It's been a little while since I've updated this. That's mainly because I feel like I've so little to show for the work that's been done. I've been busy, but it hardly looks different. Lots of little things have been updated, but the trailer has looked almost unchanged until just recently.
Let's just go chronologically. Last you saw, we'd stripped nearly everything off, taking the trailer back down to just a basic frame. We finished that process, and got it down to just the ladder frame and axle again. We made jokes about doing it backwards and moving in the wrong direction. The purpose was to get all the flammables out of harm's way so I could complete the welding. As the trailer was going together earlier, we'd found some places where we wanted to move or add some small brackets and things. We had anticipated this, which is why the trailer isn't painted yet. Additionally, after the first round of cutting off brackets way long ago, I got smarter and only tack-welded the remaining ones, just in case they would need to be moved. So those all got finish-welded during this time. We also thought a bit about how the rear storage door is going to open, and that brought us to the realization that the brackets for the rear wall had to go away, and instead it will be bolted through the rear tube.
I screwed up the rear storage "floor" piece (seen above, on the right), by about a half inch. I don't know how I managed to, but that kind of sucked. I located the holes for the brackets starting at the rear, and when I got to the front edge, the holes in the brackets lined up with the edge of the panel, so that wouldn't work. If you recall, this was the second iteration of this piece, because the first was just not to my liking. It was a crappier plywood, and it had some bad tearout on a couple of the holes. So I made the THIRD version, and it came out excellent. Looks nearly identical.
Earlier in this process, when most of the stuff was assembled, so we were close-ish to the final weight (less the weight of the walls and roof, which is not insignificant), we tested the stabilizer jacks and found that they performed just fine. However, the channels they were mounted to did not. There was enough bending that I was uncomfortable with it, even though it was elastic. I picked up another length of 1.5" square tube to replace the channel sections. This was the most significant change in recent weeks, really. Well, one of them.
So, lots of little changes, that don't really make for good photo opportunities.
The most exciting part, and the main reason I finally felt like it was worth posting an update, is because we finally put down paint! First, I had to grind some of the welds down, for certain clearances. Then I cleaned up all of the welds with a wire wheel. We prepped the whole frame, and then spent a few days applying POR 15, flipping the frame over and back again, so we could paint the bottom. Then it got top-coated with a satin black spray enamel. It's not super exciting, but it does feel like a major milestone has been passed. It looks great all in one color. You can't even see the most of the booger welds!
Here you can see the stabilizer jack tubes that replaced the channel sections:
