My A-Frame Camper Build
A crazy idea that just might work
This web site was started as a way to document the building of a home made A-Frame camper. The inspiration for the design is from the Aliner camp trailer by Columbia Northwest.
I've been camping pretty much my entire life. Starting as a kid hiking and camping in a tent, moving up to various types of trailers and campers. For the past 10 years I have been using a 1988 Sun Lite pop up tent trailer that I bought at a great bargain from a family member who no longer used it. But as with most things, it is showing its age. After 20 years of hard service the canvas is no longer usable. With some tears and worse yet dry rot it is at the point of needing to be completely replaced. In doing some research I found a replacement canvas would run me around $900, and while this is reasonable since it will in essence give me a "new" trailer, I have always been intrigued with the hard sided pop ups and particularly the aliners. So I figured this would be the perfect time to move on to this type of trailer. After a lot of searching, the cost of a new or even a used aliner just isn't in the cards, so this got me to thinking, "hey, I wonder if I could build one?"
Just a personal note on myself, I'm a fairly handy guy, and over the years have worked in a few of the building trades including carpentry, flooring, general woodworking, and for the past 18 years have owned my own locksmith shop. In addition I've always worked around my home doing minor and some not so minor repairs, so have amassed a good collection of tools and know how. Woodworking has always been a hobby and hopefully some of this knowledge will help me in this endeavor.
I'm sure many will ask, why bother? It's going to be a lot more work than if you just went out and bought what you wanted. I feel though that a project like this is more a challenge than a way to save a few bucks on a trailer. One of the major reasons is just to see if I can do it. I always believe that you can do just about anything you put your mind to it. For me its as much the challenge as the finished product. Conversely I am sure there are a lot of others like me who take on something like this just because it makes them happy. Anyone can go out and buy the fruits of someone else's labor, but when you do it yourself, not only do you know the product literally from the inside out, but there is a great satisfaction in knowing that each part you look at, brings back a memory of the struggles and triumphs of having done it yourself. I hope to get a lot of information off the internet utilizing message forums from various web sites, as well as finding ideas and suppliers for the various materials and I invite my visitors here to be a part of this build and chime in with any suggestions, comments or ideas. Especially to those who have built camp trailers themselves. I know there are a lot out there as one of the places I found my initial inspiration is a site called Tear Drop and Tiny Travel Trailers. This site is devoted more to tear drop trailers, but there are a few sections for small travel trailers. Since most of these are scratch built I hope to find a lot of ideas on how to make this work.
As I continue work on this project, you can probably see from the diary pages that many things happen to frustrate the build. Weather conditions, other obligations and such seem to always get in the way. It sometimes seems like the progress goes so slow that it will never be completed. For others who may embark on a project like this I say not to get discouraged when your timeline dosen't work out. But I also suggest you take into consideration the problems and distractions that can occurr. Best is not to have a set limit as to when you want to be completed. Actually on my build, I'm not that far off, my first goal is to have it weather tight by winter, and given that here in CT that could be as late in the season as late October, or even November, I still have plenty of time to meet this goal. Of course we could also see an early winter, but even with that I should still have plenty of time to meet this goal. One of the things that always perks me up is when I hear from my visitor's to this site. I am hoping in the near future to add a message board/forum so you can share your questions, comments, suggestions and if your doing a build sharing your own ideas and progress with others. If you think this is a good idea, and something you would participate in, drop me an e-mail and if there is enough interest we'll go forward with it.
This page was last updated: 9/1/2009
This page was last updated on 8/11/2009
