Lil' Queeny is not a big camper. Even so, she has her fair share of unique features needing just that little bit of cover-up, in the form of exterior trim. While some of these are in original locations - walls as opposed to roof surfaces for example - my chosen trim (and really, a wider trim at the factory might have helped a lot of lost Travel Queen campers of old) would not bend as simply as the original smaller stuff. And then I also had some surfaces with more staples, or staples lines which had crept further into the sheet-metal field than they did originally. And that meant placing the wider screwed-on part to surfaces that had swooping curves.
I had intended to trim out the lower straight sections of the camper first, getting practiced up and working up to the trickier "bends" and "cuts" required in some of the gypsy-wagon rounded areas.
But you know me! I scrimped (meaning frugal) on my purchase so I had to be very careful in choosing my trim lengths, making up the big guys first and choosing the excess cut-offs for the smaller areas. And that meant building in curves and cuts from the get go.
But to compound that problem, I was out of butyl tape. Well, there was that small remaining portion of the last roll, and that big glob in the nut-jar from trimming ooze that I hated to throw away. Could that be rolled out, cut and re-used?
I think it's going to be easiest just kind of covering all that in the order it fell out. It's gonna take more than one day.
In an effort to help me plan an order for both rain gutter or j-trim, and more butyl tape, I measured out lengths and planned how many rows of tape per run.
I also decided against an interim choice of placing the wider portion of edge trim (with the screws) along the roof surface, allowing the smaller edge to bend easier around the curve of the front and back wall edges, because of all my structure screws along the edge. I calculated and discovered (what I already kind of knew), each trim screw had an equal chance of going in RIGHT AT a place where it would hit the head of a structure screw. No good. Back to plan A. Make the wide part bend, or cut it to allow a bend.
I started with one of the longest, the left rear wall/roof. These lengths were to be about 6'4" so required a cut off of one of my 8' lengths. You know, leaving 1'8" for a shorter area.
Just as important as where the cuts were located, and the extra holes for screws, were the existing screw hole locations in relation to the ends of the run. So there was lots of holding it up, visualizing, cut the end, start the run, learn the beginning of the curve, plan the holes and cuts, make the cuts, choose which tool best - 1/8" metal blade on the table saw, thin kerf blade on the jig-saw, the hack saw, or the 1/16" blade on the angle grinder, file, utility knife cutting excess from a cut, etc. Each piece became a custom fit and sized "part" for the camper. No longer was it a length of trim to "slap up", it became a "part". Like so much of the rest of the camper.
Then came the curves.
After each cut I pulled the trim in to make more curve, then I'd make another cut and another pull, then another cut until the curve was right and the cut was multiple, meaning if you straightened it out, it would be a wedge.
And that process built me my first test-bed piece at the left rear.
Now that I knew what I was doing, or at least what I was going to do, I built and fit, all four pieces (front left and right, rear left and right), prepped ends and set aside awaiting a polishing and some new butyl tape.
Then I built the opposing style, no cuts, just bends by forming into the cut plywood.
Here's some of the tools used.
And by this point I had my long lengths done, my excess pieces cut off to choose from, and I could put my attentions back onto the short sections, and that glob of butyl tape.
I cut the clear plastic Sam's Club mixed nuts jar in half and used every ounce of my strength to pull the butyl from the plastic insides. Did I mention butyl sticks?
Once I got "enough" I threw away the plastic and its remaining butyl. Then I placed the glob in the center of some waxed freezer paper, folded a length over it's top, held a heat gun over the mess and rolled it down with DW's marble rolling pin. Very difficult. When thin, heat makes it soft. When thick, it takes a lot of heat to make it form at all!
I could only get it down to about 1/4-1/2" thick. But guess what? Butyl sticks to waxed freezer paper! As it had done to the regular waxed kitchen paper I had tried to help "store" it with in the garage fridge all this time.
I finally discovered removing the paper from the butyl with a hot knife or scraper blade made my stuff fairly easily usable.
Providing one method of placing two or three tape thicknesses to a given piece of trim.
Once on the trim, I again heated the scraper blade, and smoothed or pushed and cut, butyl thickness down to "well-spread" and/or "correct-thickness". RV Repair shops don't have time to do that. I think that's why the place I bought mine from sold me that stack of rolls, because it was partially collapsed on one side of the rolls, and my ignorance with the stuff allowed me to let it worsen in my own storage.
But as of yesterday, I've got just about all of the glob used up, and just about all of the short trim pieces installed. I'll finish showing all that on tomorrow's post.
