Rusty 87 build thread

[kidharris]

Originally Posted by musigenesis

thanks! Two years of work and i'm so, so close ... To a featureless white room. It will be a self-propelled white room, at least.

f u n n y.

[musigenesis]

I would really love to have one of those little battery-powered track saws.





Jump cut: lots of trimming and shaving until this actually fit.





Kind of actually fit. That's a big gap even by my standards. This won't matter since it will be the back of the closet, but still annoying. In fact none of this bottom wall will be visible anywhere except up front underneath my desk, but I'd still like it to look like I've seen a tape measure before.



I'm going to panel the back wall so I can start the ceiling. I need to have that top piece in place so I can butt the ceiling panels up against it tight. I'm hoping I can make the inside corners in the bus look good enough that I don't have to cover them with any kind of trim.



Sometimes I remember to fill the gaps with little bits of foam before paneling and sometimes I don't.





The inside corners here look decent.

[musigenesis]

Oak dowel vs. 17,000 pounds of school bus. It might have survived if it had been upright.



Spent most of the day trying to cut this one funny piece of paneling that goes over the rear door. It has an outside bevel corner on one edge and an inside bevel on the other, and a projecting section in the center. It was only towards the end of this that I realized what I was doing is impossible to do on a table saw.







Gave up and made it in three separate sections.





This double-beveled inside corner came out perfectly. If I'd known how well this works to make a solid frameless corner, I would have used even less wood in my walls in a few places.



Great lighting, but I'm ready to cut the big curved piece tomorrow.

[Phatman]

Hahahaha Musigenesis. I get exactly what you are saying. I finally nd myself doing that all the time. My dad was a master cabinet builder and didn’t believe using any power tool except a table saw. As a kid I watched him make a bowl with nothing but a table saw. Was unbelievable. I find myself trying to match that craftsmanship all the time. Keep up the good work. It’s looking great !!

[musigenesis]

Originally Posted by Phatman

Hahahaha Musigenesis. I get exactly what you are saying. I finally nd myself doing that all the time. My dad was a master cabinet builder and didn’t believe using any power tool except a table saw. As a kid I watched him make a bowl with nothing but a table saw. Was unbelievable. I find myself trying to match that craftsmanship all the time. Keep up the good work. It’s looking great !!

Thanks!

How do you make a bowl with table saw? All I can think of would be to set the blade so that it's only a bit up from the table and then lower a piece of wood onto it, and then sort of rotate the piece all around to cut a bowl shape.

Ugh, now I want to try this.

[musigenesis]

When I drove my bus back to the lot tonight, as I knew would happen, I forgot to unplug the extension cord although I didn't realize it until I got back home. The cord was wrapped around our moveable basketball basket, but fortunately it unplugged itself from the bus before it tipped the basket over onto my parents' cars. I really need a checklist that says:

1. Are you still plugged in?
2. Are you up on the chocks?

[rossvtaylor]

I'm glad it didn't pull over the basket...but it did make me chuckle, since there was no harm. Some of the ambulances we've purchased came with Auto Eject shore power receptacles, which spit out the plug and cord when the ignition is turned on. I might need to save those from now on, to put in my own bus...because I'll surely drive off plugged in, too.

[Phatman]

Originally Posted by musigenesis

Thanks!

How do you make a bowl with table saw? All I can think of would be to set the blade so that it's only a bit up from the table and then lower a piece of wood onto it, and then sort of rotate the piece all around to cut a bowl shape.

Ugh, now I want to try this.

That’s exactly what he did. Set it down on the table saw & raised the blade slowly and turned the block. Dangerous as hell !!

[Danjo]

Wow, your build is coming along really nice. I hope my interior work looks that good.

[Native]

Originally Posted by musigenesis

When I drove my bus back to the lot tonight, as I knew would happen, I forgot to unplug the extension cord although I didn't realize it until I got back home. The cord was wrapped around our moveable basketball basket, but fortunately it unplugged itself from the bus before it tipped the basket over onto my parents' cars. I really need a checklist that says:

1. Are you still plugged in?
2. Are you up on the chocks?

I had a similar occurance ... if you look at the photos I posted for you of my shore power cord, you can see the insulation of the individual wires about an inch from the plug. That is what happened when I drove off without disconnecting, once.


I think you will make a mental note and NEVER do that again. Of course, my wife reminds me most all of the time before we depart.

[musigenesis]

This piece in the back corner will be removable to allow removal of the post and hence removal of the rear-most side window (doesn't show in the pictures but this is one of the broken ones so I'll definitely need this in the future).



Temporary piece so I can fit the back top piece. I was going to double-bevel these inside corners but decided to make my life simpler; these will be hidden by overhead storage anyway so there's no point in making them overly pretty.



Same deal on the opposite side.





I have to finish the ceiling insulation with the added layer of 3/4" XPS to come flush with the furring strips before fitting the back top piece. This stuff turned out to be harder than I thought. The three middle runs are all 14.5" wide, but to get them in they have to be bent down in the center first and this is impossible with a full 8' long piece, so I had to cut the full pieces into thirds in order to manage it.



The two runs on each side are 9" wide which is too narrow to bend down in the middle no matter what length they are, so for these I had to cut two 4.5" strips and pop them up into place like I did the larger pieces between the ribs.



