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Create Your Own Van Panels Part 1
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May 2, 2025
In this livestream I begin to show you how to bolt upholstered panels to 80/20 frame. Visit the blog at https://www.vanbuilderhq.com to learn more. Interested in Nick building your van? Check out https://www.odysseycustomvans.com
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[Music]
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thank you [Music]
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thank you hey guys welcome back to the stream tonight so tonight stream really doesn't
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have a title I just wanted you guys to join me in the shop um we're planning the steps of uh
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basically what we got to do to Thomas's van Marine one over here and uh yeah I'm just gonna give you guys
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an update on what I'm going through um and I'm prepping tomorrow to start
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upholstering the panels in the back of the van so I thought you know want to add a
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better way to uh show you how I prep to get the frame done get the wood
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upholster it drill the holes stuff like that the tools I use so I got them back here on the table
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so yeah we're going to talk about three things uh the fridge that I mentioned yesterday they had an error code on it
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uh picture frigo sent me some troubleshooting guides and stuff like that so I'm gonna go through that
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um the next thing I'm gonna do is talk about 80 20 building an 80 20 frame and also using
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um the 90 uh little brackets corner brackets here uh
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specifically the ones from 80 20. we'll talk about the
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uh button head cap screw it's a 5 16-18 uh we'll talk about the lock
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washer I use this is pretty much you know 98 of the the build is this type of
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um way to connect these two pieces the next thing we're going to talk about is well
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the third one would be uh the wood the wood that I use half inch plywood
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the fabric which is Marathon and this is a
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dark oatmeal I think that's what that is anyway we'll talk about that and then we'll talk about
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uh the tools so not only the glue that I used to upholster it together we'll talk
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about cutting it measuring it squares
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um and the table setup that I have just stuff like that so that if you're going to be doing panels or Upholstery and
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stuff you're gonna be using 80 20 or wood or you can actually use wood panels and upholster it
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you can uh just kind of use my steps as a suggestion but yeah we're gonna be talking about
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that and uh let me go grab my phone real quick
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foreign yes I'm pretty much Gonna Leave the
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camera roll in here I'm gonna go back inside the van if you can see we got a second camera that is inside the van I'm going to walk
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over there and discuss what we're going to plan on doing and then I'll come back over here see if
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you guys have any questions um I didn't post an announcement about the stream tonight so we might have to make
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people in the chat which is all good but still ask your questions if you're coming in late
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and uh yeah let's hop over to the back of the van
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all right guys we're in the back of the van and if you watch the stream yesterday we did the tour on Thomas's
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van the right side of the van is essentially what we're going to mirror to the left side
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so same thing we're going to have a panel obviously bigger than this but it's
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going to go here and it'll tie into this corner it'll go all the way up to the top
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we'll have a piece of black ABS plastic that'll clean up the top section but
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this panel will have a slight tape angle to it then we're going to be mounting
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uh the threaded inserts over here on the
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left as well uh yeah just here on the left pretty much where these holes are
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that were Factory so I I always cover up the holes in the van with tape
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um especially if it hasn't been insulated just so you don't have that like cold a
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little bit of air coming through I know that sounds ridiculous but trust me anything that you can close up on having
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any type of like airflow makes it much nicer
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um I was in the back of my van and it was not insulated and it's just weird that
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these these little holes you know it'll have there's a difference in temperature kind of makes like a little bit of a
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convection but you tape it all up again no it sounds crazy but it does make a little bit of a
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difference but we'll be putting inserts here to hold the panel on the left side we'll
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probably only do one here and
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probably one two and then three we'll probably just do three that way we don't have that many
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bolt holes going on the next thing we're going to do is
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earlier a couple a couple weeks ago I went ahead and pre-measured this piece it's
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approximately about 36 inches and so that is going to go into this little recess of the window now
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I've got it strategically placed so it's not grinding or bumping against the
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window to kind of shave the paint off it's just barely off of it and then we're going to come in with
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another piece of 80 20.
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and we'll have a piece coming on this back side and that'll intersect with this
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so that'll be the back support we will be inserting one uh
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a nut insert here so we'll drill into here and we'll vacuum out as best we can
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the filings but we'll go up here and we'll have this tied into the van so you'll have a Time Point here
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and then you have a time point over here and then this bottom section
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will be enough to hold it as well as this left section so we won't have to worry about anything and this is kind of
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a it looks like a weird way of doing this um because typically you would want to
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panel this off and then fully insulate this however I still want Thomas to be able to flip this bottom window
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insulation up and then if you had if he wanted to remove it he could take this and remove it through there
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but we want to do is clean up this side over here and then the next thing we want to do is
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make our final panel that's on this side
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and we're going to have the panel face here so this is nice and clean
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but it's actually going to go now this is just for reference but it's actually
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going to go on top of this one but behind this one so like that
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so just as reference like that and then this piece over here will go on
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top of it that way you get a nice clean transition you're not seeing any creases uh
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and stuff like that so just be a nice clean transition here this will help too so that when you
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sleep in the bed there's a little bit um you know not only kind of like a little privacy area when sleeping
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uh but it's going to block off any type of kind of chill that's back here
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uh as best as we can do because this is an all-glass van and uh you really need
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to insulate as much as you possibly can with all glass because you will have a lot of heat loss however if you make
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these little nooks and crannies and stuff like that it can make it more comfortable so that's what we're going to do
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uh put that up there and then when we're finished
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with all this uh finished with the the wood being cut
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out all right I'm sorry when we're finished with the 80 20 frame we'll start uh tracing out our wood so
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we'll go up and measure it so tonight what I want to do is get a couple pieces of 80 20 put in here
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I just get this one piece up here the frame I may drill this while we're doing live tonight bolt it
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in and then put the plus nuts rev nuts over here
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once that's finished I'll show you how I measure the panel and get it ready for upholstery
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it's it's really important that you um let me get the other camera I'll tell
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you the rest of it
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okay so let's talk about what's important
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so alignment is very important you can imagine if you have a panel like this
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and you've got these precise holes that are fitting in conjunction with a
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piece of 80 20 like this this is just an example
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so like that the holes have to be perfect so what you wanted
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what you don't want to do is measure cut your wood
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upholster it and then try to go find the drill holes you don't want to do that
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because if you mess up the holes you can still save it uh move the hole and then upholster it
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it'll be fine so what we're doing so what we're doing here this is uh
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this is one of the temporary panels I made for Thomas um
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this one for example what we'll do is we'll cut our wood out
