1970s Great Divide - Ta-Ton-Ka Sal-Va-Gion
Can I do this here? It's not a Travel Trailer. Of course, I suppose any of these vintage bumper-pull campers don't REALLY fit the definition of TT. Isn't a TT something that travels, not camps? Many o...
Forum Discussion
Today: Inspection, cleaning, planning and singing the praises of the Icebox. Oh, and the fresh water tank.
I spoke with my Attorney yesterday, about my plans to post the icebox stuff today, and he said, "feel free - and have fun". It's like a safe item. Well - there's that whole frost-bite thing, but that's more of a concern with refrigerators than with ice boxes. And - the fridges use gas, and the explosion factor is a bigger problem than frost-bite ever THOUGHT of being. So we should be okay. Maybe.
But he said, "don't talk about food". Unsafe subject. Check!
Earlier in this thread, I said we might make a beer cooler out of the icebox - just because we have it, with no other particular plans. And, it could be kinda cool - but it would be more work than just going down to the store, or even a second hand store, and getting one already set-up ready-to-rock. And easier to use.
Besides, we spoke with DS and his Girlfriend yesterday, and we were able to better ascertain their needs, wants, preferences, etc., and I think we'll use this smaller ice-box in THEIR build after all!
That's a whole 'nuther build/thread, and the post hasn't been started yet, but the parts salvage is WELL underway, thanks to the mighty Ta-Ton-Ka (and perhaps even more to the Skamper Camper).
This thing is quite a bit smaller than the one that came out of Lil' Queeny originally, or the one in Tow-Mater for that matter. The one from Queeny sits on a high shelf, and with no plans yet. The one in Tow-Mater feeds a family of four, but this little baby...
Seems a perfect size for a 1-2 person unit.
A couple of days ago, I mentioned we are camp oven advocates. Now you can easily use camp ovens with a fridge on board, but the real use of a camp oven goes hand in hand with an icebox! That's because you pre-prepare your camp/trip foods at home, before - or well before - the trip, and freeze stuff. Homemade frozen dinners! Then a day before the trip you take out the first night's (morning's) meal and start it to thaw in the fridge - at home.
The food becomes your icebox ice. Oh you might want to get an ice block TOO, but you're bringing the food to eat anyway, might just as well make it do double duty as the ice.
Of course this doesn't work well if you've given over to the corporate food producers, or if you can't cook. In essence - make planned overs. DW is a professional planned-overs kind of girl. Like - just last night we had pork chops, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans! The gravy was to DIE for. And some have said it WILL kill me!
But she made massives. Massive potatoes or gravy isn't that hard. Probably easier than small portions. Massive pork chops is a little more work. She browns them first, you know - the searing thing. And that takes some time and work to rotate chops through the searing process. But then, you put the whole bunch in a large slow-cooker and walk away to do other stuff. By evening, Ooooh-ho-ho! And you end up smelling like pork chops too, which is ALWAYS a good thing, I mean if you want your man hanging around you all lovey-dovey and stuff. ;)
Of course in many families it's the guy who cooks. All you have to do is figure out what smells turn HER on - and then cook that all day! Maybe. I think there's another factor in this sort of reverse, but I ain't schooled in that subject.
And the house smells good all day too!
Then you portion it out, wrap it right (for freezer and re-heat), and make several meals out of it. Cook once, eat several times. After it's been in the freezer one or two days (or less) you have your ice blocks! And if you do that several times with different types of meals (like DW does) you have an absolutely varied menu!
Like take for instance the breakfast sandwiches.
She says, "bake the eggs in glass, not metal, to keep the eggs from turning green". She does it this way so the scrambled eggs don't fall off the bread. Cookie cutters!
And also, wrapped in parchment paper before foil, again to keep the eggs from turning green.
Toasted whole wheat muffins. Two types of cheese - pepper jack and colby jack, two meats - bacon AND Canadian bacon.
