Batteries and bits

A bit of a mixed bag this weekend with a few odds and ends. Mainly I wanted to recover some of the batteries from under the carriage to take to Sydney next week for my mate Andrew who wants to recondition and reuses them. This will be in exchange for some timber that he has hoarded away that I can use of the inside of the carriage.

There are two battery boxes under the carriage, both with six large 2 volt batteries in them. Getting at them is awkward being tucked away behind the running boards.

Here is a battery disconnected and half way out.

I removed all six batteries from this battery box. Eventually I plan to install new ones for a 12V system in the carriage but that is years away.

I also slapped some varnish and paint around after clearing out the area for the right hand side kitchen.

And finally, I sanded off the panel shown in the previous blog entry. Managed to get rid of all those horrible scorch marks and reveal the beautiful timber underneath.

More joinery

This is the most complicated piece I’ve built yet (and any carpenters out there must be laughing hard at that claim!). 

This is another end support for the kitchen benches, a frame from Silky Oak with 6mm Marine Ply panels. All corners are mortise and tenon joints, all hand cut. The complication this time around is the middle cross brace, included to support shelving on both sides, which represents my first ever blind mortise and tenon joints. Not exactly rocket science but tricky if you’ve never done such things before. The whole thing is glued together and clamped to keep flat while the glue dries. 

The unsightly burn marks on the side timbers are due to my pathetic, old and blunt saw in the Triton Workbench. I must get a new blade (and a new saw!) to do a better job. The problem is I had to mill these timbers to the appropriate profiles and the old saw is simply not up to the job. This should all sand out anyway but it is a pain in the butt.

I’ve also built this particular frame from more robust timbers with stronger joints because it will need to counter a torsional load. This frame doubles as both the end support for the kitchen bench and the main support for the back of one of the seats in the dining area. People getting in and out of the seat and pushing against the seat back while seated will tend to push this frame on a diagonal so I’ve over engineered it to compensate. I might also drop some dowels across the joints for added strength but I’ll do this from the inside of the frame so that they can’t be seen.

Surprise package

Look what turned up in the post today! Completely unexpected, this was sent to me by a regular viewer of this blog and a former QR employee. Thanks so much mate, some useful additions to my ever-expanding QR memorabilia collection!

Easter Weekend

A four-day weekend and lots of plans for lots of work on Clarabelle – all thwarted by rain! In a recent shower I made a quick survey of the carriage and identified some leaking windows and toplights that need attention. On top of that there are still four toplights that haven’t been installed and their timber surrounds need a lot of attention. But all of these jobs require a few dry days ahead of the job to thoroughly dry the whole area out then a few more dry days so that exposed timber doesn’t get wet before painting. Across the whole weekend there was the threat of showers. Not a big dumping but enough to stop me working outside. Bugger!

Sunday morning sun in the new bedroom

We still stayed overnight and the first pic is me in the morning with the sunlight streaming into the newly finished bedroom. This really is a nice place to be now, very comfortable and the bed now provides a perfect night’s sleep. I say ‘we’; that’s me, my son Chester and wife Abbie who came home from a folk festival early.

The fridge space from one side ...

Then there is some more work on the kitchen area including getting a second panel in on the other side of the fridge space. A lick of paint on the inside and some varnish on exposed timber and this is starting to take shape!

... and the other with the new panel installed.

Joinery

This is all new to me; joinery. More accurate carpentry than I've been doing so far as I move to the fitout of the kitchen and other areas. In fact this is my very first ever mortise and tenon joint:

 I worked out how to do it from reading some old books and thinking it through carefully. And while not absolutely perfect, the two fit together very well

This was the first step in making a panel for the end of one of the kitchen benches, one of two walls eitherside of the under-bench fridge. So another mortise and tenon joint and a couple of simpler lap joints later and this is what I had:

Installation was straight foward. I drilled some dowels into the bottom that insert into holes in the floor plate and the whole thing is kept vertical by an angle bracket at the back.

And while in the mood for fixing bits, I also fixed one of the end panels under the bed from my last blog entry. Further this all got it's first coat of varnish and is starting to look finished.

Back at home and the second kitchen panel, the one that will go the other side of the fridge space, is completed and ready to take out to the carriage for fitting next weekend. Being a long weekend for Easter I'll be staying out there a couple of nights with Chester and getting a lot done, including some more work outside the carriage now that the temperatures have calmed down from a scorching summer.

Internal details

It's now getting to the stage where I can make small bits at home and take them to the carriage to mount. These two panels are a good case in point. They are Tassie Oak frames with simple lap-joints on the corners and the centre is 6mm Marine Ply rebated into the frame. I knocked these up at home over the last long weekend and then spent some time this weekend fitting them into place. Not that this is their final configuration! The panel on the right will be fixed pretty much where it is but the one on the left will be the front of a draw under the bed at that location.

Two panels at the end of the bed

Then there was a simple shelf up high over the bed head. The brackets are from under the original seats and have 'QR' forged into them. Very heavy duty but decorative! The shelf itself is a solid piece of Silky Oak cut to shape. This was a really daggy old bit of timber before I spent some time sanding it back to clean wood. It is also slightly warped but I think that adds character! I've bolted it in place temporarily to try and pull it back to a flatter piece before I take it off again to varnish it.

A small bookshelf high over the bed head

Finally I started work on the kitchen area. This is where the small under-counter fridge will be. I'm making up two more heavy duty panels to go either side and become part of the framing for the whole kitchen area. I'm making these frames out of Silky Oak because they will be varnished rather than painted and will help to look more authentic in this high-visibility area.

The area where the fridge will be

Finishing the bed

Putting the fininshing touches to the bed, not last weekend, but the weekend before. First step was to install slats made of red gum decking strips. What you can't see here is a central support of angle iron running the length of the bed down the middle. This is supported at either end and with two posts along its length. All up a very sturdy bed! And that's my wife Abbie giving it a test!

 

Then it's only a case of putting the mattress back on and making the bed (then giving over to my 7yo son Chester for yet more testing!).