Profile and Outer Skin

The profile was pretty straight forward. I took it right from the Generic Benroy plans from Teardrops & Tiny Trailers . I chose to make a template from 1/8 Hardboard ($8-Lowe's) of the profile. This allowed me to play around with the profile to my liking and I also only had to do the different radius's one time on one sheet. I then cut out the profile and used this as a template for the "real" outer walls.

The silvertape is where I had broken the Hardboard to fit in the Jeep...some ductape was all it took to piece it back together.

I then laid the template on the plywood that I chose for my outer skin, 3/8" ACX Spruce and traced the profile as well as marked the locations for the cabinets. I traced the profile on both sides of the ply and then laid it good sign down and then set about working on the framing for the walls. My wall's are "sandwich" construction meaning an outer skin (3/8 ply), then a layer of 1x2 framing, and then the inner skin (1/8 luan) all glued together as a solid, modular wall panel. In between the 1x2 framing will be polystyrene insulation, which is the silver-backed insulation you see on the outside of houses. Mine is 3/4" thick which compensates perfectly with the 1x2 (actual thickness 3/4"). The pics also show me using some 1x4 in areas that I thought I'd want beefier (door openings, etc) hindsight says that this is overkill.

I let the framing dry for a day and then I glued the EPS into the voids. I then cut out the profiles with a jig saw with a new laminate cutting blade. A laminate cutting bit only cuts on the down stroke and I cut it from the good side of the plywood. Buy the BEST laminate blade you can find (Bosch, $7-Lowes) and take your time. I then clamped both walls together, set them vertically, and sanded them both at the same time as one unit. This made them mirror images of one-another. Most people use a belt sander for this step but a belt sander can take allot of meat if you leave it in one place too long. I used a power planer with the depth set at 1/16 at a time.

I couldn't resist putting the walls up on the trailer and having a look.