Well, I’ve finally gotten a start on insulating and upholstering the interior of the teardrop. Just in time for the weather to go from the 70’s to the 50’s ;-(
After fooling around building a hot-wire cutter to make cutting the styrofoam insulation easier, I finally bailed on the cutter idea and started cutting with a very thin kitchen knife. And, guess what… it works almost as well as the hot-wire cutter! Cutting the stryro sheet with the knife produces a little bit of “foam chips” but nowhere as much as I expected. It would be nice to have something to cut the grooves and slots to make the insulation fit between the angle iron ribs, but there aren’t so many of them that the chips become an issue.
Sophisticated styrofoam cutting tools
A couple of afternoons has the insulation for all the walls cut and dry fitted. The clearances are such that so far, the foam has just stayed in place with a friction fit. But I don’t expect that will last long, especially when I start attaching the Hull Liner upholstery to the foam. Friction fit is good enough for now. It will allow me to start cutting and fitting the hull liner to the foam. And it will give me an opportunity to figure out how to attach the hull liner to the foam. The 3M Fastbond adhesive I plan to use to hold the foam to the teardrop walls isn’t going to work on the fabric. The hull liner soaks up way too much glue, which then appears on the other (finish) side of the fabric.
First pieces of insulation in place
I’ll be off to the hardware store tomorrow to peruse the adhesive department. I might look at something like construction adhesive (i.e., Liquid Nails). Anything that requires spray application is right out. I’m not spraying anything inside that trailer.
A little experimentation shows that high-temperature hot melt glue (aka “glue gun”) works really well. The sample hull liner fabric would not pull away from the foam at all. The skin came off the foam before the glue failed!
I spent today cutting and pinning some more fabric in place. There are just a couple more pieces to cut. And there’s warm weather predicted for the weekend. Maybe I can get some of the foam glued in place soon.
Hull liner fabric pinned in place
Note that I removed the foam mattress after struggling to put a couple of pieces of foam in place. Getting the mattress out and back in is a struggle also, but I have to do it only once. And I’m thinking of painting the forward bulkhead while the mattress is out and I can remove the fabric.