RV Construction Log Decoder
I fondly remember reading other people's construction logs and getting
the general idea but being pretty confused about some of the buzzwords and
the overall goal of a lot of the steps. Maybe this will help:
Generic construction process for sheeted structures is:
- Prepare all metal bits by smoothing ("deburring") any rough edges.
- Assemble the skeleton temporarily using (what else?) temporary sheet
metal fasteners ("clecos").
- Once that's all set up right, enlarge the holes used to attach the
pieces to their final size ("match-drill")
- Disassemble everything, knock the sharp edge off of the drilled holes
(also called deburring)
- Reassemble everything, this time within the skin
- Drill the skin to the skeleton, disassemble, debur the drilled holes
- All exterior rivets are flush to the skin. To achieve this, the skins
and layers below are countersunk (with a special drill attachment), or dimpled (with a
die set, basically creating a dent that the rivet will sit in). In the
case of dimpling, metal behind the top sheet must also be dimpled or
countersunk to make room for the metal that was pushed inward.
- Drive yourself crazy trying to sand out any scratch or sharp edge.
Either can eventually form into a crack and that's not good.
- Prime all parts to prevent corrosion. Yes, aluminum can
corrode, especially in salty enviornments.
- Reassemble and rivet. The general approach is to put an impact
gun on the head of the rivet, and a heavy steel block on the back of the
rivet. The block will smash the shaft of the rivet down, creating a second
"head" of sorts on the backside, securing the joint.
Cool tools:
Dan Checkoway has
a really good rundown of all the usual stuff. I have pretty much everything he does (we both bought the
Avery tool kit) and he hasn't steered me wrong yet on the supplemental things.
Amazingly, after only a few dozen hours into the project, I have already used 90% of
the stuff in the Avery kit.
On the advice of many others, I also bought a benchtop belt/disc sander.
People talked about 1" belts which sounded ok, but these are hard to find.
I ended up with a 4" belt which really worked wonders on the fabrication
I have had to do so far. A 1" would not have worked so well.
After building a couple conventional workbenches to hold tools and stuff,
I was sick of building workbenches, so I am doing the building (so far)
on an 8-foot banquet table from Office Depot. It's a little low (which
can be remedied with some 2x4's), but other than that it's working just
fine.