The Shastah Disastah! 1961 "canned ham" camper

In reply to Pete Gossett :

Yeah, but I also want a cool, old truck! Don't ruin my plans! 

Margie, I'm still holding out for the update on this!

ECHO Tim Baxter...

Me three

Hello...hello...hello...

Add me to the list.

Hmm. The talk of E36 M3ty RV's in the GRM map thread has sent me over here to nag our hosts for progress and updates on this. Come on guys, get with the program!!

Ooohhhkayyy. I know I've been slacking on this. 

I know it's been too long since I updated this, but it's been a busy time period--for our tow vehicle and for the Suddards. The Edsel (and Nicole!) are part of the family now. (The Edsel was already--this old married couple took it to prom together some years ago.)

This  needs to be a primer for anyone thinking of an old trailer ,  wooden floors and  lightweight frames , 

They are not made to carry much weight ,  which may have been OK  in the 1960s , but  now you are bringing everything "just in case" 

I ended using mine for "almost" dry storage  as the rot  was too much to fix !

But work on the Shasta has been ongoing.

Tim and Tom worked together on the next phase, installing propane lines to supply the formerly Harvest Gold cooktop that Tim restored and we had powder coated in a midcentury robin's egg blue, as well as a modern 3-way fridge (horrendously expensive, but a must for cold food in tow and dry camping). They also configured the  plumbing to incorporate a new freshwater tank with a modern electric pump to replace the original tiny aluminum tank that was pressurized with a bicycle pump, and a gray water tank under the trailer to replace the... nothing. Literally nothing--gray water on these vintage campers just drained onto the ground. Or a bucket if you were fancy. Two marine batteries handle storage from a rooftop solar panel; they also went a little nuts and put in a giant inverter. I expect this thing to hum like the Death Star when we power it up.

IKEA needs to make a canned ham kit !  

Outer shell and interior choices :)

Then Tim and I spent many quality hours (and more not-quality ones) sanding and varnishing, rinse and repeat. We followed other restorers' recommendations and used Helmsman Spar urethane, three coats total, and a custom mix of Minwax stains to match the replacement birch paneling pieces to the original wood.

Color matching was intimidating, but if you actually look at the interior of an old camper, there's a range of shades in there depending on sunlight exposure, type of wood (panel vs. frame) and nature. So after a lot of experimentation and hesitancy, we just aimed for the middle and started staining.  

I salvaged all the cabinet doors by cutting veneer patches off the old bathroom door and gluing them in to replace missing or damaged areas. A lot of work with an Xacto knife that really took me back to the early days of the magazine, when typeset galleys were corrected by cutting out typos and gluing in correct letters and words. Wow, yeah, that really was a thing.

I mean, it came with a built-in magazine rack. We HAD to get it!

The choice of a 3-way fridge is interesting. My experience is that modern 12v compressor fridges and solar is a really good combo. That's for a Westfalia size fridge, but I can't imagine you going much larger. I'd be curious in hearing more about the reasoning.

Also, we need a closeup of the cut/pasted veneer :)

Once we reached the point where I needed to get on the sewing, we made a sewing "room" out of a guest-room closet:

It's a surprisingly pleasant and functional workspace. Shoutout to modern LED task lighting. And to my Baby Lock Design Pro, sort of the Miata of sewing machines (with a similar fervent following).

In reply to Keith Tanner :

They chose the fridge 5+ years ago, before the solar system was planned. Otherwise yeah, a compressor fridge probably would have made more sense and been easier to package. 

Yeah, the elapsed time on this project has bitten us in the ass on a couple of things. But this is also a 3.7 cu ft fridge, which is more than twice the size of a Westfalia's.

As for the veneer splices, I only have After pics, where the repairs are (thankfully) pretty hard to see. Here's one showing a top-left cabinet corner that had been destroyed; I rotated the patch to align with the grain of the existing veneer, and also cut along the grain to remove the damaged material.

I've made curtains for campers before, and learned the hard way that unless you want to line them (which would be a completely overdone approach for the Shasta), most of the options at the fabric stores are either too stiff to hang properly, or they become pretty transparent when backlit. And campgrounds nowadays are fairly tight-packed, meaning unless I chose carefully, someone was gonna see Tim's butt crack. Or mine. Or both.

Fabric by the yard has also become expensive, with too-thin cottons and polyesters starting at ten bucks a yard.

