A '63 Overlander Followed us Home

[reinergirl]

Is that really rust on the chrome or burned on crud? Try taking the small burner and enclose it in a plastic bag with a 1/4 cup of vinegar. Leave it in a well ventilated area for up to a week. The ammonia fumes can do amazing things. At least you have nothing to lose. If it works you can use it on the larger top in a garbage bag. I've also heard vinegar can work but I've only tried the ammonia!

Nice dig on Scott lol

The curved door looks great!

[Lance M]

Originally Posted by HiHoAgRV

I cleaned up the Tappan. Any suggestions on what to do with the top? My best solution is silver powder coat. Once again, that is not something I have in my skill set...

Lookin' great Vernon! I'd go with the powder coat. It has worked well before.

Love the curved door. Beautiful.

[MrBeast]

Vernon, I had not checked in on your build in quite a while, she is looking great.

I really love the sink door, that is very cool. I may very well wind up copying you when I do my own Airstream.

[HiHoAgRV]

Originally Posted by beckybillrae

I love your curved door & sweet sink! Original would have been far too easy for you!

I am having fun trying all of these odd things...

Originally Posted by reinergirl

Is that really rust on the chrome or burned on crud? ...!

yeah, its good ole' rust.

Originally Posted by Top

Lookin' great Vernon! I'd go with the powder coat. It has worked well before.
.

Power coat is what I'm leaning toward but I may try some of that high temp POR stuff. Now I gotta find new drip pans with the pilot cut out!

Originally Posted by MrBeast

.. I may very well wind up copying you when I do my own Airstream.

Shhhh...I copied a bunch of other folks!

The Dinette is roughed in. I went ahead and set up the router table and made cove and bead joints for the tighter radius of this round.

[Max Well]

Vernon,

You are doing such a great job! Your craftsmanship is beautiful. Keep up the good work, you are giving me so many great ideas!

Ken

[Steve Bryant]

Vernon, you should never again minimize or denigrate your your woodworking skills, sir! Even in jest! What fine work!

[Becky B.]

Originally Posted by Steve Bryant

Vernon, you should never again minimize or denigrate your your woodworking skills, sir! Even in jest! What fine work!

Agreed!

[HiHoAgRV]

More wood...
Mrs HiHo and I took the 34'er over to my parents this weekend...and while there I restocked on rough cut stock.

Cypress is going to be used to build the hollow door frames for the closet as well as the sides and rears of the drawers. I think I grabbed 7 planks.

Of the 7 Cherry planks, some are wide enough to make complete doors and drawer fronts without splicing!

I also started the powder coating process on the stove parts...

[HiHoAgRV]

Hurricane Isaac is raining on my woodworking parade so I decided to take a look at the 'Fridge

I've been on the bubble deciding what to do, the cooling unit works but the controls have gone onto a better purpose. Today I decided to just use the door/front and adapt it to a new fridge.

The bulk of the original unit was due to a full 4" of insulation around the box.

[Steve Bryant]

Vernon, what if you kept the new refrigerator's door and repainted it in the brown/orange of the 60s vintage appliances, then put the Dometic nameplate and handle on the door of the new fridge? That way, you retain the vintage charm and have a completely new refrigerator that you don't have to struggle with adaptation issues.

It's just a thought.

Steve

[HiHoAgRV]

Steve,
The wife really likes the curvy door so it's gonna stay (if at all possible).

The plan as of now...I have gutted the Dometic door, I'm doing the same on the new fridge. I will adapt the Dometic skin to the fridge doors interior parts. Unfortunately the Dometic is waaaaay wider that the fridge so the hinges will take some, um, re-engineering...but, I DO have a plan!

[Steve Bryant]

Vernon,
I very much understand your motivation to use the "Dometic door skin! I wish you the best and I know that you're up to the challenge.

[HiHoAgRV]

If you start off with a huge rough cut cypress board, then remove a huge pile of chips...
You end up with the boards to make drawer sides and backs...

I dislike making drawers...

[reinergirl]

Hey Vernon,

I'm told powdercoating won't work on the stove top , it will get too hot and will discolor. Although typically it goes brown, so maybe of you were powdercoating it brown?

A better choice is rechroming ($$$$) or reporcelianizing. I know a place in Rhode island that does the latter, but I'm sure there's a place closer to you!

However I ran across this thread that uses oxyalic acid to remove the rust. Maybe that would clean it up so that a quick polish would be good enough?

Oxalic Acid. Removing rust from Chrome the very best way! - VintageBMX.com

[HiHoAgRV]

Originally Posted by reinergirl

Hey Vernon,

I'm told powdercoating won't work on the stove top , it will get too hot and will discolor. Although typically it goes brown, so maybe of you were powdercoating it brown?

A better choice is rechroming ($$$$) or reporcelianizing. I know a place in Rhode island that does the latter, but I'm sure there's a place closer to you!

However I ran across this thread that uses oxyalic acid to remove the rust. Maybe that would clean it up so that a quick polish would be good enough?

Oxalic Acid. Removing rust from Chrome the very best way! - VintageBMX.com

Hey Shelly,
I have bead blasted the top and the rust pits are a bit deeper than I expected...
I'm not 100% that this will work...but...Im hoping the drip pans will catch the bulk of the abuse and save the powder coated top...
Now if I can find some new drip pans!

As usual, I probably gonna be the 'tester' on this stuff! If it goes bad, I guess I can blast off the failure then try something else...

I'm lookin forward to seeing some progress on your trailer...(?)

[HiHoAgRV]

Da' Dinette...
All of the structure is built, the ply is stained and the top pieces are fitted.

Next comes a couple of coats of poly, then the final install...

The pink lookin' round pieces will darken to a nice rich brown (the bed has already done it)

I also got the drawer pieces ready to assemble but they wood needs to dry for a bit.

On edit...i also dislike cutting plywood to fit the curved corners...

On edit edit...
I added a photo of the bed corner. The camera colors are not quite right, but you can see how the wood darkens...

[Becky B.]

You do quick work, sir! Looks great, as always. Lots of seating at your dinette!

[HiHoAgRV]

Drawers...
That is alot of effort for 3 small drawers...
All of the wood (except the 3 small plywood bottoms) came all of the way from the tree to the photo between my dad and I. I bet there is 6 hours of work in them.

I went with a center bottom ball bearing slide.

I like to look, the original pulls really set off the simplicity of a plain square door.

I also got 2 coats of Poly on the dinette. Now I get to do the final install of it.

[HiHoAgRV]

I fiddled a bit with the fridge door.

Since this is a Frankenstien project, yes, I'm using a 110V fridge that I already had. Actually, its the fridge that was installed in Dolly when we bought her. If it works good I can move on to a LP RV fridge...

I gutted the Dometic Door all the way down to the bare skin. Adding 3" wide sections of sheet aluminum around the perimeter give me a place to attach the interior of the dorm fridge.

I'll stuff it with insulation after everything is fitted, dissassembled and painted.

On EDIT...the MOST IMPORTANT PART...you gotta have a Nemo towel for any chance of success...

Hinges are next...

[HiHoAgRV]

It doesn't seem too many months back when we spent a large amount of time removing layers and layers of paint from the end caps...today we started putting paint back on them...

This is the base coat. The next layer will be very delicate darker tone applied with rags to add a small amount of veining...