Again, wrapped in parchment and then foil. Individuals. Frozen and taken out as needed, popped in your CAMP OVEN! No need for microwaves here! No need for electricity here! Just simple physics. Start cold. End hot. Go out and enjoy your surroundings that you traveled to see and be in, while your CAMP OVEN does what it does best. Did I mention no hookups?
Now ain't that better than cereal?
And we haven't even TOUCHED on the biscuits and sausage gravy!
Also, you can take water bottles, or jugs of whatever size you desire, fill with potable drinking water from home, freeze them. Place them in your icebox to thaw. Keeps the icebox cool, and melts for drinking water as you go.
There's a balancing act to learn when rotating food and ice.
Icebox anatomy.
Ice block in the top, which melts into the tray and drains through a tube at the back (not shown in this photo) that drops through the RV floor. More frozen foods around the ice block, less frozen foods on the shelves below, or in the door.
No hook-ups. No winterization. Just keep it clean.
Here's the manufacturer's label.
Now I didn't do a thorough cleaning on this unit yet, just kind of a brush down and wipe down. There's a bit-o-repair it will need too. But overall, QUITE reusable.
A little damage, maybe try and fill with some epoxy.
A jagged hole for the drain tube, maybe some kind of caulking/sealer stuff after getting a tube in. Maybe a grommet!
A good polishing cleaning job on the insides.
This unit is built with a cardboard wrapped exterior. A good insulator, along with probably foam, or fiberglass maybe.
It got wet at some point, but still servicable.
The door aluminum can be steel wooled, and the metal framing band re-painted to whichever color is preferred!
And the tomato-soup red panel can be removed and re-used (for something - like in Tow-Mater) and a different flat panel material made from ANYTHING can be inserted in it's place. Perhaps in the color scheme of DS's planned unit?
One more thing worked to this point on the Ta-Ton-Ka salvage - the fresh water tank, shown on the bottom in this photo.
It looks like maybe a 10 gallon tank, perfect for a small hand-pump unit. Again for DS's build. The bigger tank is the 30 gallon we took out of Queeny, that fridge came out of the Skamper, and between those is the Princess range and the Peerless Gravity furnace.
That's about it for now. There's more to harvest, but Ta-Ton-Ka is getting set-up for winter. We'll cache the rest for now, and come back to him from time to time.
I spoke with my Attorney yesterday, about my plans to post the icebox stuff today, and he said, "feel free - and have fun". It's like a safe item. Well - there's that whole frost-bite thing, but that's more of a concern with refrigerators than with ice boxes. And - the fridges use gas, and the explosion factor is a bigger problem than frost-bite ever THOUGHT of being. So we should be okay. Maybe.
But he said, "don't talk about food". Unsafe subject. Check!
Earlier in this thread, I said we might make a beer cooler out of the icebox - just because we have it, with no other particular plans. And, it could be kinda cool - but it would be more work than just going down to the store, or even a second hand store, and getting one already set-up ready-to-rock. And easier to use.
Besides, we spoke with DS and his Girlfriend yesterday, and we were able to better ascertain their needs, wants, preferences, etc., and I think we'll use this smaller ice-box in THEIR build after all!
That's a whole 'nuther build/thread, and the post hasn't been started yet, but the parts salvage is WELL underway, thanks to the mighty Ta-Ton-Ka (and perhaps even more to the Skamper Camper).
This thing is quite a bit smaller than the one that came out of Lil' Queeny originally, or the one in Tow-Mater for that matter. The one from Queeny sits on a high shelf, and with no plans yet. The one in Tow-Mater feeds a family of four, but this little baby...
Seems a perfect size for a 1-2 person unit.
A couple of days ago, I mentioned we are camp oven advocates. Now you can easily use camp ovens with a fridge on board, but the real use of a camp oven goes hand in hand with an icebox! That's because you pre-prepare your camp/trip foods at home, before - or well before - the trip, and freeze stuff. Homemade frozen dinners! Then a day before the trip you take out the first night's (morning's) meal and start it to thaw in the fridge - at home.