I solved the dilemma by buying large white curtain panels at Walmart. Purchased curtains are rated for transparency and light blockage, so you know exactly what you're getting, and I found tab-top panels in basic white, which I wanted to set off against the woodwork, on sale at about half the cost of by-the-yard raw fabric. Then it was cutting and sewing time:

Pro tip for curtains: You want the finished width to be the width of the window plus at least a third to have them drape and gather properly.

Then it was on to cushions.

This is an upholstery-grade, medium density foam (with my helper on top--he was intrigued because it smelled like the attic where it's been stored several years). I experimented with a memory foam mattress I bought on Amazon, but when in an appropriate thickness for the camper, it did little to stop a tailbone from hitting the seat bottom when we sat. Both options were easily cut with an electric carving knife. Highly recommend this inexpensive Amazon option.

I hit up JoAnn's for 10 yards of a nubbly upholstery fabric in a period color that was (bonus!) on sale. The orange may seem a little bold, but once it's in the camper and against the wood, it should just look factory. We are not trying to Glamp here (hate that word), but rather restore and restomod a neat midcentury piece.

Once the cushions were cut out (I used a half-inch seam allowance all around and subtracted 1/4 inch from the height of the boxing--the pieces that wrap the sides--for a trim fit), the fun started.  Zipper panels were constructed first.

Then the sewing, and the help, continued.

OK. Wow, you exceeded expectations here. Thanks. 
 

never having made cushions, can you explain this a bit further please?

Once the cushions were cut out (I used a half-inch seam allowance all around and subtracted 1/4 inch from the height of the boxing--the pieces that wrap the sides--for a trim fit), the fun started.  Zipper panels were constructed first.

Sure. Each cushion is made of 6 pieces: A top and bottom, plus boxing for each side. The top and bottom are cut to the cushion dimensions plus your seam allowance (how far from the edge of the fabric you plan to sew), while the boxing is cut to the foam width, plus the same seam allowance less 1/4 inch to tighten the fit of the finished covers to the cushions.
 

The actual number of pieces cut for each cushion was 7, though, because the zipper panel is 2 pieces sewn to a zipper. Those pieces total the height of the rest of the boxing plus 1/2 inch extra along the length of each; that 1/2-inch is pressed under and the two pieces are basted closed (though I admit after years of sewing I rarely baste) then placed right-side up onto the closed zipper. The zipper is sewn in with stitching down either side of the teeth, 3/8-inch off them, with the basted seam centered over the zipper. Remove basting if needed and you have a zipper panel.

I added 2-1/2 inches to the zipper length so it would extend around the corner and make it easier to stuff the foam inside, and shortened the boxing on that side accordingly, with an extra inch on that boxing that I pressed under on the zipper end so the zipper pulls could tuck. 
 

It was altogether too much math for my liking. 

While I sewed (and sewed), Tim and Tom finished the wiring. The original fixtures cleaned up well--I had to bleach and sand off some scorch marks from the old fiberglass shades, and we sprayed the rusty metal in a bronze metallic. 

I love look of the old gas light, but didn't want to burn alive, so found a little LED to go inside it:

Here you can also see that the sliding panels have been covered in our boomerang Wilsonart.

The lights are awesome. more campers should have wall sconces. And the orange is just right.

Sewing machine brand loyalty makes Ford vs Chevy look like a vague preference. My wife chose to nail her flag to the Bernina mast, alas. 

The fridge in our Westy is 2.3 cu. ft. and I had to do some work to make that fit. I know three-way fridges are used more in big RVs, I just wasn't sure what the cutover point was. At some point the compressor draw is too much for solar, I figure. The old one we yanked out was more of a cooler and couldn't run 12v without melting a golf cart solenoid but it was 80's tech at best. 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Thanks! Yeah, we'd probably make some different choices now vs. 5 years ago--starting with not buying parts until we really needed them, so we weren't working with stuff that was already out of warranty (which bit us on the tank sensor that we already had to replace) or outdated. However, after owning many campers and having some very borderline fridge experiences with them, I was super cautious about proven tech that would be overkill there. I've sat around too many campfires wondering if the dinner I just served was gonna make everyone sick.

As for sewing machines, I am too cheap to buy a higher end machine, plus it would be wasted on my out of practice, admittedly reckless sewing. My mom was quite the seamstress, which I blame for my reluctance to finish seams, baste, and stuff like that. Upholstery is probably the perfect use of my talents :D