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and then we'll find out where all our holes are
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uh there's a couple tricks to doing this what I do is I kind of line up the piece of wood
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close to where I have my holes and then I'll put a mark and then I'll just um I'm pretty good
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after doing this for a while not to Pat myself in the back but I'm able to get it really close to where I can almost
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eyeball my line and drill the hole right the first time now I know if you haven't done it before
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that's gonna be really hard so I have a trick for you so what you're going to do is
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um Let me let me try to make this
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foreign
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exaggerate this but what you can do
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is you take your piece of 80 20. um and you're going to take your
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little t-nut right here you're going to take it and you're gonna slot it and you're 80 20 or you're gonna this is
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a roll-in t-nut uh if you guys don't know what a role in t-nut is there's a little ball with the
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spring and what this does is say you you did not have the ability to
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put this in here and slide it in like that see how I did that
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so say you couldn't do that a roll-in t-nut
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you can roll it in so you put it here you push it in
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and you can roll it like that see
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so look how I inserted this without sliding it in I just I just rolled it in
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uh okay so what something you can do is find the spot where you want to have
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your hole grab a permanent marker and just measure that line
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now that line is just a visual reference so if you accidentally move it
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you know to slide it back up before you before you do what I'm about to tell you take an extra long Bolt
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screw it in until it bottoms out
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and then
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okay so screw it in until it bottoms out like that and then what you can do is two things
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so you can take it and then lay the board on top of the nut
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and then take a hammer and just hit the
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board extremely hard now what that's going to do is it's going to make an imprint on the back of
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the wood you guys may have known this if you're doing this DIY projects it'll make a mark on the back of the
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board and for some reason you can't get it to make a mark just draw a permanent marker around the
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head of the socket head um
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button head soccer head cap screw button head cap screw gonna lower these
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names the button head capture just just put a permanent marker on it and then do the same thing hit the board and it should
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give you just a little bit of an imprint uh then you can drill it out put the
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panel back up and then just fine tune it usually I'll make I don't know nine out of ten I'll be perfect
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and then that last one what I'll do is I'll actually take the drill bit I'll put
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uh so say this was a panel and I had two holes that were perfect but the middle one wasn't so perfect I'll go ahead and
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Bolt the top and bottom down to locate my panel and then I'll take the drill bit and I'll just go in
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and drill it out then I'll take both of these out I'll clean everything up sand it down and
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then I'll begin to upholster it all right so that is the 80 20 frame
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that's us getting the piece of wood cut
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um let's go and measure I'll show you how I measure it's pretty simple but
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you guys might pick something up that you didn't know
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see if I can zoom in a little bit
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foreign
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you have to remember that there's nothing really to reference off of you build your own reference
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so that has to do with with uh levelness squareness
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you have to be in control of that the whole time you're building this right here
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going straight up was very very difficult because not only did
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I have to have it's so far out from the wall on the bottom but so far on the wall from the
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top on both sides then I had to estimate where I wanted everything to land so
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that when I did my slatted ceiling all the slats going even all the pieces
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are even the ends are even and they meet um because if you guys can believe this
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the ribs that the cross members at four puts in the van they're glued in so they
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can be off anywhere from uh 16th eighth of an inch
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I don't think I've seen one up to a quarter maybe maybe I had one section that was almost a quarter they can be
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you know twisted because all they're doing is putting they're putting the body together
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they're taking these ribs they're putting the ribs on but they spray this foam
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and I'm not lying the foam that's set in the foam with the final layer of the
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roof that's what holds your roof on as I've cut cross members out and I've ripped them out and they've only been
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held on by that special Automotive grade foam there's no welds
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so if that doesn't blow your mind the fact that the ribs are actually not
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a you can't reference off of the the ribs so all the ribs in this van
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what I did the supports for the slatted ceiling I had to have my own
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jig to create my squareness for the top
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so I went from the bottom up up here because also
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this shop is pretty level the concrete floor is pretty level but the van has weight in different sections
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so if the van is tilted and you use a level like a bubble level that's not
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going to work because if you follow that and now you're on a flat surface your van is
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going to be all your bill is going to kind of torqued to one side um anyway long story short there's a lot
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of measuring to square everything just to make sure the 80 20 is nice
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because it's so structurally true as long as you cut the ends Square
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but when you start mounting everything with these 80 20 brackets everything is very true so if the good news is if
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you're dead on it's going to stay pretty dead on the bad news is if you're off
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it's going to drift off for example when I put this side over here the first time I thought that this
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was straight because I squared it here and I squared it here and here but when I got to the
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roof it was actually off about a quarter of an inch so I had to redo all that
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and think about it if I'm off a quarter of an inch on the top when I make it right every single piece
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of 80 20 that I cut is probably an eighth inch off so I can't like all
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those pieces I have to just use somewhere else in the van because they're they're wrong now
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so not to put you in a panic but you know
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if you start right you're going to end right so don't rush when you get to these steps
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okay that was a long way of saying the Vans do not they're not true uh in particular this side right here if
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you notice I go from here up and then I stop
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I stop because the van starts to curve inward so obviously I can't go straight up so I
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have to end I have to end my vertical piece here
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and so everything is in relationship has a relationship so this ended here because that's the
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top of the water tank they have enough room for the pecs they give me enough room for the Murphy bed enough room for
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the plywood so that that wasn't my limit so I couldn't go any more up from there
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that's why this bar comes across here the cool thing is this goes up vertical
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I have an inch and a half going in so guess what this taper comes in about
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an inch and a half so guess what when I put my piece of wood up there that curve is going to be hidden because
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the bottom piece of wood is going to hit the 80 20 on the bottom and the top piece of wood is going to hit it's going
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to make it's going to meet the curve at the top so I'll have a clean transition over
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here I have a clean transition over here um
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next part so let's go ahead and measure this just to see
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now what we're going to do is we're going to measure the left first
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and I'm going to get my distance from the top of the van and I'm not sure if
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you guys can see this I'm away from my computer so I can't see
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the chat oh yeah you guys can see all that
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so the first thing you have to do is I need to measure from this rib bottom down where the
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cable tray is on the passenger side and I've got three and a half inches so
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I come over here I find three and a half inches which is
