bush camp furniture

Next piece of furniture is a cover for generators.
For this we need a piece of ply. This one is 1 meter square and this is about the minimum size for small generators. Any smaller and it won't be kept dry from rain coming straight down.
We also need 4 slats. Two of these will go along the sides of the ply and another across the top. So they need to be as long/wide as the ply's sides (all the same here, 1m, as the ply is square). The fourth slat is the leg. Around 80cm works well.
Lastly we need a wooden block. This holds the leg on.
We also need two small slats for reinforcing. These are optional. A good quality piece of ply can just be held with bent over nails. Because this is a crappy piece we will reinforce the sides. In this example we cut the long slats to length and this gives us three 16cm slats of which we will use the two best ones.

In pic 2 we flip the ply over and place the 16cm slats underneath at the bottom of the ply. We then lay the side slats on top and nail them to the 16cm slat through the ply.
Pic three shows this from a better angle. Note the angle of the nails. This is called skew nailing and is much stronger than putting the nails in vertically. As can be seen from the nail hanging from the side, these 4 nails will end up partway into the 16cm slat underneath. After both sides have been nailed we flip the cover over and put 4 more nails through from the other side. Probably not necessary, but I usually overbuild.

In pic four we start on the top of the cover. We do the same thing here. We lay third slat across the top and nail it into the top of the side slats.
Pic 5 gives a better view. We only need three nails here because we are nailing right through everything and bending the nails over after. This is a very strong join. These nails are longer as the one disappearing into the dirt shows. Again we skew nail, although because we will bend the nails over this isn't really necessary (alright, I admit it, I just did it out of habit!).
We flip the cover over in pic 6 and bend the nails over. Note the extra piece of wood under the cover here. This is to stop the nails being driven back out as we bend them over. A much stronger way of doing it as the nails will be very tight.


The result is shown in pic 7. The nails have been hit down until they are embedded below the surface of the wood. So the nail point can't jab us when we grab the cover. This is very difficult to do if they are bent down over the top of each other, so try to keep them off of each other.

In pic 8 we are just about to nail on the block. Note the leg wood at the back of the picture underneath the cover, there is also a bit of scrap wood under the other side. This brings the cover up so it is laying flat on the block. It is much easier to nail if everything is level.
We skew nail using the longer nails to hold this on. There can be a fair bit of stress on this join so longer nails are better here.


Once the block is nailed on we flip the cover over again to attach the leg. Because we will be nailing into the side of the block it is easier if we prenail partway into the leg first. Less things to hold and juggle as we attach the leg. In this example I stood on the cover, put one foot on the block, held the leg under my arm somehow and started nailing. It is a bit awkward but doable. As can be seen in pic 11, I did bend one of the nails while hammering!
Note the blue pen mark. I use an ordinary pen to mark wood. It saves breaking and sharpening pencils and the pens do last a very long time surprisingly. I marked the leg before prenailing it, this makes it easier to put the nails in the right spot.

Finally we have the completed cover. The cover can be oriented away from your campsite to deflect noise or away from the prevailing wind to stop rain getting on the generator. Or to keep the sun off. Having a small piece of plywood under there to rest the generator on is handy to keep it a bit cleaner.
The black is a light covering of black spray paint. The cover will weather to a nondescript greyish colour but it takes a while so this is a way to make it less noticeable straight away. Another advantage is any wood painted like this becomes near invisible under headlights or spotlights.


The leg and block can be nailed straight to the ply without the slats, this will work. But the ply will tend to sag very quickly, especially if it gets rained on so I have found it better to do it this way.