Re-imagining a 1948 Boles Aero Trailer

  Replaced rivets along driver's side hemline. This weekend I learned how to use a pneumatic rivet gun to drive solid rivets. These aren't the "blind" pop rivets most people are familiar with, these are solid metal, in this case aluminum. You use the rivet gun to pound the rivet against a "bucking bar" so that the back side smooshes out (the technical term) to hold the pieces you want riveted together. This only works if you (or a "bucker") can get behind the rivet with the bucking bar. The entire shell of the trailer is made up of riveted 0.040" 2024T3 Alclad aluminum skin and interior Z extruded aluminum framing spars. There are a few places that they used some small 1/2" extruded aluminum L for stiffness, but it's really a simple fabrication approach with only a few different materials. Most trailers use wooden wall framing covered by aluminum skin. The rivets heads can shear off under stress, and this trailer had quite a few that ...

1946/1947 Boles Aero Brochure I got in contact with the daughter of Don Boles, the founder of Boles Manufacturing. She's "the keeper" of all the original factory records. I'd been told she might have build information for my trailer, but alas she said they didn't keep close records in the early years. But she did send me a couple very interesting and useful items. The first is a brochure from 1946/1947. It made me more certain of the aluminum alloy and thickness I should buy for the patches I'll need to make (and also the compartment door I hope to fabricate). It also shows the rubber "gravel guard" that I've seen on about half the early Boles. I'd wondered if it was after market like some other things on my Boles. I was told by a "knowledgeable" restorer that 1940's trailer did not have rubber gravel guards and that I should remove it during my restoration. The second item she sent was a bit of Boles Aero history. What a great ...

  Looking Forward Dirty and Tired I had hoped to work on putting new glazing and seals on the trailers Air-O-Lite windows but the specialty gasket didn't arrive before the weekend. So I decided to get to work removing the interior paneling and insulation. I really didn't know what I'd find but I was very curious. First I had to remove all the widow trim rings, electrical fuze box, etc. I must have unscrewed about 200 #6 3/8" sheet metal screws. The wall panels are installed first and the wrap-around roof goes on next, so I needed to reverse the order to remove them. I was slightly concerned that I'd find an insulation with asbestos in it so I pulled off a small panel on the back near the tail light so that I could check. Panel next to back window I was able to pull out the panel and the insulation still had a manufacturers brand mark on it. Little did I know that I had gotten really lucky: there was only one other place in the whole trailer that you could see any m...

  Bargman H20-2 Handle Details matter sometimes. When I saw the exterior handle for the trailer I thought it was like a piece of artwork. I didn't know much about it but I thought it was pretty cool. Turns out it belongs to a Bargman L-54/L-55 lock and this lockset is quite desirable. In fact a reproduction handle itself goes for about $100. A reclaimed lockset sans handle can fetch $175! While learning this I got sucked into a internet vortex of vintage trailer parts that was sort of like watching a dystopian scifi about the sale of human body parts. Imagine windows cut out of trailers rather than simply unscrewed! The inhumanity! In any case, I got a little fixated on the lockset simply because the inside handle was broken off long ago. If someone closed the door while I was inside, I'd effectively be locked in. None of the windows are large enough to crawl through. So I needed to get a replacement handle and that meant figuring out what kind of lockset I had in the first pla...

  Trailer Treasure You never know what you'll find in an old trailer. In mine I was lucky enough to find little other than mouse poop. Lots of mouse poop. I mean a huge amount of mouse poop. I also found this 1984 Whisky Flats Days button. Locals will know this annual festival held in Kernville, CA. It also gives me more reason to believe the trailer was mostly local during the course of it's life to date. I found one other thing behind the stove, but I'll share that later. Looking Forward Looking Aft The temperature was forecast to be down from the Labor Day records so I removed the interior. It wasn't easy. Power tools weren't really an option for the more difficult sections because of the tight confines of trailer cabinetry. So it was a lot of screw driver turning. My arms should be much more tired than they are. The one thing that continued to amaze me all day was the endless variety of fasteners they used. It's like they used whatever was handy or on sale. ...

  Not Coronavirus, Hantavirus I figured I'd better get started cleaning out my 1948 Boles Aero camp trailer while I was still excited about acquiring it. Like most old trailers, Bolero had old bedding and soft goods that needed to go. And it had a small number of treasures stored inside. Probably the most concerning thing was the rodent droppings. The propane furnace is located under the floor with a opening in the floor where warmed air would rise into the trailer. At some point the furnace housing got peeled back and so there was a wide open hole in the floor. I'm sure that the trailer, and the cushion batting in particular, made a cozy home for any field mouse that stumbled across it. So I masked up with my 3M N95 organic cartridge filter mask and safety glasses. Same setup I use for spraying wood working finishes. Call me reckless, but I didn't use disposable Tyvek coveralls as the CDC website suggested. I pulled up my small utility trailer to collect the trash for tran...

  So you've never heard of Boles Aero, don't worry neither had I. They manufactured about 18,000 aluminum trailers in Burbank, California from about 1946 to 1980. I found out they are not as well known as the Airstream line (who hasn't heard of Airstream) but they are well-regarded among the vintage trailer crowd. There's a short history of the Boles Manufacturing Company here  and here . These trailers predate Vehicle ID Numbers (VIN) and in fact during this period people ordered and built lots of kit trailers that had no serial number and apparently were not "licensed". I've read that for these old trailers the DMV accepts the serial number as the VIN. My trailer is serial number 1448366. I've read that Boles Aero used the 3rd and 4th digits correspond to the year of manufacture. That would make mine a 1948. I conjecture that the "14" stands for the trailer body length and the 366 corresponds to unit number 366 manufactured in 1948 ("1...

  Not a Boles Aero Trailer More and more frequently Becky and I have been spending some time talking about what we want to do when we retire. The discussions are starting to be a little less abstract and more concrete. We don't have solid retirement plans but I'm already eligible for an attractive annuity and Becky is within spitting distance of the magic 59.5. One thing we want to do is travel, both in the US and abroad. When we drove cross-country a few years ago we were in a hurry to get home so we didn't do much sight-seeing, but we both thought there were a lot of places we'd like to explore more. I've been thinking the flexibility of a camper van would be nice. Not a full-time live-in-it-while-we-tour-the-country thing, but some nights in the van and some in a hotel. And for those of you who know me, you understand that I couldn't buy one from Winnebago or Airstream when I know I could "do it better". For me half the fun is the project! So I'...