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I probably did it on purpose because it's exactly at the bottom of this plastic
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so I'm going to measure from the bottom of this plastic
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down to my final section here
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and thankfully it's a 55 inches okay
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so 55 inches is how long the board is going to be going up and down
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then we'll come over here we've got
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let's see what we got here we have
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I think we can do 15 and three quarters
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now this is going to pose a challenge too because I'm not sure yet with the way
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the Vans design if how much this is coming in
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my eye says that it's not doing anything but as soon as I cut this straight line we'll find out when you cut a piece of
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wood so we've got 55 inches and
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the next thing I do is I'll subtract approximately
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a quarter inch and I may ask why because once we do the spray adhesive and then
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we do the fabric we're we're adding almost an eighth of an inch to the
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material at the bottom of the top so that quarter of an inch so I'll take the 55 down to 54 three
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quarters and then this whip the number this this wide number it's 15 and three quarters I'm going to
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make it 15 and a half so 15 and a half 55 three quarters
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so let's go right there now
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say five and a half actually 15 and a half
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55 no 54. three quarters
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okay so that's how I do the the first panel
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uh the the second panel uh is a little bit trickier so let's go
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look at it
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all right so the second panel over here I'm gonna go ahead and get a bracket so
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I can I mean a t-slot so I can go ahead and bolt this in anytime that you guys can
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visually reference stuff in the van that is Paramount you you need that visual
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reference because there is no other reference in the van there's nothing telling you that measure
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from this point and everything is going to be perfect
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all right
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the other roll above all rules don't drop drop the D the D slot or the
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T the rolling t-nut in the van you'll be very unhappy
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so we're going to take it we're just going to slide it in here and after I just told you not to drop it
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this is what happens when you're live on camera make sure you drop it
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let's see if I can do it
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so what we did is we just have a t-slot nut in here I've got the wrong
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set of Allen wrench but it's fine I just need to cinch it down here
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okay so what I did here is there is a little bump out in the window
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and you have to just ignore this whole back side you have you have to if you're building with wood or you're building
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with 80 20 or aluminum tubing or anything like that you are in charge of what Square
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and so you just have to you know that you're kind of building a cage inside of a
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cage all right so the first thing we're going to do let's act like we were trying to
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measure to cut this piece so what I do is I simply just gum up and I
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cut it longer than I need to and I do that because
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it doesn't matter if you're an engineer it doesn't matter if you're super precise you're a cabinet maker or
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whatever there's something about a van to where you're doing a lot of one-off stuff
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there's so many things that are affecting the the end result that it's always has
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to be tweaked um as much as I've done this so for example
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this bottom you want to make sure that one this is
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Square to the top that when you did your miter saw cut on your 80 20 it's nice and square
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you didn't accidentally shift it and it's now like 89 degrees or whatever
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um so we bolt it in and then it may touch so what we're
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going to do is just take a little permanent marker and we're just going to mark it I'm going to go back to our miter saw we're going to shave off an
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eighth of an inch or so and we're just going to dial it in until we get exactly where we want it you don't want to force
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something in there off you want to keep shaving it until it gets true
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don't Don't cheat because remember once this is in it's going to be used as a reference so
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if it was if you kind of half did it on this piece and then next the piece comes
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in you have to hear I mean you could be literally off an inch by the time you get back to like over here somewhere
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um maybe not an ants maybe maybe a quarter anyway
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uh so what I did was I measured it and I just kept shaving off till I got my clearance exactly the way I wanted it
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because I wanted it to just barely uh be off of this sheet metal
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because what I'm going to do is I'm going to take a corner bracket and I'm going to mount it up here
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now I'm going to have to that's going to be the only Corner bracket I have to modify with the uh
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on the bench grinder because it's gonna that bracket's gonna have to
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be turned a couple degrees and what that's going to do is going to kick out the bottom of the corner
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bracket and I just need to cut that off so when the piece of wood goes on there it's nice and flush
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so I measured it trimmed it did all that so that's that's good that's that's nice it has a has a home
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let's check the chat all right nothing in the chat
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so what I'm gonna do here is I want to measure from the back side so that I have a
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clean line now this is kind of confusing here so what I'm doing
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it's again I'm getting kind of fancy but it's because I it's I in my mind I know what my I want my end result to look
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like so the way that I'm doing it looks unconventional but the end result will
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make it look right because I want this panel to actually go in the front of the panel is going to hit
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the back of this 80 20. and the back of the panel is going to hit the front
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so what I've done is I've offset my piece of 80 20 off a half inch out
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or a little probably a little over half inch probably half inch plus
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looks like 0.8 um
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and that is to allow for the upholstery because remember the upholstery is
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adding to the wood thickness all right so if I measure this I have
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exactly 12 inches um
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now the reason I had 55 inches I got exactly 12 inches a lot of that is because when I'm
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designing it I I'm I'll move it like an eighth of an inch or a half to get it to be like a
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whole number and then I'll try to do that just so things are nice and correct
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because it's hard to catch a mistake if you have like 15 and 7 8 and then this
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over here is you know seven and three quarters but if every number is you know 16
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inches 12 and a half and then you have 13 and 7 8 you're like whoa what's wrong
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you can it'll kind of that's me that's that's how I catch if I'm getting off
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anyways we got 12 inches so this piece we're going to have an uh
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we'll have an interesting transition this piece down here you could make a
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piece going from the bottom all the way to the top however if you ever needed to get into here to
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service the water tank or any of these valves you'd have to take the whole entire panel off so we're going to keep
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this bottom panel here as an access panel and then we're going to start our next panel and go up from there
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so since we're doing and technically like an inside panel we're going to take the
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12 inches and then we're going to subtract an eighth from each side for the
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upholstery all right so let's move we'll remember the 12 and then we'll go back and change
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that so we got 12 inches here and then we're going to go up here to the top
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we're going to reference we're going to reference our side over
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here okay so it's going all the way to the top
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so it's going all the way to this piece of 80 20 so we got
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it looks like it's right at is this that
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so you got 43 and 7 8 and we're going to bring it back
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to 43 and three quarters so 43 three quarters
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43 three quarters
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so 43 three quarters
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ah see and there's 12 minus the 2 8 we'll do 11 and three quarters
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remember guys it's just wood if you mess up you're just wasting money
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it's just wood don't don't don't stress out I stressed out on the 80 20 because 80
