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docflyboy · 10-18-2020, 11:35 AM

Thanks to all who have posted their experiences with Marmoleum. It looks so good, you almost want to just sit in folding lawn chairs and admire. I checked my install again today to make sure there were no bubbles and then took the trailer back to the Sparestream Corral in the old GM assembly plant where I keep my accumulation of aluminum treasures. I wanted it to stay in the insulated hangar overnight and let the mastic set up at an even temp. Jerry

docflyboy · 10-19-2020, 04:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by steinVT

Jerry it looks great and nice color. ..... Plan to do it again for the Ambassador except I will have to figure out the welding as more joint is visible. Thanks for the good write up. - Mark
Attachment 381130

Mark- your install looks great. I lost one of my wheel well liners in Texas during the shell off. Yours look great, and it makes me think that a little OEM '67 Chevy trunk splatter paint might look great and go without the ABS cover. Are your fenders insulated or not. Also, your floor is really attractive. Mrs flyboy wants new flooring in the '05 Safari and it has a blonde woodwork scheme. What was your floor color? thanks, Jerry

steinVT · 10-19-2020, 06:50 PM

I fitted one or two layers (can't remember) of PRODEX insulation between the two layers of wheel wells. In the '56 both layers are galvanized. The paint you see, is actually the same Zolatone that I used to spray the interior.

We are really happy with the color choice, it contrasts nicely with the all the wood. It does show dirt a little more than I would like. The marmoleum number was REAL 3236, Dark Bistre. From your pictures, I thought it was very close to what you installed.- Mark

docflyboy · 10-19-2020, 07:41 PM

Mark- thanks. It gives me some ideas. Jerry

docflyboy · 10-26-2020, 04:46 PM

We were projected to get snow last night and today, and the meteorologists were spot on. I usually take my Caravel out of storage and bring it home and work in the driveway or in an airplane hangar, depending on what tools I'll need. I don't want to be taking it out in wet weather, so I thought it was about time to do a woodworking project. Yesterday, I dimensioned some boards that were up to 8" wide and about 9' long and 13/16" thick while popping in and out of the living room to watch the home town team. Today, I laid them all out and tried to get a color and grain layout that would work with my front locker cover. This cover is what distinguishes the '68s from their prior years, so I wanted it to look as good as my skills would allow.

I wanted to post the deconstruction of my locker cover, as it had some water damage and had delaminated on one side. A little scraping shows it is likely a mahogany veneer or luan over house scraps of maybe Beech or similar wood. It is reinforced with the aluminum track for the sliding doors on the back side. It's good it doesn't move, because it's flimsy at best.

As far as reproducing it, probably the most expedient way to copy the shape is to rip a piece of 1/4 Masonite and use a router trim bit, at least for the outside shape. This will also work for most of the inside curve profile on the sides as well. The deconstruction revealed some glued end grain to side grain at least in the upper outer corners, not a particularly strong joint, but it held for 52 years because of a thick veneer overlay on the front, and the speaker cloth spanner being stapled in from behind.

My plan is to make a blank out of Honduras Mahogany, then clamp a Masonite template on one side and cut with a flush trim bit, with the bearing running on the Masonite. I don't have a bandsaw in my shop, but belong to a woodworkers guild, so I'll probably take it there and rough out the outside of the blank Wednesday. My blank is two full length pieces of stock and a pair of middle pieces to get the width that I needed and work around a knot on the back side of the blank that would have been close to the bottom edge near the middle.

The perimeter of the speakers probably doesn't matter much about how the grain match at the jointed edges, since it's only about 1.25" wide, but it is certainly a challenge to get the grain to yield an invisible joint based on the grain. I dimensioned about twice as many boards to play with the grain possibilities. The boards were more center cut, like quarter sawn than plain sawn lumber, so I don't think I'll get cupping based on grain pattern as seen from the end of the board.

I'll let the glue dry up overnight and was aggressive to get the glue off the A-side surface while clamped up. My blank once ripped will end up being 13 1/8" wide and my spiral head planer cuts 12" but will take a 13" board, so I'll probably dimension it to my final 3/4" with a wide belt sander at the Guild and clean up both sides. -Jerry

dbj216 · 10-28-2020, 06:35 PM

Your home team beat my home team for the 10th time in a row. Sad I don't watch any football anymore. Too political for me. I'm very glad AirForums is not. Airstream topics only please.

You're doing some class A woodworking. Airstream has a good cabinet shop for sure, but they are tasked with lightweight and low cost. Your work will be like fine furniture.

