Dealing with irregular shapes is a common occurrence when building your van. Unless you have a box truck or step van, your vehicle has lots of curved walls, ribs, bolts, and other things you'll need to work around. There are a few ways to deal with these unusual shapes and creating pieces to fit them.
Ticking sticks
Use a ticking stick to recreate odd shapes on whatever board or other object you'll need to fit into that space. Essentially, you are creating a drawing of a large shape inside a small shape, and then using the small shape to recreate the large shape somewhere else.
Foil shape tracing
The aluminum foil solution works well for surfaces with odd shapes, such as when creating window coverings. Attach sheets of foil to the surface and to each other, conforming the foil tightly around the edges of the shape. Then, carefully remove the entire aluminum shape, and transfer it to your work surface. The aluminum foil will be the exact shape and size you need, so you can just trace around it on your new material. Then, recycle the foil!
Edge tracer tools
You can use an edge tracer tool to get the outline of a small shape.
Resources
| Resource | Description | |
|---|---|---|
| Wall paneling example | Example installation of wall and ceiling paneling in a Ram ProMaster van. | |
| Search forums and groups | Search van life discussion groups for "dealing with irregular shapes" | |
| Search related sites | Search van life sites for "dealing with irregular shapes" | |
| Search NomadLife.wiki | Search other pages on this wiki for "dealing with irregular shapes" |