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20 is expensive um and
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I just like to do things accurately so it's more of a pet peeve of mine I just
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you guys have probably seen I have a box of my off Cuts I'm very proud of
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this is the only 80 20 that I've wasted in the whole entire van build or
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I mean for Thomas's so so you should make a box like this if you're using 80 20 and try to see how
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good you can do the cool thing is once you have a box of stuff you can't use
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you know you can These are nice they then become valuable
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for the next project because you'll have these just cuts that are not you know like this little
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transition pieces and stuff like that or you can use them for like jigs that's what I do like oh
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I'll have some parts of the van where I need to pre-drill some holes and what I'll do is
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I'll take the drill press and I'll drill out one of these sticks and then that way it's my my reference so that I can
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drills
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[Music] all right so we've got our first panel 54 three
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quarters second by 15 and a half and then we get our second panel 43 and
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three quarters 43 and three quarters and eleven and three quarters
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um see here oh hey go and do
37:19
hope you're doing great do you draw your design and cat or another software before build
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so believe it or not I don't designing CAD or like a 3D modeling
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program which is odd because that's that's exactly what I went to school for so my degree is in
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3D modeling and rapid prototyping so that's the classes I took so I did a
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lot of uh 3D modeling um we used AutoCAD but we mainly use Pro e
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So Pro engineer and then um you know we learned how to load that up
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into a CNC machine and have it map out and and cut everything but
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uh the funny thing is when I went to go and you know get my job
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um that equipment was so expensive that we learned on at college that the companies I went to didn't have it so
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I went back to AutoCAD and uh I used AutoCAD which is if you know it's just 2D
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drawings and um I just pretty much did everything in AutoCAD because I was just making drawings of uh
38:29
parts to take to a machine shop and uh long story short I when I started doing this van thing I
38:38
thought I needed to do 3D modeling but um what I do is
38:44
here I'll show you a little bit of what I do
38:52
the thing is it's it's really hard to design something perfectly in the 3D software
38:59
and have it translate to the van because attachment points and stuff like that
39:06
um now for example if you were a humongous van Builder manufacturer let's say you're like a Storyteller or
39:15
um Winnebago like making the Revel or uh Travato
39:22
you have uh a set team that has a set design plan they know where all the
39:27
specific mounting locations they want but again it's very cookie cutter so what I do is
39:34
I take whatever you have in your head and I make it reality so I don't have I'm not held back by like a cookie
39:40
cutter model I can just for example Thomas's van we we took the
39:46
Ford AC unit we moved it from the back to the middle which I don't think I've ever seen been done it's probably the
39:52
first time it's ever been done but if I can see to my head I can make it in
39:58
real life and the way that I do it is I'll go to here
40:06
so I use my drawing pad and you want to sketch as much as
40:11
possible you don't want to get into the whole engineering into the weeds and stuff like that you want to get the
40:16
concept down first and then you want to go and go out into the
40:23
you know in the world into Amazon into stores and then you want to actually find the physical components
40:29
and you want to get that information
40:34
and then have that begin to uh tweak your
40:40
hold on a second this thing's not opening up so you want to get your layout so like
40:46
this is the layout I want um you know I want
40:52
um my bed here or my kitchen Galley here and then you get what you want for flow
40:58
wise and then okay let's see here
41:03
let me back up
41:20
trying to hide the taskbar come on
41:27
oh wait I did it over here if you guys can see I have like four
41:33
monitors over here I'm trying to figure out which one I did this on
41:59
all right let me digress that's not working it's fine all right so we're gonna we're
42:06
gonna go back so uh so go and do check this out so this is pretty much how
42:12
Thomas and I did our consultations so I start off
42:18
with the consultations in the van Bill process let's just say you know you're in the future we're we're building your
42:25
band for example so the first thing has to do with your use case because the use case sets the
42:31
foundation for the power system uh that's kind of like your core like the heart of the van
42:38
and depending on how big or small you want that then we start to develop stuff around it
42:44
because if you don't design your power system
42:49
off the bat first it's really hard to increase the size of it for example in uh Thomas has been that
42:55
we're working on we don't have any uh there's no wiggle room
43:03
we could only do 400 amp hours but we could have done if we did like
43:10
the victron batteries that would have helped but the problem is victron
43:15
the the batteries in a self-contained unit so the BMS is external that's like
43:20
the brain of the battery so basically you'll have four batteries that have a lot of energy density but then they
43:27
have to be plugged into a brain and the brain has to be plugged into another thing
43:32
um that's why I like the soks is because they're all independently controlled
43:39
okay let's see here this is why I like live streams we can just hop on and call I mean we just get
43:46
into uh other topics uh let's see here I've been using graph
43:53
paper and a pencil hold on a second let me hop up
44:01
see
44:12
see browser existing
44:19
those are existing sub
44:25
browser existing sub alert there we go
44:41
when I'm tweaking this window here
44:47
okay so if you're looking at this photo or this green
44:54
this is this is the concept we did for Thomas and pretty much what we did is this was
45:05
what we came up after we did a couple of so this would be like a rendering that I would do
45:10
I do all this stuff in real time uh I don't think it's it's kind of a waste of time to just keep mate uh kind of be like a design
45:17
firm and you design like these 10 drawings that you spent hours on and
45:23
then it's like no we don't like any of those you know so what I do is we'll do a phone consultation we'll be on like
45:29
Google meet or whatever and I'll be drawing this in real time uh because what happens is as we're drawing
45:36
something might go through your mind and it's like no no we won't change that so we just erase it and we just keep tweaking and tweaking
45:41
and uh yeah it's a lot of fun I enjoy it okay you've been using graph paper
45:47
pencil for General ideas and then tweak and physical space yes yes yep yep
45:56
yeah so I get the graph paper out after I know the components you're going to use so for example
46:03
if you're going to have a bed don't stress out about the bed size just
46:08
just know that that's the area for the bed because things that you cannot change is you cannot change the
46:14
footprint of your power system you can't change the footprint of the refrigerator or where you're
46:21
going to put like uh like a hideaway toilet or where your gray water jug is you know
46:27
those are like physical things that are kind of locked in dimensionally and you
46:33
can't they're gonna go in the van somewhere but like the bed you can have a queen
46:38
size or you can have a short queen or you can have a short full um if you look up Winnebago Rebel
46:46
the bed in a wig Winnebago Revel is I think it's like it's an inch shorter
46:53
than a full size mattress it's it's not big
46:59
um but everybody doesn't have a problem they love the rebel
47:04
uh let's see here so I'm gonna go back to some earlier photos
47:10
and yeah just keep asking me questions while we're chatting here
47:16
trying to get I'm gonna try to get some I'm trying to get some really old stuff
47:46
this is fun it's like going back in time okay so this was like one of the first things that we laid out and you see it's
47:51
really it's super basic um get my head out of the way here one
47:57
second
48:05
okay so this is one of the the first first sketches that we did and
48:13
immediately this looks like a different van now we still have our water tank so that was a footprint that could not be
48:20
changed it was the most capacity but the width was because he has a
48:25
paragrapher so you couldn't be like a 40 gallon tank I'd be a Slim 20 over the wheel well for
48:31
the footprint to work we did consider a sink but in the beginning he had a chest uh drawer uh a
48:39
chest freezer like a Dometic cfx uh
48:46
cfx 175 or something like that and then we had like a fold down
48:51
table for his chair and then we had like the wall of electronics and then we had two cabinets and that's pretty much it
48:58
and then we had the Murphy bed well actually we were trying to go with a happy jack but it was just impossible
49:04
uh Dimension wise anyway so this was the first one
49:09
and then uh we kind of just kind of getting some different angles on you know what it
49:15
looked like as far as the driver's seat um then we got into like an overhead
49:20
view because we're trying to find out we knew we needed to relocate the AC unit So This Is Us finding out where the
49:28
AC unit is going to go the hot water tank um stuff like that
49:34
and then we kept going um this was our solar panel layout so we
49:41
went ahead and started to kind of think about you know how much are we going to be able to put on the roof depending on
49:46
the roof rack brand that you purchase versus the max fan versus the
49:52
company of solar panels um so that's really why I would like actually pause on the graph
50:00
paper just really be freehand and very explorative uh you know don't
50:06
just just be very free that's all I can say um
50:12
and then this is us calculating uh I mean it's it's just me talking with
50:20
my hands because I like to draw and talk it helps me kind of put my thoughts
50:25
so as Thomas is saying like this is what he would like he would like to use you know this much power
50:31
um I just start kind of branching stuff out I'm like okay well I need 15 to 30 amps of solar coming in uh
50:37
I need you know 30 amps from the alternator possible 30 15 amp Shore power coming
50:43
into this we want to do sok we originally want to do 600 amp hours but
50:48
again it was no way it would fit we wanted to do
50:54
um yeah we needed an inverter that was big enough to charge the paragrapher run the
51:01
microwave and then we we just kind of we just kept going so
51:08
uh we started to get into some calculations
51:14
um this was us calculate I mean I was I was calculating the sok battery so I was
51:21
adding up you know all the inches the space in between and the reason that you just want to do
51:26
it just really just not neat don't care is because
51:33
it's as fast as you can say that you're going to go with something you may change your mind which is completely
51:38
okay be free to change your mind because you'll get to a point in your build to
51:45
where you're like oh man I can't go back because I've already made so many hard decisions so
51:50
uh this was us finding out you know how the Murphy bed was gonna start to go
51:57
in um let's see here
52:04
oh that's my chat box there we go
52:13
and then we moved into [Music] uh see what we talked about okay this
52:20
was our our plumbing design
52:25
because again we couldn't go on the left or the right side of the tank everything had to be on top of the tank and so that
52:33
