Caravan, SIB and Trailer

[Steve509926]

Originally Posted by Brinormeg

Just bought a few of bits off ebay and was trying to work with it today for the first time to make a slide for my transducer...

Great to work with in some ways although hdpe is slightly softer than some other plastics available.
But bloody hell I can certainly confirm its slippy nature. I tried to clamp it to a bench with 3 good quality clamps to cut with my jig saw against a straight edge as I would a piece of wood. Ruined 2 small sheets of it before I gave up and just used the handsaw because the vibration of the jig saw was enough to keep moving everything and ruining my cuts.

I now know exactly what you mean! it is very, very slippy. It's not the easiest of stuff to machine because it is so difficult to clamp.
The first piece created so much chatter using the router to form a radius that I ended up cutting a quarter of it off and throwing it away, which then meant I didn't have enough to form a leading curve with a heat gun as Jeff suggested.
I screwed down the next two pieces on top of the bunks then routered the radius on all the upper edges, produced a much better result.
Hopefully "Redneck" will now glide on and off the trailer.

[jeffstevens763@g]

Originally Posted by Steve509926

Cheers Jeff, I was just going to route a radius on all upper edges but if I can form a leading edge curve I think that would be much smoother.
Did you just use heat to form the radius or did you also cut a few slots in the inner radius?

Just seen this sorry I use a hand radius tool cheap but very effective

[Steve509926]

Originally Posted by jeffstevens763@g

Just seen this sorry I use a hand radius tool cheap but very effective

No problem Jeff

[Poly]

Originally Posted by TmMorris

That would be a good reason! I'm supposed to have been a chemist at some distant moment in my life and never knew silicon would get absorbed by pvc.

Lard?

Thats because its siliconE not silicon ;-) they are actually siloxanes. They are notorious in any application where adhesion is required - its not just PVC that is affected, although it may be worse because either it acts as plasticiser or the solvents you would use to clean it off drag it into the 'fabric', and then it migrates back out over time.

[Steve509926]

I was completely dismantling the trailer this morning, greasing the hubs, de-rusting the nuts bolts etc before putting it away for the winter.
One thing that has been a bit of a problem is the length of the arms that make up the "A" frame, they are just a bit too long to fit into the caravan without a struggle and I know I'll cause some damage one day, so I decided to cut them in half.
Trip to the steel stockists near by, two lengths of 45mm square section with 2mm walls, 8 x M10 bolts, washers and nyloc nuts.
2 hrs later, arms cut in half, 8 holes drilled, zinc painted, problem solved.
Satisfied, but why haven't I done that before now!