I have the technique worked out now, but I was (very) briefly contemplating getting a spray foam kit for this last 3/4".

[musigenesis]

Originally Posted by Native

I think you will make a mental note and NEVER do that again. Of course, my wife reminds me most all of the time before we depart.

Nope, almost did it again today - I luckily spotted the cord as I was backing out, though. I wonder if there's a simple way I could wire this plug up to my starter interlock circuit so that the bus won't start if the plug is drawing power.

[musigenesis]

Originally Posted by Danjo

Wow, your build is coming along really nice. I hope my interior work looks that good.

Thanks, I hope my interior work looks that good too eventually. This 5mm underlayment I'm using for the walls and ceiling is kind of crappy up close and it's going to take a little touching up in places to make it look like normal smooth paneling. Fortunately most of it will be covered up by cabinetry and whatnot so I can ignore those parts.

What are you going to using on your bus?

[musigenesis]

Originally Posted by rossvtaylor

I'm glad it didn't pull over the basket...but it did make me chuckle, since there was no harm. Some of the ambulances we've purchased came with Auto Eject shore power receptacles, which spit out the plug and cord when the ignition is turned on. I might need to save those from now on, to put in my own bus...because I'll surely drive off plugged in, too.

That sounds very cool, I definitely want one of those.

[musigenesis]

These prototype pieces for this angled furring strip ended up with an edge bigger than 3/4", so this little ridge was sticking up about 1/8".



Some careful nibbling with a flap disc smoothed it off. All the other pieces that I mass-produced were accidentally the right size on this face, so I don't have to do this all down the bus.





Laid out the stern sheet (?). The left side of this was a 45 degree bevel cut which was pretty tough to manage on my table saw with a piece this long. It was pretty jagged but it smoothed out nicely with my orbital sander.





At this point I realized I would be facing a monstrously frustrating task of smoothing this off and getting it to fit correctly so I cut it in half.



This outside corner came out pretty well.



Other side. Pre-drilling and countersinking all the screw holes is annoying, but it sure makes putting the piece up pretty easy.







More ceiling insulation.



Step 1 in my misguided attempt to put the ceiling up with no help. I figured I would just sort of slide the piece over these blocks and then wedge in a 2x4 on the other end.



Screws are every 6" and these center sheets are 16" on center.



This was I think my fourth attempt. The first two times the sheet fell on me and the third time I actually got it in place with the 2x4 wedged under it, but then when I tried to tap-move it into the correct position the 2x4 came loose and fell on me and then the sheet fell on me. This time I added another 2x4 before shifting the sheet.

I think I'm going to get my brother to help me with the other two of these full center sheets.



One paralyzed right hand later.



The join is not as nice as I'd hoped for. My wall bows in slightly here where it meets the factory edge of the ceiling sheet. Oh well, it was perfect in my head at least. I'll think about ways to make this look better in the front.



I'm going to be painting all of this, but this might have looked kind of nice with some stain and polyurethane. I love the look of wood, but strangely I find being in an all-wood room to be kind of oppressive. I need my environment to be mostly white and bright, especially in winter.

[Phatman]

I know what you Musigenesis. All stained wood tends to be oppressive. Be careful with the white though. Does tend to need cleaning more than normal. Does make the area look bigger though. Good work !!

[musigenesis]

Today is my two-year skoolieversary, woo hoo - the eBay auction for my bus ended Jan. 19th 2019.

I was planning on moving into my bus in April 2019 lol.

[Bus'n it]

Happy Skoolieversary!

[musigenesis]

I realized with these test pieces that the edge ceiling panel wasn't going to hold the curve properly without an attachment point in the middle of the two furring strips.



In this spot on the underside of each rib in my bus is a little indentation/flat spot formed in the channel at the point of the sharpest bend; this conveniently creates a 3" long flat area where I can screw a piece of oak to the rib with Teks screws and I don't have to worry about matching any bend.









And a couple of centuries later I got the first piece screwed in.



And then the matching top wall piece. Both the edge ceiling piece and the top wall piece have a 16 degree bevel. It's not any harder to cut a bevel than a 90 degree, but they both take an incredibly long time since I have to screw on the guide and then there are so many screws to put in, all by hand (I'm using #8-3/4 and they tend to strip and/or spin the screw when I try to use my drill; I can set the torque on them by feel using a screwdriver as well).



I thought it was going pretty disastrously at the start but it turned out fine.



The joint in the back is not so great. I'm going to need to add some curved trim to close this up.

[musigenesis]

Added some supporting members to the walls to hold up various things that I had not really planned for. This will be to hold up the corner of the couch/chaise lounge so I don't have to add an additional post inside the wall.





So convenient to be able to attach things from the back.



My desk is going to be about 9" away from the wall, so I'm going to mount a coat rack underneath the bulkhead wall window, which will be anchored to these two dowels.







I was originally going to attach my folding desk with three strap hinges, one for each rib, but my desk is a couple of inches two narrow for this to work, so I decided to use piano hinge instead. This is to give me a strip of 1x3 I can attach the piano hinge to (this will also let me anchor the oven and the folding table next to it).





Whoops.











All the paneling up so far.