If that’s not a reason to celebrate, I don’t know what is. It’s been a long time coming. To put it in perspective, Jef and I built the first version of the bed nine months ago. Craziness. This is the world’s slowest van build for sure, but at least I’m still plugging along. I think most people would’ve thrown in the towel, or at least compromised on their dream build by now. Not I.
Remember in my last post how I said that 95% of the bed would only take 20 minutes? Here’s why:
I removed the slats from the old bed frame and attached them to the new one using the biggest cheat ever: 3M Dual Lock Reclosable Fasteners TB3540. This stuff is amazing. It’s like sticky-backed velcro, but it’s used for more industrial applications. Both the adhesive on the back and the fastening mechanism itself are crazy strong.
If you’re making a mental note of this Dual Lock stuff, make sure you note the model number. Several months ago, I did quite a lot of research on the various 3M Dual Lock fasteners. 3M makes them with different kinds of backing adhesives. TB3540 is made with a special adhesive that can adhere to polypropylene and polyethylene. Both are plastics that were designed to be as smooth, slick, and slippery as possible. This means that the TB3540 style sticks really, really, really well. Really.
So anyway, I simply stuck strips of Dual Lock to the sides of the bed frame, and then I stuck strips of Dual Lock to the underside of the bed slats, and I was done! The nice thing about this attachment method is that if I ever need to remove a slat or change its position I can do it by simply pulling it up. If I ever need to access the electrical stuff, which is under the bed, I don’t have to remove the bed frame, I just have to pull up the slats that are covering the cubby I need to access, and when I’m done I can simply push the slats back into place. Pretty darn cool, right?
Oh, I just want to mention that Dual Lock holds about a million times stronger than velcro. I pulled up one slat as a test and while it was a challenge (slightly vein popping), I still found it super convenient. If Gypsy is ever in an accident, I’m confident those slats won’t go flying. They also won’t budge laterally at all, due to the design of the Dual Lock fastener.
I have way more to tell you about and I have lots of pictures and even some video to share, but I’m getting sleepy so I’ll write up a Part 2 tomorrow.
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