Steve having a whole gantt chart full of things to do. One is to finish off the outside of the trailer and we've been talking for a while about doing some form of camo (originally steampunk style) on those parts of it which are a different colour than the rest. This has come about because there was some strange variation in the sheets which we did not fully see until it was up and built.

So various plans were considered including Japanese style cherry blossom. But what we've gone for is a sort of fishscale tattoo motif, stenciled in blackboard paint. Here are some pics as describing it won't do. (Click pics to enlarge).

Here you can see the streaky bits when the wood was supplied with filler in a different colour. The stencil is part done and you can see where the use of washing liquid as lube on the cill over the door has dripped and stained the wood. At this stage you can still see this wood variation (not in a good way) pretty obviously. And here ...

... its a lot less obvious. And to avoid the overall flock wallpaper we are stopping here. Its a slightly different design on the other side. We like to think of this as a Yakusa (ie. Japanese mafia) cum Maori tribal tattoo - I think you *might* see what we have in mind.

Still work to be done, notably the replacing of what Rhys calls the 'eyebrow' above the door, the placement of the awning rail and the trim around the roof to finish that edge. Oh, and the wheel will get a paint job and the wood is going to get around 6 coats of clear Yacht varnish (at least).

The great thing about teardrop trailers that are home builds is that they have a distinctive look (no losing these in the car park or mistaking it for someone elses at a campsite). Looking forward to camping in it this summer.

Why is this a sneaky post? Because Steve did the hard work and I have stolen the edge and posted about it. Well I did have a lot of say in the design and we're both pleased with how its turning out. (Thanks Steve).

Chris

A pivotal discovery

I've been worrying about the problem of how to attach the struts that hold up the tailgate for quite a while. But then I spotted some old castors that were lying around and I thought, "pivot... swivel..."

It was all that was needed. Ready made. So here's the first one in place. It's nice when things work out.