Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Progress on the '64 Scotty Sportsman

Blessed by a good wood-working pal, Tom Wilson (who has rebuilt the three Scotty cabinets for me, and consistently prods me to move the work along) and another good friend, Gary Pierce, I've made a lot of progress on the trailer in the last 5 or so months. 

That includes taking the trailer all the way down to the frame, sanding and sealing the frame (in good condition, thankfully), rebuilding the floor and new linoleum, installing new side panels (using the old pieces as templates) and now re-doing the interior ceiling (using Masonite, with a white, semi-gloss finish on one side). The Masonite is a bit tricky, and not sure I would recommend it to fellow re-builders. But, it's in and now, onto the interior finish.

You'll see in the photos below, the three cabinets are installed, and most of the work on the front-end dinette is accomplished.  For the rear gaucho bed, we both widened it by six inches (by taking six inches off the center floor-mount cabinet and the lower portion of the center wardrobe, taller cabinet) and added two deep slide out drawers underneath the bed.  The original trailer had only a cabinet door that dropped down, to allow stashing items/boxes or suitcases under the bed - all too basic.

Still have to re-trim all the interior edges with the aluminum edge trim (floor, cabinet edges), then it will be onto the wiring of the trailer.

We are in Seattle for the next four weeks, then to Newport Beach, CA for a week, so no work on the Scotty for a while; bit I can happily say its starting to look like a Scotty again!

For additional insight, take a look at the National Serro Scotty organization web site (nationalserroscotty.org), with lots of re-build how-tos and real-world advice; or, feel free to email me, tviall@msn.com.

Here's the trailer torn down to the original floor, with dry rot along about 50% of the outer edges.
New floor finished, new sides applied.
New cabinets, built by pal Tom Wilson, painted Sea Foam blue.
Beginning work on the front dinette seats.
Masonite ceiling panels finished, interior cabinets being fitted.
A good eye will note we trimmed six inches off the width of the lower portion of the wardrobe closet, to add six inches to width of the new gaucho bed in back of trailer (we also trimmed the other floor-mount cabinet by the same six inches).
Masonite paneling all finished and the three cabinets fitted.
New right dinette finished, re-worked to allow a Porta Potti to fit underneath (hopefully to receive little or no use!).
Read gaucho bed mostly finished, with two deep pull-out drawers underneath.

Yep, the right rear was pretty much all dry-rot, resulting mostly from a steady leak from the overhead roof seam.