Camper Build – Fun with Foam

So we’re ready to get started on the build with our fancy structural foam and our roll of fiberglass! The lady at RevChem gave us two suggestions: lay up one side of each panel flat first before assembly, and to keep panels together, use toothpicks! Noted, fiberglass goddess!

this is kinda sorta what it’s going to look like.

the foam was super easy to cut with a razor blade! Score one point over balsa wood….

The sides of the tub are pinned and drying!

we’re using the fancy toothpicks as “nails” because that’s what mom had in the house, and the flat end is really easy to hit with a hammer.

So now we almost have a full tub piece built! time to start glassing the corners! however, we did make a little mistake… we didn’t round off the corners at all, just hoped the fiberglass would mold around them… it didn’t. This left us with a huge bubble along the edge of two sides. At this point we realized that all outside edges needed to be sanded to a radius. But what to do with inside edges? We ended up cutting little corner pieces out of a scrap of foam and gluing them in place. Apparently the original Gorilla Glue foams when it sets up and is perfect for foam because it fills all the little voids and is easy to sand.

I greatly overestimated how much glue was required

Some more strips cut haphazardly with a razor blade

toothpicks at weird angles work perfect to keep the gusset piece in place as the glue expands and dries!

Luckily I kept a few random 4×4 chunks for weighing things down

All sanded! We used sandpaper wrapped around a chunk of the round bar I used for my truck suspension bits

Nice radius on that corner also! The outside edges are considerably easier to sand

We don’t have any large clamps, so I spaced and weighed down the whole tub at 45* angles with whatever I had laying around. Including other tools and chemicals.

We’ve learned a lot already! There are limits to what fiberglass will bend to, keeping things square is hard with none of your flat surfaces are actually flat, Divinycell foam is super easy to work with, and you’re going to need way more resin than you think…

We’re now actually ready to start glassing things in and finish up the tub portion of our sweet new camper!

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