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M146 conversion - Spacial Transformations style

LowTech

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Arizona
I'm suppose to be working on my M796+Shelter Live-in, but I'm not!
This 146 has been taking my time, so I thought I should prob post up some pictures of it.

First off I needed a deck for it (we don't have enough ladders and they're a pain when your working in it) So I designed this as a no-waste job. Everything was measured to come out of standard sized lumber w/o having small pieces of off-cuts.

13-06-26 (6).jpg

Next we stripped the floor and oiled it w/ a high quality oil (pure tung oil w/o any petro-chems)
Don't bother to tell me that we should have started w/ the ceiling and worked our way down, . . . I know. But we were doing it as we had funds and time. That's just how they happened.

13-06-26 (9).jpg 13-06-26 (12).jpg

Then we ripped out the ceiling, upper ¼ round moldings, and removed the ac wiring w/ all switches. I'm only going to put 4 of the dome lights back in and 1 light switch by the side door.
Also smoothed out the walls a bit.

14-04-09 (1).jpg 14-04-09 (3).jpg 14-04-09 (4).jpg

This is where projects start to go the other direction, and the space begins to transform :)
 

LowTech

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Getting Tarted up

I rewired for the dome lights and it got painted.

14-05-02 (1).jpg

Next was to tape the bags of insulation back in place and to cut and oil some birch ply for the ceiling. Here we ran into some probs
(I'm not going to talk about all the other “usual” problems we'd already had ;) )
The ceiling crossmembers are on 4' centers and about 2” wide. As the 3rd sheet went up we discovered that we were losing distance. I started measuring and found that “new” 4'x8' was short an 1/8” side to side.
A lot of brain storming later we ended up w/ a 2”x2” angle of ally. One side had to be cut down to 1 1/2” so that it would fit between the ceiling and the roof. We then screwed it into the crossmember and gave ourselves about another 1 1/2” to mount the ceiling to.
Being that there is one half sheet in the run, we cut that one a bit wide and put it in instead of holding it till the end. Now we were back on course.
I also had to template the holes for the lights, cut them while out, and hope it all went right. It took 2 dif templates to match up the holes.

14-05-08 (0).jpg 14-05-08 (2).jpg
 

LowTech

Member
Steel Soldiers Supporter
886
12
18
Location
Arizona
Quickfarms - that was the order I thought I'd be doing mine as well ;)

While I have you here, do you have any idea where to get door handles for the shelters? I'm needing one.
And how come we never see your builds, or am I just missing them?
 

quickfarms

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Orange Junction, CA
Quickfarms - that was the order I thought I'd be doing mine as well ;)

While I have you here, do you have any idea where to get door handles for the shelters? I'm needing one.
And how come we never see your builds, or am I just missing them?
And to top it off I just picked up another shelter.

For the door handles what is the shaft size? I have found them in both 5/8" square and 5/16" square. In the locked position is the shaft orientated like a square or diamond? I have a source for both.

I have not done any build threads because the projects are not complete and still a work in progress. My second problem is a thing called work gets in the way at times so my progress is sporadic. I have been working almost non stop since tower park.
 

LowTech

Member
Steel Soldiers Supporter
886
12
18
Location
Arizona
Got the 1/4 round moldings oiled and up, and started mounting the electrical channels back up under the molding.

14-05-24 (2).jpg

Light fixtures getting installed.

14-05-25.jpg

Still have one of the 4 giving me problems. Last one to go up needs the hole in the ply mod'd so that the screws would line up w/ threaded holes in the metal above the ply.

Probably get on that tomorrow.
 

LowTech

Member
Steel Soldiers Supporter
886
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Location
Arizona
What water heater will you use?
Being that this one is basically just one of the “pods” that make up our compound, and not planned for the road (though I will keep it on wheels and ready just in case) I'm not going to do a full camper/live-in build.
For this one there will be no bathroom, we have those facilities available on site. Hot water will just be for the sink and that will come from a basic solar batch heater on the roof.

Right now we don't even need that, our cold water is hotter than the hot in these temps. ;)
 
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