Why I like vinyl wrap for mini campers

When I first started building mini campers, I had to consider how the exterior would be finished. I use marine grade plywood in all my builds which is solid, but even the “A” face has patches. Marine plywood is not built for show.

As far as I could figure, I had only a couple of choices; either cover the plywood with an aluminum skin or paint it with an exterior-rated paint. For the first couple of projects, I chose the latter. To start with, aluminum skin comes in big sheets which I was not equipped to handle. Being thin, and metal, it would easily get banged up in a small workspace like mine where you constantly move things around to set up for different build tasks and stages. Plus, I’d have to cut it and make sure not to ding it in that process. I figured the chances of me getting four usable panels for a camper were about zero.

Paint pain points

Paint seemed to be the obvious choice, and I used it for my first three builds. Boy, did I hate it. I got a really good color match for my 2017 Indian Chief Vintage which was wrapped in a beautiful two-tone blue and butter color scheme. The problem with painting the camper was threefold:

• Putting a dark color over a white sealer/primer meant coat after coat after coat. To get a consistent color, I had to go to seven coats.
• In southwest Florida’s hot, humid summer climate, every coat took forEVER to dry. As I’ve noted in other posts, it took even longer to cure.
• Even after the paint cured, the flat color of the paint revealed every tiny flaw in the plywood. Accepting that this was a camper and campers get banged up, this didn’t bother me too much. But if I were trying to achieve a more professional finish, this wasn’t it.

What about vinyl wrap?

I am not sure where the idea of using vinyl wrap for a tent camper first occurred to me. It could have been something I saw on the trailer build site Teardrops and Tiny Travel Trailers. There are a lot of good ideas there for the DIY trailer builder.

Vinyl wrap for my mini camper projects could be ideal because it’s available in a massive range of colors. There are a lot of cool patterns available. And if I could get it to stick properly, it would be a super fast way of finishing the camper, giving it a professionally-built look.

That was the big question: Would it stick? I knew vinyl wrap was primarily used over sheet metal, but wood is a porous material and I wasn’t sure. To find out, I decided to do some experimentation. I’ll cover that in the next post.

---