causes concern with how the Tank's going to be filled how the hot water is going to be filled
52:39
um we've got 20 gallons plus two and a half gallons gives us 22 and a half gallon so I mean this is just all stuff we just started tweaking and what's cool
52:46
is when you keep going uh
52:51
you start to get this you start to get kind of like a 3D space
52:56
so you can kind of really so I just this is just me sketching just to give me a feel of like the 3D feel
53:04
um because it does it depends on who you work with you know some clients can be really Visual and then some other ones
53:11
are um you know they're more they just want to know that it's going to work
53:17
um it's hard for them to uh like understand what it's going to look
53:23
like but that's okay that's my job so we went from this and then we just uh
53:30
we kept dialing it in um this is let's see yeah
53:40
these are this is the and so this gets into the circuitry so
53:47
yeah let me know if this is too much I'm just kind of uh
53:52
I feel like I'm talking about the build process this might be helpful for
53:57
anyone wanting to understand like what are my thoughts on how I put stuff together
54:05
um so this is all the circuits that we're going to be put into his van
54:10
that we could think of at the moment we ended up adding six uh
54:15
eight more to the system so again even though we thought this is
54:22
exactly what we're going to do we still end up adding more so what you'll see uh next week on the
54:30
live streams we're going to be adding an additional 200 watts of solar to his system it'll bring it to 550 watts of
54:38
solar and I'll explain why we're doing that
54:43
[Music] I love geeking out too this is perfect I'll keep going
54:50
um yeah so this was
54:55
because remember you're spending a lot of money on these parts and if something is not fitting the specifications with
55:03
just a little bit more room to grow you're probably going to be
55:09
in some trouble anyway this was the electrical layout we
55:16
have all our lights um then we have the the fridge the Baja design stuff like that anyway this is
55:21
the electrical layout um where's my mouse
55:28
and then we started to talk about timeline uh
55:33
so timeline is really challenging because you can
55:40
you can put the floor down and say you're going to go into the straight the carpet but then all of a sudden there's a
55:48
you know with everything that's happening logistically with shipping
55:54
I did not think that that would uh play into this but it really did I
56:00
mean there was there's some of this 80 20 stuff it took like a month almost two months for some
56:05
stuff to come in it was wild and then yeah it was wild but anyways we started laying out the
56:11
timeline of like when things could be expected to be put together
56:17
um this is just a
56:23
it looks great this looks crazy looking back on it this is our roof scene
56:28
lighting layout with our
56:33
the blue is the Baja design Squadron pros and the yellow are orange is the
56:41
Baja Designs uh IR and then we've got I think that's the
56:48
uh
56:53
the awning awning light let's see and then we keep going
57:00
just more sketches of you know what we could maybe do storage wise
57:15
and then this is one render of what we kind of thought things were going to
57:20
look like because behind the sink where we're going to have all the controls that didn't work out because
57:26
we had we ended up having so many controls that just wouldn't fit so I had to move it to the opposite side of the
57:32
wall and so like the thumbnail for yesterday's live stream that's that
57:37
uh control panel it's filled up
57:42
um so now this is us trying to calculate can we have a folding mattress in the
57:48
bed this will eventually get solved by roam rest um
57:55
which I have a note I need to call him
58:03
foreign [Music] I mean this gets really technical so you
58:10
guys can see I've got six inches plus like 0.25 plus 0.5 plus 1.5 which is the
58:17
80 20. so in Van building I think I'm gonna be making up terms
58:23
here that's the only way I can explain this but there's like uh tolerance stacking might be a word for
58:30
my engineering days but it's like tolerance stacking that's the only thing I can think of it's when you have so many things that
58:37
need to go together that you need this bigger number to understand like how much room you need
58:44
so the inch and a half is like a piece of 80 20. a half inch is a piece of wood a quarter inches maybe Fabric or
58:50
whatever and then six inch it was the mattress so that's eight and a quarter
59:00
yeah it's it's funny how tricky this was looking back but
59:05
it was fun um okay and then we keep getting to
59:13
let's see what is this
59:19
yeah what is this
59:28
okay okay okay okay so this is looking this is the view looking down so the paragrapher is here right here in
59:36
Black these are the tires so we have a tire clearance for the
59:42
paragrapher to drive in this is a little man upside down this is Thomas sleeping in the bed
59:49
um we've got our one foot from the back so you see I'm saying like it changes so much that you just
59:59
don't be perfect you'll get to perfect when you get to
1:00:05
like these stages where you're starting to actually dial stuff in
1:00:13
um these are power system layouts so this is what we this is the batteries the inverter over the wheel well
1:00:20
again just just tons of Concepts to get the it's really getting my thoughts
1:00:26
dialed in and then we get closer to what you guys
1:00:32
see in real life where we have the drawer style fridge we got the sink and then we got the Little Pantry that pulls
1:00:38
out and then we know we got five inches here 18 inches for the sink so now we're
1:00:43
starting to to dial this in
1:00:48
what's going on Jamie uh and then we got a dollar to more
1:00:54
power system we thought he could put his golf clubs right here but we ran out of room
1:01:00
uh we thought we were going to do like a TV
1:01:06
and a closet and ran out of room
1:01:14
uh let's see oh again now we're talking about the slatted ceiling
1:01:20
so the concepts here this is the wheel well on the left wheel well on the right
1:01:27
um you know how are we going to do the insulation do we want a flat ceiling or do we want some type of
1:01:34
contoured ceiling how is the 80 20 going to interact we talked about that
1:01:46
let's see so that's the paragrapher and green
1:02:05
this is the lift bar so like the pull-up bar we were going to go with a rope but we decided to do just a clean piece of
1:02:11
80 20. this is now mapping out the slatted roof
1:02:19
in conjunction with like the roof Vents and where the
1:02:24
uh 80 20 supports are going
1:02:29
this is kind of just drawing in our where the bed was going to lay down and
1:02:36
interact with the power system
1:02:46
oh that's a good one so if you guys I was telling you about
1:02:51
the through bolt so if you had this is for the Murphy bed so we had two pieces of 80 20 here
1:02:57
and so that they don't buckle we drilled a bolt and bolted a bolt through
1:03:03
one piece of 80 20 into the other one and then tapped it and man that's a has been an awesome connection
1:03:12
um let's see here
1:03:22
I don't know what this is we're gonna skip I lost my mouse
1:03:29
all right here we go so okay no AC
1:03:34
yeah I was going to go through a couple more of these and we'll get back to the schedule programming
1:03:50
um okay so that was pretty much as far as consultation goes um this is just like a little math that we did on some live streams
1:03:57
but yeah uh so go and do that is a very long way to explain
1:04:03
the process so I hope you hope you enjoyed that um yeah guys in the chat keep asking
1:04:11
questions this is a lot of fun I love answering questions
1:04:16
um so keep the questions coming in I'm going to jump over behind me and I'm gonna talk about so we
1:04:22
showed you how I measured to get the panels in and the structure that's going to hold the panel in the wall so now let's
1:04:30
uh drive this desk over here
1:04:43
let's talk talk about some tools
1:04:54
so if you can see this this is a piece of textured ABS plastic
1:04:59
and so this is what I use I got this idea from Humble road if you guys watch him
1:05:04
and so what Humber Road does is he uses this to um
1:05:12
Bend and put up in the cabinets of the van so that if he
1:05:17
ever needs to access or repair something in the van for a client you can just take this out work on it and then put
1:05:24
this up now I don't think he does this but I found a little trick so what I do is I
1:05:30
use the 80 20 and I put it right here
1:05:35
and that way when I bend it up the 80 20 holds it like that
1:05:42
so I don't have to do anything at the top I just have a couple sheet metal screws on the bottom and I can take it right out
1:05:50
so this ABS plastic is a really good way to professionally clean up areas that you can't
1:05:55
really make like a wood part that curves it looks professional and it's slightly
1:06:01
easier all right next we have
1:06:10
squares I hope everyone knows what squares are
1:06:15
they're how you make stuff Square so uh you have a small one
1:06:22
and you got a big one and this way you can Square your edges measurements
1:06:30
all that good stuff so like the corner parts of the wood for example like I have a piece of wood right here
1:06:36
and there's a section that's already cut out of it but I still want to use it I don't want to waste it so I'm going to
1:06:41
use another section but I'll still have to square off corners and then I use this to do that
1:06:49
if you're going to build your own van get a humongous this is called a drywall
1:06:54
Square and it is um
1:07:00
it's 48 inches long and it's just it's you're going to be needing to make long
1:07:07
straight cuts so use this to get started
1:07:13
and then what you're going to follow up with this is an expensive investment but you
1:07:19
can use it with for any stuff in your house so not just the van
1:07:33
so that's a track saw so this is a track saw guide
1:07:39
it's got some rubber padding on the bottom and what you do is you lay it down on the piece of wood
1:08:18
foreign
1:08:25
[Music]
1:08:49
like a skill saw that attaches to a track and you can precisely slide it down the track
1:09:00
and it makes a perfect cut and I mean perfect perfect
1:09:06
it's so perfect that you have to pre-cut this strip on the side
1:09:12
when you first use it to dial it in anyway so I cut everything with this
1:09:18
because I don't have to worry about it being like a wobbly line
1:09:23
um because even though we're just doing Fabric or upholstering the panels with fabric
1:09:30
it's not the thickest fabric so it needs to be a very clean straight line because when you wrap it any
1:09:36
imperfection you're gonna you're gonna notice so I use this so I use the squares to
1:09:42
get me started then I lay this down and then after I cut the panels out I go
1:09:48
to the next step which is upholstering which is one of my favorite things to do I love upholstering
1:10:00
so you're going to go to a fabric store and we're going to go online and I'm going to show you where I get this from
1:10:08
so this is a company uh the type of material is called Marathon fabric I get
1:10:14
it from perfectfit.com no affiliation just easy information for you guys so
1:10:21
this is the fabric we used in his van and you get a big old roll of it
1:10:28
you need to buy Japanese razor blades okay
1:10:36
I'm telling you it needs to be I need to be olfa
1:10:42
olfa and you need to make sure it's this uh
1:10:49
Black Blade olfa olfa uh this is Japanese steel
1:10:58
for upholstery do not cheap out I mean
1:11:03
don't do it
1:11:10
and you'll you'll want to make sure you break away the razor blade throughout
1:11:15
the process you want just super super clean cut
1:11:21
um if you don't get a clean cut what's going to happen
1:11:28
is if this so the reason everybody loves Marathon
1:11:33
fabric is because it has um uh Teflon in it and it's it's extremely abrasive
1:11:39
resistant the problem is when you're scoring this
1:11:45
if you don't do a clean cut the fibers are so strong if you accidentally grab one with a crappy
1:11:54
um razor blade it's gonna do this it's gonna take it's gonna hit one of
1:12:00
these and it's gonna it's gonna do that it's gonna pull one of these fibers out and then yeah it's not going to be good
1:12:06
don't do it Pro tip from Nick all right um
1:12:13
so how are we going to adhere it to our piece of wood
1:12:23
all right you can spray this on
1:12:29
unfinished wood it's okay you just need to make sure you use 3M super 77
1:12:38
not super 90. a lot of people get confused um let me get a can of that
1:13:03
all right in this case red is good green is bad okay
1:13:09
I'll explain why uh let's see not sponsored by 3M
1:13:15
um okay super 77 let's read why this is good
1:13:22
it is good for foil foam paper metal plastic fabric
1:13:30
cardboard insulation okay commercial strength super 77
1:13:38
right there foreign super 90.
