The Latest from Me - Page 108 of 246

May 27, 2018October 17, 2026

Camper Build 5/27/2018

About 30 minutes ago I reached a milestone with the camper project. Here you see the floor glued and stapled down. It’s made up of plywood, rigid foam, and plywood. It would have been much easier to just use 3/4″ exterior plywood and be done with it but this should be just as strong or stronger and is insulated. Next I guess will be to polyurethane the living daylights out of the top and sides. There is a thing called “the mix” among camper builders where you mix polyurethane with mineral spirits to thin it and that soaks in really well to seal the wood forever. I will do that here.

I’ll also rip more 1x8s to make perfect 1″ lumber to match my rigid foam’s thickness as I start the walls.

May 26, 2018October 17, 2026

Camper Build 5/25/2018

Since the last time I posted, I’ve doubled the width of the 1x boards and added three cross beams. I’m taking 1×8 boards and ripping them on my table saw to a perfect 1″ width which here is vertical to match the thickness of the foam. I can get 6 1″ boards out of a single actually 7.25″ 1×8 with a .5″ strip left over. Then I’m gluing two of them together to make a 1″x1.5″ board. More work and more glue but not as much waste as ripping 2x2s. Then three cross beams directly over the cross beams on the trailer. Double thickness as I’ll be running bolts through them in places to secure the floor.

Then the rigid foam and the top layer of 1/4″ plywood that will be the surface I walk on. The bottom plywood is 11/32″ BC exterior plywood, the top is 1/4″ “RevolutionPly” which is called interior but supposedly made with with exterior glue. I got three sheets of that for the cost of 2 exterior sheets of the same price. Hopefully that was not a mistake, so far so good.

Next step will be to drill some holes and secure the floor to the trailer, then adhere the foam to that, then glue and staple the top to the foam and 1x lumber.

May 20, 2018October 17, 2026

Barnard’s Star 2016-2018

Here is a short (2 frame) video of a nearby star called “Barnard’s Star” in the constellation of Ophiuchus. After the famous Alpha Centauri triple star system, this is the closest star to the Solar System at 6 light years away. By a weird coincidence, just over one hundred years ago an astronomer named E.E. Barnard discovered that this star is moving across the sky faster than any other object in the sky beyond the Solar System. This “proper motion” is measured at 10 arcseconds per year. By comparison, the planet Jupiter appears to be about 40 arcseconds across from Earth. Not a lot but easily measurable with a telescope and camera. In these two images, take 26 months apart, we can see one star move to the left just a little.