By Cheri Sicard
You must see the amazing craftsmanship in the DIY wooden truck camper built by the creative and industrious David Rule (very funny/charismatic guy with 430K subscribers, 34M views). In the video below (with 4.3M views), young David takes us along on a condensed journey of building his functional and artistic wood truck camper.
David began, as many good ideas do, with a sketch on a cocktail napkin. He then went on to build the box for his camper. As he wanted to be able to horizontally stretch out in bed, he had to add “wings” to the short bed truck camper. Watch the video to see how.
Next, he built the frame for the cabin, followed by the rafters for the roof. The latter are designed so that water flows off the roof in all four corners. Before moving on and installing and fiberglassing the roof, David waterproofed the entire frame.
Cutting and installing windows came next on the to-do list. He then tackled the wooden truck camper’s showstopping double Dutch back door. Having a two-piece door keeps David from ever getting locked in should someone raise the truck’s tailgate during the night. It also gave him an opportunity to display some artistic woodworking chops.
At that point, the DIY wooden truck camper’s interior was a blank canvas. David fixed that by building a cedar roof and installing some 12-volt lighting and an electrical system that’s charged by his truck’s alternator.
After that, David furnished and decorated his small but comfy basic camper. After all was finished, the camper weighed just over 400 pounds. David’s Toyota Tacoma truck gets 20 mpg on its own, and 16 mpg with the camper aboard. By contrast, the truck only gets 7 mpg when hauling David’s DIY tiny home. He spent a grand total of $3,340 on the project.
What do you think of David’s creative DIY wooden truck camper? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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Skills and entertainment.
Thank you, Cheri! That was a fascinating and enjoyable video. He is an extremely talented and entertaining video-maker. Given how little room the truck bed afforded him, He seemed to make good use of the space. I guess that he has access to bathroom and cooking facilities elsewhere, otherwise, given their absence from his camper. The final product was beautiful. I was surprised that he did not fill the area between the roof and ceiling with spray foam or another type of insulation, but an air gap does provide some insulation. Have a great weekend and safe travels! 🙂