The food becomes your icebox ice. Oh you might want to get an ice block TOO, but you're bringing the food to eat anyway, might just as well make it do double duty as the ice.
Of course this doesn't work well if you've given over to the corporate food producers, or if you can't cook. In essence - make planned overs. DW is a professional planned-overs kind of girl. Like - just last night we had pork chops, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans! The gravy was to DIE for. And some have said it WILL kill me!
But she made massives. Massive potatoes or gravy isn't that hard. Probably easier than small portions. Massive pork chops is a little more work. She browns them first, you know - the searing thing. And that takes some time and work to rotate chops through the searing process. But then, you put the whole bunch in a large slow-cooker and walk away to do other stuff. By evening, Ooooh-ho-ho! And you end up smelling like pork chops too, which is ALWAYS a good thing, I mean if you want your man hanging around you all lovey-dovey and stuff. ;)
Of course in many families it's the guy who cooks. All you have to do is figure out what smells turn HER on - and then cook that all day! Maybe. I think there's another factor in this sort of reverse, but I ain't schooled in that subject.
And the house smells good all day too!
Then you portion it out, wrap it right (for freezer and re-heat), and make several meals out of it. Cook once, eat several times. After it's been in the freezer one or two days (or less) you have your ice blocks! And if you do that several times with different types of meals (like DW does) you have an absolutely varied menu!
Like take for instance the breakfast sandwiches.
She says, "bake the eggs in glass, not metal, to keep the eggs from turning green". She does it this way so the scrambled eggs don't fall off the bread. Cookie cutters!
And also, wrapped in parchment paper before foil, again to keep the eggs from turning green.
Toasted whole wheat muffins. Two types of cheese - pepper jack and colby jack, two meats - bacon AND Canadian bacon.
Again, wrapped in parchment and then foil. Individuals. Frozen and taken out as needed, popped in your CAMP OVEN! No need for microwaves here! No need for electricity here! Just simple physics. Start cold. End hot. Go out and enjoy your surroundings that you traveled to see and be in, while your CAMP OVEN does what it does best. Did I mention no hookups?
Now ain't that better than cereal?
And we haven't even TOUCHED on the biscuits and sausage gravy!
Also, you can take water bottles, or jugs of whatever size you desire, fill with potable drinking water from home, freeze them. Place them in your icebox to thaw. Keeps the icebox cool, and melts for drinking water as you go.
There's a balancing act to learn when rotating food and ice.
Icebox anatomy.
Ice block in the top, which melts into the tray and drains through a tube at the back (not shown in this photo) that drops through the RV floor. More frozen foods around the ice block, less frozen foods on the shelves below, or in the door.
No hook-ups. No winterization. Just keep it clean.
Here's the manufacturer's label.
Now I didn't do a thorough cleaning on this unit yet, just kind of a brush down and wipe down. There's a bit-o-repair it will need too. But overall, QUITE reusable.
A little damage, maybe try and fill with some epoxy.
A jagged hole for the drain tube, maybe some kind of caulking/sealer stuff after getting a tube in. Maybe a grommet!
A good polishing cleaning job on the insides.
This unit is built with a cardboard wrapped exterior. A good insulator, along with probably foam, or fiberglass maybe.
It got wet at some point, but still servicable.
The door aluminum can be steel wooled, and the metal framing band re-painted to whichever color is preferred!
And the tomato-soup red panel can be removed and re-used (for something - like in Tow-Mater) and a different flat panel material made from ANYTHING can be inserted in it's place. Perhaps in the color scheme of DS's planned unit?
One more thing worked to this point on the Ta-Ton-Ka salvage - the fresh water tank, shown on the bottom in this photo.
It looks like maybe a 10 gallon tank, perfect for a small hand-pump unit. Again for DS's build. The bigger tank is the 30 gallon we took out of Queeny, that fridge came out of the Skamper, and between those is the Princess range and the Peerless Gravity furnace.
That's about it for now. There's more to harvest, but Ta-Ton-Ka is getting set-up for winter. We'll cache the rest for now, and come back to him from time to time.
