Rookie Woodworker Builds Truck Camper

My name is Dan and I am entering this blog in regards to my Truck Camper building project. You might ask why build my own, well I priced some of the Lance campers and the like and they were just ought of sight in price. I wanted a truck camper so that I could tow my boat down to Galveston, Texas from New Caney, Texas, a distance of 112 miles from my house, one way. I love to saltwater fish, but I don't like the 2 hr drive from my house, one way. So my thought was to build or buy a truck camper so that I could stay down there a day or two at a time. Well I got on line and searched for camper projects and found the Glen-L truck camper plans. This was in June 2006. I also looked at used campers, but they all seem to be up in the Northern part of the United States. I didn't feel like driving 3,000 miles for a truck camper or spend $25,000 for a Lance camper. So I ordered the Glen-L truck camper plans, the Alcapulco design.
The plans are pretty straight forward. I am by no means a master carpenter but you couldn't tell it by the ease of construction on this project. Of course I ran into a few small glitches but I worked thru them. I have had people from my neighborhood stop by to see the progress I have made on this project and these are people who have not been over to my house but maybe once in the 25 yrs I have lived in this subdivision. The one thing you have to keep in mind on a project this big is to break it down into small projects. Don't look at the big picture, it is mind-boggling. You start on one wall at a time, then the box, then the front wall, then the back wall and so on. And don't get in any hurry, just chisel away at it a couple of hours everyday and before you know it that part of the project is done.
I bought the lumber for this project first. I bought about 60 2x6's made out of Fir. I then ripped 20 of those 8' 2x6's into 1x2's. These are used for much of the frame work on all the walls. The plans call for using cabinet staples but I found they split the wood. What I did was glue all the joints together with yellow glue and then stapled the joints together with a regular hand held stapler. Then I reinforced all the corners with triangular blocks glued in and then air nailed with 18ga brads. The secret behind the building of these plans is everything is glued together. The walls might seem flimsy, but once you get the cabinets in, the walls get stiffer, and then when you add the roof it is rock solid. Of course all the walls are attached to the box using screws. Next post will show some photos of the construction.