So the cold weather is arriving and it makes for the whole building experience to get a little harder. And after last weeks experience of driving to Wales with no window things could only get better, couldn’t they?
Well I started of with panels this week, all of my panels are being designed by myself to suit my build. At the back I am going to have a permanent bed and that needed to be built at the same time. With the Crafter being so big I have found it hard to get ply panels larger than 10″ x 8″ so I have had to be creative with the way I have made the panels. I decided to have a small panel at the bottom and a larger panel at the top this has enabled me to use the more common 8″ x 4″ply panels I did however have to source two of the larger 10″ x 5″ ply sheets and luckily someone I know managed to order them for me, Thank you you know who you are. I think my skills with a jigsaw are getting better and my confidence using it has grown so much in the 3 van builds I have now down.
I want the fixings for the panels to be invisible so that is the next task it is not hard to do and I will explain how I do it in a future blog, luckily some of the panels will be behind other things so they can be fitted with screws and caps.
As I said I will be having a permanent bed in the van so I built the framework today and test fitted it, it’s always a nervous moment when you lift a frame into a van hoping that you have measured correctly. As they say “measure twice cut once” well I measured about 4 times just to absolutely sure. It was a perfect push fit and as you can see in the photos I think it will be a perfect height too. The 90 degree brackets were from Tool Station and come in a 10 pack they are Product code: 80446. I have wooden bed slats that will fit over the the frame using plastic holders that most beds now use.
The next tasks will be to get all the panels test fitted so they are ready for carpeting.
On a side note if you read my blog regularly you will know that I like making videos, well the guys that host “Dubs at the Castle” have asked if they can use my video from last year, which was really nice, free tickets for this year would have been even nicer.
