Primitive and modern outdoor skills

Jack2: Sleeping Platform

2016-02-13

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This'll be a short post, but I at least wanted to get up some photos that show how the platform is constructed. As I noted before, I wanted to have a lot of cargo capacity in the truck. I also want it simple Anything that breaks up the space in the bed reduces the actual usable storage space. Drawers and things are complicated. Similar to Jane I just wanted to keep it simple.

The question then was, can we make it even simpler than Jane's platform is? Here's what Angie and I came up with:
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The design is 4 2x4's spanning the bed-rails. The cap tapers in as it goes upwards, and the 2x4's are as long as they can be and still fit, so they actually "spin" in to place. This is the same as the design of Jane's platform. Jane then had a tessellation of 6 panels filling the voids. That worked well and is great for easy assembly and disassembly... but the breaks in the platform meant that each panel was only supported at the edges, and thus drooped very easily, requiring them to be stiffined with 2x2's. The design in Jack2 is just 2 panels side-by side, each 73 inches long. This is much stronger, and requires less support underneath. It still uses some 2x2, but just little blocks to hold the 2x4's in place so they can't spin and drop out.
This build took about a day from start to finish. 2 10' 2x4s, a couple cheepo chunks of 2x2, and 2 4'x8' sheets of plywood. We ended up with a lot of spare plywood, but we needed two pieces to get sheets of the right dimensions.
It did take some tweaking to get it all to drop in place. We cut out notches in the rearmost 2x4 for the window latches. This was done with a saw cut down each side. We then drilled a series of holes, and hit the chunk with a hammer splitting it off. A bit of work with a rasp and sandpaper to smooth it out, and we were done.
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Notice how the platform actually sits just underneath the window, it fits pretty tight in there. It makes it a little harder to slide in place, but it means things are mostly held in place.
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Angie's parent's had this old mattress around, so we decided to give it a try... 6" tall is too tall and it just takes too much headroom so I don't think we'll use it... 2.5"-3" would be nicer, but it was interesting to try it.
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Excited to try it!