Wannigan/Cooler Build

[rjent]

That is a great job. I will say a finger joint that long is not easy, and it is successful because of the Ibox not in spite of it.

Good job. Let us see it when finished. I am very interested on how this turns out ....

[charlese]

Very impressive, Al! Kind of a shame to cover the joints, but as you say, they are only a limited assembly function.

Glad you got that jig working.

[algale]

So, this started out as a thread about my frustration with the iBox, but I've changed the title to reflect the continuation of the project, which is a Wannigan/Cooler to take on canoe camping trips with the Slow Boat.

The carcass of the Wannigan/Cooler was box jointed and glued with Titebond III just to hold it together during the epoxy phase.

I've now added thickened epoxy fillets to all the interior edges. The exterior edges are rounded over so the fiberglass will adhere.

The entire box now gets sealed in epoxy in anticipation of appplying fiberglass. In this picture, I've just put a sealer coat of epoxy on the exterior.

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All the interior surfaces of the box will get a total of 2 inches of Corning "Foamular" rigid XPR type foam from the big box store. That should give the cooler an insulating factor of R10, which is equivalent to a YETI or other high-end cooler. The insulation will be fiberglassed over/into place to keep it from getting dinged up and to give a nice smooth surface to the cooler's inside.

Finally, it will get a coat of exterior paint to protect the fiberglass from UV.

The Wannigan/Cooler is sized 22L x 16H x 15&1/2W and is designed to fit inside a large stand alone freezer. The idea is to add all the food for a camping trip that needs to stay cold, and freeze the contents in the box as one solid mass. Per the designer, it should keep stuff cold for 7 days at the height of summer. We shall see.

[algale]

Wow. This has taken way longer than I expected. Working with the epoxy and fiberglass on the inside of the box (to protect the insulation) was a nightmare!

But I am coming to the home stretch. It occurred to me that this wannigan/cooler needs a sticker. Since it isn't a YETI, I thought I'd call it a NYETI (play on the Russian word "nyet" or not and Yeti. The cooler will be painted white.

Which graphic is best?

NYETI Screen Grab.png (28.6 KiB) Viewed 22450 times

or

NYET A YETI.png (32.83 KiB) Viewed 22450 times

[BuckeyeDennis]

NYETI, hands-down.

I’m curious, though. How can fiberglassing a cooler be a challenge for the guy who built the Slow Boat?

[algale]

NYETI, hands-down.

I’m curious, though. How can fiberglassing a cooler be a challenge for the guy who built the Slow Boat?

Well, I hate fiberglass and epoxy. Plus, working on surfaces that have square corners/vertical sides and trying to do too much at one time did not go well. Adding to the challenge is the confined space. Should have done each surface separately and rotated box so working surface was laying flat. But due to my desire to get the fiberglass done fast so as to minimize time I worked with this awful stuff, I got greedy and tried to do it all at once. Made twice or three times the amount of work correcting mistakes and in the end the job isn't as neat as I'd like. But it should work. The fiberglass is largely there to protect the insulation from being damaged and it will do the job.

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IMG_297B51C351EF-1.jpeg (1.64 MiB) Viewed 22437 times

[rjent]

NYETI, hands-down.

I’m curious, though. How can fiberglassing a cooler be a challenge for the guy who built the Slow Boat?

I agree, NYETI hands down

Wonderful job. That should work well!

[algale]

I though I had a brilliant idea for how to create a seal around the cooler's top and make the cooler somewhat easier to handle. This brilliant idea involved mounting a band of oak around the cooler at about the height needed to mate with lower edge of the top. I put a groove in the banding to accept/protect the bottom edge of the lid. I made the groove slightly deeper than necessary so that some weather stripping could be placed in the bottom of the groove to make a compressible seal with the lower edge of the top.

I was pleased with the how the banding looked.

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Except if you look closely, you will see the lip on long edge of the banding is wider than the lip on the sides. It wasn't originally so. After installing the banding, I remembered that the the wannigan/cooler is intended to fit in my stand-alone freezer and was sized accordingly. Unfortunately, the original design did not account for this banding -- which I realized only after the epoxy had hardened. And it was about 5/16"s too wide!!!

Much cursing was followed by hand planing and hand sanding of the banding on the sides until it will just barely fit the freezer.

IMG_5895.JPG (212.97 KiB) Viewed 22221 times

But the result is the lip is now thinner on the sides than on the front/back. I could have thinned the lips on the front and back to match, but I'm going to leave it as is as a reminder that you shouldn't change the design mid-project without re-measuring!

Not shown yet are the feet, which are oak blocks. Next up I am working on a method to attach some webbing handles.

Still to be decided: whether to use hardware (latches) to hold the lid down or just use more webbing to strap it down.

Also to be decided: whether to use self-adhesive weather stipping in the groove to make the seal with the top or whether to put some kind of paint/pour in rubbery substance (Flex Seal?).

[reible]

It is looking nice!

I've had my share of times were I change designs midstream and live to regret it due to things like you found with the freezer fit. I try not to do such things anymore, I think of the change then set on the idea for a couple of days and rethink it several times.

I use to do a lot of my planning on paper with sketches and I found that if I put notes about things like maximum sizes and the like it was helpful in not making those sorts of errors. But now I seem to keep loosing my notes and often giving up on where they have gone. And then my memory isn't as good as it was so the details are even more important but loosing things has also gone up so I'm much worse off then before.....

Do you have bears where this will be used? Might want to think how you will handle that if so. We use to put a rope over a tree branch and lift it up out of harms way and away for the camp site. Of course a net bag would do OK for the cooler I guess.

Ed

[algale]

Do you have bears where this will be used? Might want to think how you will handle that if so. We use to put a rope over a tree branch and lift it up out of harms way and away for the camp site. Of course a net bag would do OK for the cooler I guess.

Ed

Only black bears are possible here in Maryland and anywhere I'd likely go, including Maine and the Adirondacks.

It seems that the hanging technique has somewhat fallen out of favor because there is never a perfect tree around and if there is an appropriate tree bears that frequent camps have gotten used to spotting coolers in those trees and have become adept at getting hanging food caches.

The latest advice seems to be to stash the cooler out of camp and off any trail. Pick a bush or low tree and just put in under there.

I've been on two guided week long my canoe trips in far northern Maine (Allagash River and St. John River). The guides (who are third generation) left the food wannigan/cooler right by the fire pit. They said they had never had a bear in camp. But I suppose there's a first time for everything.

A more common problem seems to be the "mini-bears" aka mice, squirrels and chipmunks who will eat right through packs. I think the fiberglass/epoxy might be a deterrent but only time will tell.