With the galley cabinet face repaired and ready for final sandings before moving on to finishing, I approached that last stack of awaiting wood: the ceiling archway cover, the new cut panels for the fridge door and the doors above and below the fridge, the bread board cabinet floor, and the two Tee drawer guides.
The Tee guides? You're finishing those? Are you crazy?
Here's my thinking. The sliding of drawers back and forth over the guides will create friction and wear. If I had made these out of hardwood, there would be less wear, but if they are finished with poly, they'll have both less friction and wear - especially since they are made from pretty clear wood, no knots, no splinters, no cracks. So yeah, I'll coat them up and then in the future, should the soft wood be problematic, I can easily replace them with hardwood models by pulling two easy to get to screws from each.
But first up - the ceiling arch. One of the first pieces taken down. One of the hardest pieces to store all this time and keep from getting damaged. It wasn't in great shape from the start, both along the edge where one side got factory staples to secure the edge trim (the other side is stapled to the arch, then the cover installed, and the last edge stapled through the cover, the trim and into the arch framework), and at the ends where a factory worker was less than careful on the cross cut when making it to original size.
Out of auto focus but you get the idea.
Notice the actual break here, and it seems the original installer got a little western with his stapler.
I held it up in place and realized it was cut about 3/16" too long for the position it was to be placed in. So I was able to dress the most ragged end with a little cut off on the table saw, and not create a visual gap. I also pulled the staples as carefully as possible and filled the holes. Then it, along with the rest of the stack got their 60 grit treatment.
Next I moved to the new pieces for doors (pop-off like the rest of the camper's original "drawer front sized" covers over openings), these for the created spaces I made above and below the fridge.
I still needed door backs and internal 1/2 inch plywood sandwich meat pieces, so I took measurements for each and cut them on the table saw.
These are the backs.
Backs with fronts (the fronts are on top of their respective backs).
And with the plywood sandwich meat.
The plywood used for the sandwich meat was originally the top cover over the original fresh water tank cabinet. In fact all of the drawer wood is original - to either Lil' Queeny, or from the parts camper. It's important to me, whenever possible, to re-use the original wood, as it carries energy from the past. I sense it is mostly positive energy - caused by happy moments camping and spent with family or loved ones - and yet, there is bound to be some negative. Unless there is just some wrong feeling about a particular piece or component, I try to mix any possibly less than positive stuff up with the rest of the good and over time it has an effect to shift the negative into positive incrementally - over all, helping the entire universe in the process. Hey! Don't laugh! Camper's are people too!
But another thing about wood is that surface cells can become weak, especially if left exposed to sunlight, and slough off outer layers. Those weakened surfaces aren't necessarily good for a glue joint, so I roughed up their surfaces to get to better wood and allow a better glue joint. It's amazing just how much powdery dead wood cells came off from a relatively light sanding, as shown here in this picture.
Then I continued lunch preparation and added some mayo.
To both sides and to both sandwiches.
And slipped them both into zipper baggies to keep them together until later, when I'll eat them if I get hungry enough (the key word being "enough").
Then everything got the 150 grit and 220 grit treatments and then the whole shop was cleaned up and the pieces wiped down.
Time to finish.
As before, some surfaces will get stain and poly, others will get primer. Then some of the primered surfaces will get the bronze paint, and finally the bronze will get its own poly coating. And here, at this juncture, the first bronzed pieces of the project - the camper back wall - will finally get their own poly finish, as did the front wall and right wing assembly way back ago.
I was looking the camper over close yesterday. The only part of the galley that won't be surfaced finished at this stage will be the stove surround, as I'll be working both sides of it when I build the cab-over bed structure. That's because there is a leveraged support board that extends from along the bottom of the cab-over wall to the back side of the stove wall. Once the galley is finished up to this level, I expect I'll be re-grouping and seeing about enclosing the front of the camper. Now THAT will be a milestone!
