Days 3-5 of Building

Hi everyone, it's Kelly again.

Days 3 through 5 involved installing the rest of the wall panels.  It's all coming together quite well, and soon we'll be able to add the floor of the teardrop!

We stitched in the wall panels that touch the roof on Day 3, and saved the big job of sealing the seams with fiberglass and epoxy for Day 4.  Sealing the seams was similar to when we joined the puzzle joints on the long roof panels.  First we added some super glue and drying accelerant between the copper wire stitches, then started mixing our epoxy while the super glue dried.

For the big seam down the middle of the roof, we cut out the stitches, painted on a light coat of epoxy, then rolled out the fiberglass strip over the seam and added another coat of epoxy to saturate and seal the fiberglass.

The seam between the roof and first side panels is at more of an angle, so we have to use a thicker epoxy to fill in any gaps before laying on the fiberglass.  This epoxy has wood flour (aka really fine sawdust) added to it, and gets poured into a bag with a cut corner (like a pastry bag).  After squeezing it across the seam, we scraped over the thick epoxy (called fillet) to press it into the seam and remove the excess.  As with the previous seam, we laid out the fiberglass and added a coat of the clear epoxy.

On Day 5, we installed the last wall panels.  The process was very much the same as the previous days: stitching the panels to each other and the mold, super gluing the seams, cutting out the stitches, adding epoxy/fillet, then finishing with the fiberglass/epoxy combo.  In order to have easy access to the seams and to ensure the epoxy wouldn't drip down into the teardrop shell, we tipped the entire teardrop on its side.

The last two things we did on Day 5 was to prep both the bulkhead and the floor of the teardrop.  For the bulkhead, we had to join some pieces together with puzzle joints.  The bulkhead will be attached near the rear of the teardrop shell, and will separate the kitchen area from the sleeping area.  The floor came as two thick wooden panels that needed to be attached to each other, so we used epoxy to glue them together, then drilled on a board across the entire length of the seam so that the floor will be sturdy.

Hours worked:
Day 3 -- 2 hours
Day 4 -- 4 hours
Day 5 -- 9 hours

Total Time -- 25 hours

Where we ended on Day 3

Superglue on the seam

Adding epoxy to fiberglass on Day 4

Smoothing out the seam to make sure there aren't any bubbles

Sometimes it was difficult to reach the seams because of the mold

Smoothed out fillet

One side of fillet ended up much neater than the other

Stitching in the panels on Day 5

All of the side panels stitched in on Day 5

We tipped the teardrop on its side to have easier access

Superglue on Day 5

Fillet and epoxy on the side panels