More Progress

It has been several days since the last post, but progress has not stopped.  Some additional fitting / preparations were made for the interior ribs.  Some millwork was created for the cross-ties that will contain threaded rods, and the non-rodded cross-ties.

Note:  we will install 3 or four cross-ties with threaded rod embedded to draw the two sides together consistently.  The threaded rods will become obsolete once the inner and outer layers of plywood are installed, but in the interim they will serve a definite purpose.

Meanwhile, we also fed the three 2/0 cables that will run between the battery box and the wiring cavity, carrying the 12v from the batteries to the converter, since doing so now would have been much easier than if the intervening structure was in place.

As you can see, the tongue box has been removed for this operation.

Next, the two inner ribs were trimmed to length and fit in place.

With those ribs positioned, we filled in the short ribs between the main yoke and the galley paritition.

 

We then created the millwork for the cross-ties, and laid out the position of the exhaust fan.  As the exhaust fan will be positioned centered upon the point where the ellipses meet to as to be positioned not only aesthetically but also on the flattest spot, its position drives the location of the cross-pieces.

That done, we decided to test-fit an interior plywood panel to see how everything was aligning.  This required moving the cross-braces to the rear door edge from the front door edge so we could maneuver the plywood into place.

We were pleased with the results, but they showed us where we need to concentrate efforts.  For instance, the yoke at the front of the trailer required a doubler to catch the leading edge of the plywood sheet.  Also, we need to concentrate cross-pieces in the front part of the curve in order to help the plywood comply.

I took some interior shots, but they were out-of-focus as the camera was not able to use the low-contrast graining of the birch plywood to focus.