We missed our ham radio club breakfast last week because we were at an RV rally and we plan to be at another rally three weekends from now so in spite of all the work we still have to do on the bus we went to breakfast in South Lyon. After breakfast we went to the Lowe’s in New Hudson, which is close to South Lyon, and bought a Porter-Cable 1/4 sheet palm sander. The sander is small enough to get into corners but has an integral dust collection bag. The bag can be removed for sanding in really tight spots, but it cuts down on airborne dust while sanding and reduces the amount of cleanup afterwards. We have several other Porter-Cable power tools and I am generally pleased with them.
Back at the house we took care of a few chores and then got to work on the bus. Linda continued working on stripping the old wallpaper behind the sofa while I pondered for a while about what to do before deciding to concentrate on rebuilding the landing at the top of the entry stairs. This landing is where the pneumatic entry stairwell slide cover was installed. Without all of that “stuff” in place the last step up to the landing was now too short and the step up to the copilot level was too tall. More importantly, the step heights were all different, and would be a built in trip hazard if not corrected.
I determined that the 2.5″ wide poplar boards installed on edge with a 3/4″ thick plywood floor and a top layer of 3/16″ SurePly underlayment would match the top surface of the plywood in the driver’s area. That would (should), in turn, allow me to install the new vinyl floor tiles so they bridge that seam. I will have to reuse the plywood in the driver’s area, but worst case that will require using adhesive remover followed by floor patching compound and sanding before installing the tiles.
The landing was not “square” (of course) so I made and rechecked measurements several times. I then built a four-sided frame that fit snugly and had the front board aligned with the face of the plastic riser. I am going to tile the steps and I am not going to use underlayment so I needed these surfaces as aligned and flat as possible. I will probably use floor patching compound, however, to fill the gaps before installing the tile. I used screws to secure the frame to the adjacent vertical wood that forms the riser to the copilot level and to the base of the landing with angle brackets.
I needed a piece of 3/4″ plywood approximately 31-1/8″ x 27-5/8″ for the new landing as the old piece I took out was not in good shape and I did not want to reuse it. I did not have any other 3/4″ plywood pieces that were large enough so I went to Lowe’s. They did not have 3/4″ half sheets (4′ x 4′) but I bought some more angle brackets while I was there. I then went to The Home Depot. They also did not have 3/4″ half sheets, but they had full sheets of 23/32″ sanded plywood that looked like it would work and a nice panel saw with an employee available to operate it. I waited while he built a complete set of closet shelving for a couple and engaged in some domestic counseling. He then cut the plywood sheet into two 4′ x 4′ pieces and helped me load them into a cart. I was able to get them into my Honda Element by myself and close the back hatches. I had a nice QSO with Steve (N8AR) on the drive home via the South Lyon 2m amateur radio repeater.
Linda had long since finished working on the wallpaper and busied herself in the kitchen preparing collard greens Cole slaw and vegan potato salad. It was somewhere between late afternoon and early evening but I still had enough light to work outside. Linda was still busy cooking so I decided to go ahead and try to cut the plywood for the new landing. Again, it was not a rectangle, i.e., an equiangular quadrilateral (four right angles and four sides with opposing sides parallel and equal in length) so getting the shape exactly right was tricky.
I determined that the right front corner, as viewed from the entry steps, was a right angle, or close enough to one to provide a known starting point. I put the plywood on 2″x4″s on the flat in the driveway to elevate them so I could clamp a saw guide in place and provide clearance for the saw blade. I measured the lengths of all four edges as best I could and placed the right front corner at a factory corner of one of the 4′ x 4′ pieces. I marked the length of the right side and the front on the two factory edges. The left side was longer than the right side and the rear side was longer than the front side so I marked arcs for the left and rear lengths and found their point of intersection. If the right front corner was, in fact, a right angle them this had to result in the correct shape. The key word in that last sentence is “if.”
I tried to confirm my layout by measuring the lengths of the diagonals on the plywood and on the bus but I could not get accurate measurements in the bus. I triple-checked my measurements and layout then marked the guide lines for the setback on my circular saw; 6-5/8″ to the inside edge of the teeth on the blade. Truth be told I initially marked the guide lines on the wrong side of the cut. I started to adjust my guide board to the outside of the blade and then thought better of the idea. The guide needed to be set up so that if the blade wandered off course it would cut into waste material rather than the finished piece. I re-measured and marked the guide lines in the proper place, checked their location with my small square, checked with the saw, made minor adjustments, and finally made the first of two cuts. I then repeated all of that and made the second cut. When I set the piece in place in the bus it was a perfect fit. I was so pleased that I had Linda come out to see it. Sometimes I amaze even myself.
I like to quit on a high note so that was the end of our bus work for today. We did not make dramatic progress but we kept moving and got things done that needed doing. My work today involved a certain amount of pondering and on-the-fly engineering combined with careful, repeated measuring and accurate cutting. This kind of work is never fast.
A beautiful sunset had developed, which meant it was getting dark, so I put a few things away and closed up the bus while Linda prepared our dinner. She made a nice salad and heated a couple of Amy’s vegan (non-dairy) lasagna entrées. A glass of Moscato was a welcome accompaniment and we enjoyed a second glass as we relaxed in the living room. We got a Rockler catalog in the mail today so I looked through that. If you are into woodworking it’s the adult equivalent of the Sear’s Christmas catalogs of yesteryear.
I called Butch at 10 PM. It was 7 PM in Bouse, Arizona and I figured they would be done working for the day and probably already had their dinner. The daytime highs there have been reaching 110 degrees F so Butch and the other RV Park employees have been starting work between 6 and 7 AM and trying to finish up by 1 PM. He did not elaborate but said the situation the first two weeks has not been exactly what they signed up for. He had already responded to an e-mail from Linda with more details so we let it go at that and talked about other things. We wrapped up our conversation at 10:30 and I went to bed. I was going to play a couple of games and then go to sleep but there was an update available for the iPad OS so I installed it. 9.0.1 was a big update and took quite a while to install. I was very sleepy by the time it finished and turned out the lights.