David

docflyboy · 10-29-2020, 07:31 AM

David-we got your snow, and we've had a run of wet and soggy with a damp chill. The hangar work till spring, is likely with the door closed. I heated the garage when I had the Caravel in the side space before the shell off. I'm liking it. Thanks, I'll try to make if furniture grade. I'm a purpose driven woodworker, so it takes me a bit to get my mojo back each time there's a purpose. Working in expensive wood really kicks the check and double check into overdrive. As you know, it's not the speed you get there, but that you got there. Jerry

Peter417 · 10-30-2020, 12:17 PM

What drivers do you plan to use? I have a pair of genesis speakers that I refoamed and have contemplated building into the original speaker housing.

docflyboy · 11-01-2020, 07:43 AM

I've got a mobile Audio/Video guy that is married to one of my favorite nurses that I work with. He always gets it right, and will be doing the rear camera setup and switching into my TV. I'll post what he comes up with. I'll be ready for him in about a month. I do have a little trick install I'm planning though. If you google how to make a panel speaker with endgrain Balsa, there's a little driver that I think I bought from Dayton, that I'm mounting on the inside of my exterior skin forward of the door on the CS to play windchimes, invisibly. I'll follow up and let the forum know it that's a boom or bust. I got the idea, because the how to video that I watched said that the speaker panel had to be a pretty acoustically dead wood, or it would sound tinny or metalic, so I thought wind chimes would sound OK that way. We'll see. Jerry

docflyboy · 11-26-2020, 04:08 PM

I've gotten side-tracked for about the last month with work related items. Sometimes it takes a lot of things getting done for it to just look like anything happened. It worked out fine, while I wanted my Marmoleum mastic to cure a bit. I've posted before on painting the interior skins, but the recent progress has been rewarding. When my trailer came back from the shell off and new fabrication, it had skins placed where I had left them out when it went down to the shop. Quite frankly, it was very confusing where the skins fit, since I was relying on the holes to all line up. Fortunately, I figured out that in '68 the backs of he skins are flat white primer, and later on they are brown.

I went ahead and painted them all, so that I'd have options. I wanted to paint them out of the trailer so that I wouldn't have any sag lines where my skins overlapped or where the center ceiling piece holds them down. I did figure out how to straighten them pretty effectively, where there were creases and indentations. I had a piece of 1/4 birch plywood scrap in the hangar, and placing them face down on the plywood and tapping them with the peening side of a ball peen hammer down the back of the crease worked very well.

Also, no matter how you think you've got your wiring rough-in so logically thought out, you still need some detailed notes and wire labeling. I used the Dymo Rhino labeler to label each positive and negative lead, then got a lesson from the aircraft avionics installer a couple hangars away from mine. I've got a little more to do on the wiring and then it's all good to button up all but the forward SS corner.

An HVLP gun was great to use to shoot the skins. I used a second cleaning of everything with Krud Kutter, then rinsed and rinsed again with hot soft water with a pressure washer set to about 1200 psi. I then wiped them down with Isopropyl alcohol once, then hit them with a red Scotchbrite pad on a DA. This got the skins clean without loss of their vinyl texture. One last cleaning with Isopropyl alcohol and then I pop riveted them to the inside liner panel of my hangar door and shot them. With about 6 extra skins, all total it took about 3 pints of RTS vinyl paint. One of the attached pics shows two skins on the hangar floor that haven't been shot and the ones hanging have been. There is a little loss of the white criss cross pattern, but the color is pretty close. There is absolutely no tackiness.

The insulation I chose is Thinsulate that I saw good reviews on a Sprinter build forum. It's easy to work with and cuts well and sticks in place with just a little #77 adhesive spray. The Thinsulate is fire resistant and mildew resistant. It doesn't have an IR reflective barrier, but I think two layers of aluminum should suffice for that. Hopefully things will move along a bit more quickly from here. Jerry

dbj216 · 11-26-2020, 05:57 PM

Thanks for sharing your interior skins painting process. Wow, that is a lot of work, but I bet the paint will last a very long time. And the thinsulate is a great idea. I have to remember that one. I hope you tell us how well it works.

My painting process wasn't near as good. Clean, tape, roller and done. It may not last very long, but it looks good now. Your process is much better.

David

docflyboy · 11-26-2020, 10:04 PM

David- thanks. Actually, I think if you're going to re-insulate and you have a place to do this, this takes less time than all the masking. I really appreciated the craftsmanship of a lot of the very skilled restorers on the site, but felt the depth of latex paint took a little away from the originality, and maybe durability. The paint has a vinyl binder and is dry about as fast as shooting acrylic lacquer back in the '70s and 80's where dust being attracted to it is a non-occurrence. When I was restoring a T-34B, the painting drove me nuts, because the Imron was so toxic, attracted dust while it was drying and really showed a dry pass. I'm not that great with a spray gun, and my hangar is not as well lit as it used to be before the airport got a grant to put all LED strip lights in and I had to get rid of a bunch of HO fluorescent lights. I wore a P-100 organic respirator and didn't have to run around in a fresh air full face mask like with Imron. The price of the paint wasn't cheep. Two quarts was a little over $350, but they also made me up a rattle can at my automotive jobber. There is no overspray in my hangar, like there would have been with Imron or even a single stage paint. The color that matches the original skins is a stock duPont color called Camel Beige. It's just a little more pink than the original, and you loose the white criss cross, but you could fog it and put it on a little thin and keep those features. I shot it with a detail gun at 28psi on low humidity days without a line dryer. Thanks for your kind words. Jerry

docflyboy · 11-27-2020, 05:43 PM

Today- I finished the DC panel. I chose to put it on the SS forward overhead locker, so that I won't have to crank my stiff neck around to look under a bench, when I want to manage loads. I chose a 5 breaker Blue Sea System with an integral ammeter and voltmeter. It can read the volts on three battery banks, although I intend to only have one internal battery bank, but will use one switch position to read the TV through the 7-way plug, the middle position will read my internal battery bank, which at present is just one 100Ahr gel cell and the third will read an Anderson power plug that will be on the trailer A-frame. I used Blue Sea bus blocks that have a protective cover that is not on in the photos where I had a lot of home runs on one circuit.

