[A/S] Tambour Doors Refurbish

["dan dodd" <dandodd1@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Repairing Airstream Tambour Doors

I've got a 32, center bath, International Sovereign Airstream. I am in
the process of refurbishing it: repairing dry rot holes in the flooring
(ongoing), replacing the kitchen counter (to do), recovering the some of the
upholstery (complete), retabbing the curtains (the plastic tabs, to do), AND
repairing the tambour doors (complete). This is what I learned repairing the
tambour doors.

The front room of my Airstream has the pull out sofa/bed on the left with
four tambour door bins below and a sofa at the front with two tambour door
bins below. Because the tambour fiberboard strips swelled over 25+ years,
the tambour doors were split from their paper backing and were difficult to
slide up/down the rail.

The doors were missing some of the pull down handles and plastic cover
strips, but counting the old kitchen counter tambour doors, there were
enough parts to do the job.

The next task was to ensure there were enough door handles. I hack sawed
some of the kitchen counter door handles down to size and pulled the
fiberboard strips from all the handles using an old screwdriver to widen the
slot where Airstream punched the handle in place. This is necessary to
replace the cloth backing on the tambour door.

I bought spray on and paint on contact glue and muslin cloth at a fabric
store. Next, glued seventeen fiberboard strips to the cloth trying both
kinds of glue on several tambours doors. The paint on glue has better
holding power than the spray on, but its a little messier.

Then, I used a table-mounted router to trim the ends of each door to inch
thickness so it would slide in the 5/16 inch rollup slot easily. You could
use a table saw to do the same thing with less precision and more passes. I
checked each door for fit and trim before I punched the door handle into
place. Then it was easy to reassemble the tambour door in place.

The doors slide up and down very easily and are holding together very well.

DanDodd