1:13:45
kick plates polyethylene polypropylene plastic laminate concrete
1:13:52
metal and wood okay that's why these two are different
1:13:58
just because it says high strength and super doesn't mean the super is bad
1:14:05
um yeah this does not work as well
1:14:13
all right now super 77 um tonight
1:14:20
yeah we've already gone pretty long with live stream I'm Gonna Keep Going answer your ask your questions I'm not leaving
1:14:27
um but super 77 just buy a whole case of it I think that's like
1:14:34
it's like either nine cans or something like that it's pretty expensive but just do it because
1:14:39
I buy four cans at a time I don't know why because I do this uh for a living and I should be buying
1:14:46
cases but I just go down lows and I get four cans and I'm like man I need let me go back
1:14:52
and get four more cans um yeah just by case of this stuff it is
1:14:59
incredible there is a technique to sprain it you want to you want to spray it you do want to keep
1:15:06
about 12 inches away um because you it needs to
1:15:13
I'm gonna use the wrong word here but it needs to atomize before it hits the wood
1:15:19
if you spray it and it hasn't kind of fogged and it's like liquid
1:15:25
believe it or not that liquid that gets on the wood right here
1:15:31
uh the upholstery will not stick to it it screws it up for some reason
1:15:37
so you want to keep it about you know about that far away it's about 12 inches or a little bit more
1:15:47
um and then you want to let it tack up for a minimum of one minute if you do two minutes
1:15:54
that's okay three minutes is too extreme don't don't do three minutes just do a minute and a half
1:16:03
and use Nitro gloves so this is a hack I I didn't read this anywhere
1:16:08
but I found out that Nitro gloves will not stick to it you can peel it
1:16:14
right off and the the adhesive won't stick to the Nitro gloves they're really cool
1:16:19
so I use black nitrile gloves like they use in the automotive shop it has to be Nitro
1:16:25
and what you want to do is you want to make sure
1:16:30
you can tell if it's ready to be to adhere to if when you put your fingers on it it's tacky
1:16:36
it's not wet okay on raw wood
1:16:43
minimum of two good passes if you do three without getting it nice
1:16:50
and getting it really gummy that's a bonus because the unfinished wood what's going
1:16:56
to happen is it's almost like stain when you spray it the first time it's going to
1:17:02
soak into the wood so there won't be that much adhesive on the surface
1:17:08
and then the next part you're going to spray a little bit more
1:17:13
and uh it's going to
1:17:19
um it's not gonna go into it as much
1:17:24
I know my phone is distracting me over here
1:17:30
[Music] it's not going to soak as much in but then the third coat is going to be
1:17:35
perfect but you know don't go don't go crazy you'll play around with it you'll understand
1:17:40
okay now you're not finished you gotta take the can and you gotta
1:17:46
spray your fabric you spray the fabric and you gotta spray
1:17:51
the piece of wood and then once they're both tacky you put it together
1:17:58
you only get one chance to put it together you can't put it on and be like oh I I didn't put it down correctly
1:18:05
you're screwed because you'll have to rip it back off
1:18:10
um so the adhesive is so good sometimes it'll actually it may rip the wood fiber out
1:18:18
so you compromise the piece you just cut because if you rip the fiber out and you
1:18:25
try to reupholster it it's going to have like a dip don't ask me how I know it's like I've
1:18:30
it's like I've done this before um yeah but when you get
1:18:37
good at it you can have really clean professional looking edges
1:18:44
this is just a this is a we're going to redo this piece but it's nice and light and I can show you
1:18:50
the example also don't worry about the back side where you flap oh make sure you flap it
1:18:57
over it's going to make sure this front part uh wears really well it gives it
1:19:02
like an anchor on the back um but and then
1:19:08
I'll show you all these techniques I'll do a whole video on this uh but like down here on the back don't
1:19:14
worry about the back side all right I know how I say I like to be Steve Jobs where
1:19:21
the inside is as nice as the outside I do that with like Electronics the 80 20 the brackets and stuff like that
1:19:27
but this uh this tends to be pretty wasteful because
1:19:34
80 20 is important the electronics are very important so take your time do that right from all angles
1:19:40
but this this is a place where you can uh save on fabric
1:19:50
because the fabric is it's not a crazy expensive but
1:19:56
you know this section right here let's say you mess up well if you double-sided this then
1:20:03
you're not going to have enough later to do because you will make mistakes I mean there's two or three panels that I just had to they were
1:20:09
excellent but then I messed up on an edge I redid the whole entire thing
1:20:14
so that's why we always have a little bit of extra fabric
1:20:20
um so I got ahead of myself and I didn't tell you about
1:20:25
drilling the holes in the in the wood so we're going to take these screws out
1:20:31
real quick we're just going to go over drilling the holes
1:20:38
you want to drill the holes like I said earlier before you wrap it
1:20:43
that way the hole is in here and then when you get ready to upholster
1:20:49
it you can just push down and the The dimple is where you'll cut your razor
1:20:55
and then make the hole um if you try to drill this after the fact
1:21:00
it's going to tear it's going to tear out you you run the risk
1:21:08
of it catching a fiber and for my example before
1:21:15
I can do it again you run the risk of ripping a fiber out and remember these are Teflon some of
1:21:22
these and it's just gonna rip and there's going to be a there's gonna be a string all the way up here
1:21:29
ask me how I know I I've done it before I've I've thought I could get away with drilling a hole
1:21:35
the drill bit caught and just pull the whole string out it was it sucked
1:21:41
because it I did a good job on that panel and I had to redo it
1:21:47
yes the fabric is easily cleanable so there are two things
1:21:54
if you do anticipate cleaning it uh like it's a high wear area for
1:22:01
example and Thomas's van you spin around here I like this thing it's got wheels
1:22:07
there we go all right for example right here
1:22:18
this is a panel that is exposed to the outside
1:22:24
now what I do on panels that have potential exposure
1:22:30
foreign
1:22:36
I'll paint them so I'll use like regular paint like latex paint
1:22:43
um and I'll paint the piece let it dry overnight and then I'll put the adhesive on top of it
1:22:49
that way if like a little bit of rain or moisture gets on there it's not affecting the
1:22:54
