Mirrors On The Celing...

... Shiner Bock on ice?

aka "here's where I'm at"

My good buddy Frank will probably label me crafty after I let this cat out of the bag... For the past few months I have been secretly working on turning my bathroom into an aluminum clad room. I have loved the look of the segmented endcaps on the 40s and 50s Airstreams since the first time I saw them, and my fiberglass endcap had some fairly major issues that, when repaired, left the piece in less-than-ideal cosmetic condition. Having followed Frank's work on Anna Lumanum's bathroom, and also enjoying Carlos's on the Airforums where he created segmented wooden endcaps, I decided to recreate that look in my trailer's bathroom.

But I didn't want to completely copy-cat Frank, and I also really love the look of the California Whale Tail on the external skin of some mid-50s Airstreams. For those who don't know what the Whale Tail is, here's a link to a picture of one on RJ Dial's archive pages. For a few years in the 50s, the California Airstream factory used this method for the aft endcap, rather than the 13-segments.



So "here's where I'm at."

There's no easy, mathematical way to do a "Whale Tail." By observation, I find that there are 4 "lengthwise" segments on each side of the central "trapezoid." But, they don't extend far enough down the side to meet at the middle of the window, the way my fiberglass endcap does, so I had to add a 5th segment to each side. First I measured out the lines of the central "trapezoid" to something that looked aesthetically pleasing, and also didn't seem to hit TOO much of the compound curves. I used plastic lattice molding because it's flexible enough to make the curves, I screwed it into the fiberglass, and then I traced the arc onto the fiberglass. Next, around the permieter of the fiberglass endcap (at the top) I took the dimensions from the edge of the central "trapezoid" to the bottom edge of the fiberglass endcap, and divided by 5. That's the "width" of each of the "far" ends, away from the window. Now, for 13-panel endcaps, the far end is "fat" while the end closest to the window is skinny. But on a Whale Tail, the pieces stay roughly the same size throughout. So I measured points along the window, and then along the trapezoid, that kept the panels roughly the same size, with a slight taper on most of them (the very top piece comes out pretty much as a triangle). So again, using Frank's "hands-free" method, I used tar paper with the lattice molding screwed through it and into the endcap, and traced to the outside of the molding, and then cut along those lines to create my templates.




Then the next task was to cut the pieces out in aluminum, drill, cleco, and rivet them in:







And then, the final piece, the center trapezoid, had to be cut and installed.



There are two cut-outs in this piece, one for the lights to come through, and one for the AC electrical outlet. I'm not quite done with this, still need to fabricate the surround for the lights, and make the cutout for theelectrical outlet. But, I got this one temporarily clecoed into place, and that's when I broke my last 1/8" drill bit, so I called it a day.

Now it's Beer Thirty!