Airstream made up all the lights with crimp connectors tying everything together under the two ceiling lights for the most part in '68. I wanted to home run those back to the DC distribution panel. So that there would not be more than two crimp connector lugs on a screw, the lights have a bus for both positive and negative. The electronics in the forward sliding door locker just goes to it's 15 amp breaker, as does the Vitrifrigo AC/DC fridge. All the fans are on one circuit and everything to do with having running water is one one circuit. That includes the pump (my '68 vintage pump works and runs like a sewing machine), the SeeLevel System and the ignitor for the water heater.

The galley will have a propane/CO detector, the See Level panel with pump switch mounted to the right of the chimney and the controller for the water heater ignitor, as well as a 3-way switch that will turn off and on the ceiling and vanity light in the bathroom. The ceiling light switch in the bathroom ceiling is switched out to a rotary 3-way to complete the circuit.

All the fans and range hood make up in the CS upper locker.

There's also a small switch just to the galley side of the door that turns on both strip LED lights that will be just above the hinges of all 5 locker doors to wash the ceiling. Another small switch will be on the opposite side for a scare light that I'm cutting in using David Winick's Caravel's photos as a position locator.

I'll cut a CNC aluminum panel for the DC distribution box, which will have the control head next to it for the MSH-3012 hybrid load assist inverter charger. There will be USB ports and there need to be 2 Klixon 1 Amp pull type breakers to protect the system from an ammeter failure.

The 1 Amp fuses that protect the lines to read the voltages of the three power sources will be near the voltage source to protect the line. The hybrid load assist inverter/charger sits under the SS booth bench with the battery, leaving the "garage" open for cords and hoses.

I'll follow up later on the AC system and hybrid inverter, which require two separate neutrals.

Better pictures later, when Mrs flyboy will hold the things into position and I have the hangar door open for better light.

kevinkatz · 11-27-2020, 10:06 PM

Totally agree that you can do it yourself. I did it in my 1949 Curtis Wright. It may not be as good under the bed or the cabinets along the edges, as the professional install but it is absolutely not visible. The center came out great. I suppose that it is like everything else in a restoration. Your could try do it yourself or you could take it all to the pro's. For me its not about the money, but rather the satisfaction of having done it myself. Everyone has their own desires and comfort level. Don't be frightened off by marmoleum installation.

docflyboy · 11-28-2020, 04:09 AM

Kevin- thanks for the shout-out. Checked out your pics on the forum and you're not easily frightened off either. You're right, for our types, perfect is a goal, but the prided is in saying that you did it yourself. Jerry

dbj216 · 11-29-2020, 05:53 PM

Hi docflyboy: I think your aviation background is coming through in your very elaborate 12v system. I know a guy who has a battery, a converter, a fuse panel, and a SeeLevel and that's all. Simple Simon some call me.

David

docflyboy · 11-30-2020, 06:26 AM

David- You nailed it, when I was restoring an airplane I built a small factory to do it in. I'm changing my screen name to doc_overkill. Mostly the DC panel attention is to shed loads when boondocking, sort of like you would if you lost your alternator belt in the clouds. LOL Jerry

docflyboy · 12-01-2020, 03:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dbj216

Hi docflyboy: I think your aviation background is coming through in your very elaborate 12v system. I know a guy who has a battery, a converter, a fuse panel, and a SeeLevel and that's all. Simple Simon some call me.

David

David-I found this photo of a '68 GT that was for sale about 2 years ago. I think this is about as good as AS got it as far as seeing the gauges and an efficient layout. I just feel I have to hide the modern and honor the layout of the Caravel. My '67 has a similar layout, but a PO painted the wood work and it looses a lot of pretty. I'm guessing the console was on the option list. Jerry

dbj216 · 12-03-2020, 06:20 PM

I believe this "control center" was part of the International trim level, along with the nicer cabinet woods and other things. Boy, that 68 Globetrotter 20' galley looks nicer than my son's 69 GT 21'. 69 was the first year of the new body style. Here is a photo of the galley cabinet in the 69. Thumbs down.

David

docflyboy · 12-08-2020, 10:13 PM

Well, a little confession of a diversion over the weekend. Hollie knows, but I'm not spilling the beans just yet. I was going to drink a '66 Palmer, which was the Bordeaux that got me hooked on French wines and send Hollie the bottle to fill with purple resin and sit on her '66 galley counter top, but now there's a '66 in the Sparestream Corral. Jerry