wood the wood sealed but everywhere else in the van it's not necessary just the places that you might
1:23:00
get some rain on now how does that pertain to cleaning it
1:23:05
so say you have like a lower so pretty much on Thomas's van like where the
1:23:11
uh kitchen Galley is and anywhere there's like a kick area like here here
1:23:17
there I use the Riga hexa
1:23:34
which is this material right here that's a Baltic birch plywood that's
1:23:40
been laminated with like an embossed something okay
1:23:45
the places where you are not doing this but you need to but you need to be able to clean it
1:23:52
you're going to want to paint it and put the fabric on because uh
1:23:57
I'm getting to answer the question one second so if you have that barrier the adhesive in
1:24:04
the fabric when you do go to clean this fabric you can clean this fabric
1:24:11
where's my piece of fabric go
1:24:21
you can clean this fabric okay now I will tell you the only way that
1:24:28
I've cleaned it because I messed up on a panel um somehow like a little bit of
1:24:34
uh like wet paint was on the table on plastic and I laid the corner of it down
1:24:40
and just like a just a drop got on a panel and I'd put a lot of work in this panel
1:24:45
so I wanted to save it and so I immediately got denatured alcohol
1:25:01
so denatured alcohol and I put it on a rag and I just kind of
1:25:06
patted it to get the paint uh wet and then I lightly just rubbed it
1:25:13
and my idea was that the alcohol is going to
1:25:18
evaporate and it should go back to normal um and it did that so it came clean
1:25:24
perfectly and you know completely unnoticeable now
1:25:31
I wouldn't go crazy with the alcohol because it can compromise the adhesive
1:25:37
um but the section that I used it still stayed it's I mean it's it's fine
1:25:44
um that's kind of a long way to answer that question but the fabric is uh
1:25:52
see if I can find out what it's made out of pretty sure it's uh
1:25:58
it's got Teflon in it
1:26:12
uh Marathon Tweed fabric it is made of
1:26:19
poly polylephrine what is that
1:26:43
here you can join me so we're looking at Poly
1:26:49
oh leffen Hollywood
1:26:56
fabric
1:27:06
it's more durable than polyester
1:27:14
it's heat sensitive
1:27:20
oh that's carpet and how about how to clean
1:27:33
Mustangs can be easily removed dabbing the stained lukewarm water
1:27:38
you can use bleach on don't quote me on this I'm reading on
1:27:44
the internet this has nothing to do with what I put in his van you'll need to ask perfectfit.com where
1:27:51
I got it but according to this
1:27:56
this type of fabric you can put bleach on it
1:28:14
so here's the website perfect fit Marathon Tweed fabric and we see we used uh
1:28:23
dark oatmeal that's what we use for his van dark oatmeal
1:28:30
foreign
1:28:37
also known as Duramax or interweave leading Choice van conversion Market
1:28:43
cover wall paneling
1:28:54
while we're on here this is where I get the fabric they have tons of colors
1:29:00
the other van that I'm building at the moment has the Heather has the gray Heather
1:29:05
which is it's uh people love it it's one of their favorites
1:29:15
um you can also buy adhesive and foam from these guys
1:29:25
okay it doesn't show anything about cleaning anyway hope that
1:29:32
answer your question go and do um any place I mean where
1:29:37
where I'm going to wipe I'm gonna detail this man before I take give it back to Thomas and I'll probably
1:29:44
clean up some spots and just see how it does um
1:29:50
yeah as far as I know it's it's been pretty pretty easy to clean
1:29:55
in that one spot which was paint you know I don't think you're gonna get paint on it you're probably talking
1:30:00
about like food or something like that but the reason I say if you think it's a
1:30:06
section that's going to get uh wet or that type of stain like from a
1:30:12
drink or whatever I would seal the wood and then upholster it because the fabric
1:30:18
is probably gonna be fine it's gonna come clean but the wood is going to soak in whatever that is
1:30:23
um like the stain or die or whatever
1:30:28
all right um back over here
1:30:42
all right keeping up keep up with those questions we're gonna go a little bit longer here and I'm gonna
1:30:49
see if I had anything else to talk about oh yeah I wanted to talk about the riv
1:30:57
nuts measuring them and the drill bit how to measure for the drill bit used
1:31:05
okay so that'll probably my last part of this stream I'll explain that and we're probably
1:31:11
done for the night so if you have a question go ahead and put that in the chat so I can cover it
1:31:16
tonight all right so when you put this into your van
1:31:22
uh there's a section in the van where I was telling you so this part
1:31:29
of course it's off
1:31:38
so inside the van oh my gosh come on the wall where those three pieces of
1:31:45
silver tape are I'm going to be putting in a insert
1:31:57
we covered this in the Amazon tool recommended van DIY van Builder tool
1:32:02
live stream and you get these things they're called rivet nuts
1:32:10
that look like this and what they do it's a rivet that
1:32:15
expands
1:32:21
and allows and allows a bolt
1:32:29
to be threaded into it
1:32:35
so imagine this is your van wall you put the rivet into the wall
1:32:41
and then to compress the rivet you use two types of tools either use this one where
1:32:48
you drill the hole so let's talk about that
1:32:54
how do you drill the hole it sounds simple right not in a van
1:33:01
the the steel that's in a van is is completely different than anything
1:33:06
you've drilled in before there is uh
1:33:13
different hardnesses in the van the structural components of the van
1:33:19
uh are made of a different type of steel and it will destroy a drill bit in
1:33:27
probably two holes so you unfortunately need to buy
1:33:33
expensive drill bits for doing the rivnut drilling the riv
1:33:39
nuts um I mean the drill bits when I say
1:33:44
expensive they're like thirty dollars each and they need to be carbide solid
1:33:49
carbide not carbide tipped not carbide coated
1:33:56
not blue not black it's solid carbide
1:34:02
um so they're expensive but it's going to save you the headache because you'll be there all day with just like a normal drill bit
1:34:10
um so anyway what I have here is I had the drill bit that I use
1:34:16
this is a 27 64. so
1:34:23
let me do this on the drawing pad so in case you guys want to just grab it from me you'll
1:34:36
okay okay so you need a Riv let's change
1:34:42
colors so we got Rev
1:34:54
rivet nut of course my face
1:35:00
just has to be right there doesn't it shh
1:35:08
h
1:35:20
so you need a rivet nut and this is a five
1:35:26
sixteenths -18
1:35:32
bit you're going to need a Riv
1:35:42
rivet nut tool
1:35:49
and the drill bit
1:36:00
for a 5 16 5 16-18 is going to be
1:36:10
27 27 64.
