Work on the Teardrop is Underway!

Sean and I have been back at work on the teardrop for a bit over a week now.  One of the first orders of business was to acquire and assemble the Ikea POÄNG chair in which I will sleep.

A side note:  Many years ago a badly strained back led me to search for a more comfortable sleeping position.  I discovered that sleeping in a chair completely eliminated the back pain, and had the added benefit of substantially reducing the effects of apnea.

One reason the cabin of this trailer is 4' 6" inside is to accommodate the chair.  It was critical at this juncture to put the chair into the cabin so we could locate two light fixtures plus a wall-mounted fan.

There is plenty of headroom and legroom with the chair facing aft.  Plus, with it moved to one side, adequate floor space remains for a mattress for my wife.

With the locations for the light fixtures and fan decided, we added some 1/4" thick oak trim to cover the plywood joint, the joints between the walls and the ceiling, and to represent the two internal ribs.  Where the light fixtures will mount on the strip covering the plywood joint we widened the strip with some rosewood of the same thickness.  When the lights are mounted, the rosewood will "trim" the fixtures nicely.

Next we built up and mounted a wall plate for the fan, again using rosewood to trim the mount.

 
The balance of the time we have been learning how to use the dovetail jig I bought last year.  I want to employ dovetails when building various boxes, large and small.  For instance, both inside the cabin and under the hatch we will mount a 12v DC outlet and a 120v AC outlet.  These outlets need to be in boxes of some sort; the walls aren't thick enough to use a standard electrical box as in your home, so they must be surface mounted, and I don't wish to use plastic or metal Wiremold type boxes.

Therefore, I will build the boxes from rosewood and oak, with dovetailed joints for effect.

As part of the learning process, we built this box which is a drawer that slides into the dovetail jig's stand.  It will be used to store all the extra templates, guides, router bits, etc. that go along with the jig.

 
Yesterday we glued up two halves of a box to store the jig itself.  Once this box is finished we'll move on to the rosewood electrical boxes.