Miniature Foam Models Help You Design Perfect Trailer Dimensions

Create a miniature 1 in. to 1 ft. scale model of your tiny trailer from foam to work out your design ideas before you build.

In this video, I talk through the dimensions of my handmade teardrop trailer build, featured in my book “The Handmade Teardrop Trailer” (Spring House Press, 2018). My material of choice is simple foam. It’s easy to cut and shape and assemble with hot glue to quickly turn your paper sketches into three dimensions. My final build had slightly different dimensions as detailed in this video, but you get the idea!

After playing around with foam, I decided to up my game. I increased the scale of my prototype to match the size of a kid-carrying bicycle trailer, and I tested out some design and construction ideas with the goal of building a mini-teardrop trailer for my bicycle that could carry picnic and playground supplies on short bike-rides around the neighborhood.

Designing with prototypes helps you avoid big mistakes when you move to your actual project. Give it a try before you get started on your teardrop trailer build, you’ve got nothing to lose.