1:36:16
drill bit that's the size
1:36:33
all right okay
1:36:40
well how do you find this out
1:36:47
now this sounds like a dumb question but I do this stuff a lot and I still needed
1:36:54
a little help so don't read into that too much but
1:37:01
we had a pair of calipers these are digital calipers all right
1:37:07
and what we want to do is we want to measure this rib nut now the reason I'm saying this is crazy
1:37:13
is because if you buy stuff on Amazon or you buy it in a kit or whatever you you just got to
1:37:20
be careful like this stuff uh like comes from China or overseas or anything like that
1:37:26
sometimes it's it's off and if you don't know that you're just
1:37:31
I'm you know I have like a bin
1:37:37
of all my parts and so I'm going through bags of these
1:37:43
but I noticed that I measured it and this one for example is uh
1:37:53
like I measured one earlier in the van it was 10.5 this one's 10.7 millimeters
1:38:00
don't worry you don't have to go so OCD like this because I'm telling you the cheat code
1:38:07
so the 5 16-18 rivet okay you got 10.7
1:38:13
I just go to my drill bits and I go and I measure and I find one 10.4
1:38:20
so 10.4 10.7 it's not that big of a deal you can move the bit a little bit but
1:38:27
that's how I match a 27 64th bit with this uh
1:38:32
right here you can also use a fractional
1:38:37
drill uh fractional size drill gauge
1:38:43
and you can take this and you can put it in there
1:38:50
so you can find out that way now check this out this says that this
1:38:57
is a 29 64. this is a 27 64. so
1:39:07
your local Lowe's is not going to have a 2964 drill bit they're going to have a
1:39:13
27 64th that's why I'm make that's the point I'm making
1:39:21
um but anyway so that's going to go in there and then you got your drill
1:39:29
so we're going to act like this is the van we're going to drill our hole get it all
1:39:34
nice and cleaned out then we're going to take our rivnut tool
1:39:42
okay and we're going to screw this on the end of it and then we're going to twist this which
1:39:48
is going to thread it onto here and then we're going to thread it on and we're going to pull it and it's gonna
1:39:54
it's gonna mushroom the top of this and then we're going to take this
1:40:00
and unscrew out of this and now this is permanently
1:40:05
I'll do it I'll do a real world example sometime but I don't have time for the big that
1:40:13
so I bought this all right so this
1:40:19
mounts to my drill
1:40:32
and I can now
1:40:43
so I can do here is I can screw my
1:40:50
insert on and then when I go in
1:40:58
so now when I go to drill it
1:41:05
this is uh it is a whole gear system
1:41:13
now you have to practice a lot because you can mess up so practice on something
1:41:20
that's not your van first uh something that's really good to use
1:41:34
if you've cut out oh yeah go and do I will go on Amazon in
1:41:39
just a second I'll show you the exact one I got so this is the cutout for the vent fan
1:41:46
and a roof right this piece of sheet metal is from the van and it's perfect
1:41:51
to practice on so just take the piece that you cut out your van
1:41:56
and uh and uh what I'm trying to say drill holes use this
1:42:12
all right let's go shopping go to Amazon
1:42:20
let's go into [Music] let's go into
1:42:30
rivet nut tool all right if you
1:42:39
if you just wanted to do it the old school way you could buy these um no problem right there this is the
1:42:46
one I bought right here we tools about I bought this
1:42:54
when I did not know better I bought this one it was like three or four years ago when
1:43:00
I bought this one I I do use it for some technical places
1:43:05
where I if I accidentally hit the drill wrong it'll really mess up
1:43:11
um yes I will put the link in here
1:43:16
let's see
1:43:22
so come on
1:43:42
all right so this should be the link to where's my chat box
1:43:51
so this will be
1:43:56
so this will be rivet tool number one
1:44:04
and then rivet tool
1:44:12
two
1:44:18
all right so the second one is going to be the was it Astro pneumatics
1:44:24
there it is Boom foreign
1:44:31
about this 2021
1:44:39
yeah the disclaimers just be very careful with this one it is there is no there is no feedback
1:44:48
it's you just have to kind of hear what you're doing if that makes any
1:44:53
sense um
1:44:59
and then I'm gonna give you rivet tool number three
1:45:05
this is for people who don't care about budget
1:46:16
hmm
1:46:25
try to find it there it is
1:46:38
yeah so this one is you just you you want the tool
1:46:46
that's what this one this the last one is it's 500 but what this one does is you
1:46:52
can dial in uh you can dial in the the pressure
1:46:59
so Adventure wagon the company this is what you see them using the video
1:47:05
is they do this you know all the time so they use they use
1:47:11
they don't use this exact gun but they use a gun like it
1:47:18
um so that's actually a great photo
1:47:24
yeah this is a great photo guys so if you're looking this is what it does so it rivets it into the steel or sheet
1:47:32
metal but the the nice thing about this one I think about maybe getting when this one
1:47:39
of these in the future um because you you pull the gun
1:47:44
and it goes like and it it just does it and it has a
1:47:50
standard uh PSI that it squeezes it at so what
1:47:55
you can do is this chamber on the back side you dial it in to dial in the squish
1:48:03
and then that way every time you pull the trigger it's going to deliver that much accurate PSI to the crimp
1:48:11
if you need high speed you would go here but
1:48:18
I did uh
1:48:23
so the first van rivnut first oh yes A rivnut Plus nuts
1:48:33
um they're the same thing they're they're the same thing
1:48:57
well let's see here I could be could be wrong
1:49:03
a plus nut has like uh I mean they do the same thing they're they're like a rivet but I think a plus
1:49:09
net has these uh slices in it
1:49:18
but they're they're basically a piece of Steel that's going in a hole and expanding
1:49:23
um I like rivet nuts better than I like
1:49:30
these the rivet nut um
1:49:36
these for example a ribbon that has these knurls on the
1:49:42
inside so when when it's when it mushrooms it kind of has these like serrations that grab into the sheet
1:49:48
metal because the last thing you want this thing to do is spin that's happened to me before
1:49:55
and you can't use it if it just spins
1:50:01
but these kind of like these Buckle see how they make like a little they make like a little x pattern
1:50:08
so that's a plus nut so I would not use plus nuts I would use
1:50:13
rivet nut see how see how a rivet nut has
1:50:21
these like striations right here it's like these uh
1:50:26
so that grips into the sheet metal and allows it not to spin
1:50:32
you don't want it to spin see right here see what it does on the right side of the screen
1:50:40
it's like these teeth so you want these teeth to grip behind the surface so it
1:50:45
doesn't spin all I can say is with the
1:51:05
all right guys we get ready to we'll do uh a couple more minutes on the
1:51:10
stream so any more questions tonight I'm gonna walk around the shop real quick and see
1:51:16
if there's anything I laid out that I wanted to share with you tonight in this context and they want to come
1:51:22
back whatever questions we have we'll answer and we'll call tonight
1:52:06
[Music]
1:52:12
foreign
1:52:25
[Music] guys we're gonna be here for one more
1:52:31
minute get those questions in um otherwise we will
1:52:36
continue the stream tomorrow we'll do just a quick blurb here if you guys wanted to ask me any
1:52:43
um questions make sure you head on over to Odyssey
1:52:49
customvans.com so that is my van building business you can go on the website
1:52:54
click on the contact page and this is where you can get directly in touch with me
1:53:00
I said in live stream I will be putting together a consultation program where you can
1:53:07
schedule a phone call with me you can book A Time um you know ask me anything you want
1:53:14
during the time that you have uh purchased I will answer everything I
1:53:20
can during that time and I think it'll be an excellent way to really nail down certain questions you have that maybe I
1:53:28
don't cover in the live stream um so
1:53:33
this contact form is for our future clients so if you would like to have your van
1:53:40
built by Odyssey custom vans fill this form out just as you would any cocktail form
1:53:45
subject line and message tell me your story tell me what you're looking for in your adventures and uh wire building a
1:53:52
van also use this form for the consultation purposes so for subject you can type in
1:53:58
consult and then a message just say you want to book a time with me uh
1:54:04
put a couple dates in there I'll reach out to you and we'll set that up but yeah by next
1:54:10
week we will have I will have a system to where you can you can book on a calendar for consultations because uh you know
1:54:17
sometimes it takes more than just questions on the stream to help you with what you got and I definitely want to
1:54:23
help you out so honestly custom fans that goes directly to my inbox
1:54:30
um if you just want to email me without the contact form I do the contact form that way I know it
1:54:38
comes through the website I can organize it better but my email is right there on the
1:54:43
website all right guys well hope you enjoyed the live stream tonight we will kick this
1:54:50
off and uh give Nova a pet over here but um yeah
1:54:57
thanks you guys so much for watching tonight and we will see you in the next live stream
1:55:12
thank you
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