NewOldWood

I spent most of my life in the mid west, seemed like every year at the first snow most of them drove like they had never seen the stuff before.

I built a set of wood sills for a 41 Cadillac a while ago. The originals were all but gone but the owner came up with a set of blueprints. Not sure where he got them but they were a nice set of prints.

I was originally looking for a standard 8000# lift but ended up with this one because it's what they had in stock at the time. It's 9000# but is also 6" wider than the 8000# lifts. After using it a while I am glad I have the extra width. https://liftsuperstore.com/product/quatro-stacker-heavy-duty-9000-lb-4t/

I don't own one but here's a thread on a 37 Gar Wood tripple cockpit that I restored recently. 22' and without the cool Liberty engine, but other than that very similar to this one.

Not your daddys Gar Wood.....methinks.... Undoubtedly restored (rebuilt) with some type of a watertight bottom. Even if it has a traditional spar varnish finish on it, todays varnishes will last quite a few years if not left out in the sun all day every day, unlike the twice (at least) a year affair it was back in the 30s. If it has a urethane clear coat finish on it, it will hold up even better. Hard to beat the ride quality of a wood boat, much softer and quieter than glass.

In one case a new owner of a car I had built that he bought at an estate sale tracked me down. Just out of general curiosity. In another case a new owner bought another car I had done the woodwork on and tracked me down because he had another car he wanted a wood body built for.

The finger joint cutters have to be custom made. I can't remember who made these for me, it's been too many years. They are about 6" diameter, 1-1/4 bore. I use them on a 5hp shaper.

The door frames are fit and glued in place, I try to leave a little extra wood around the edges and finish off the gaps after all the latching hardware is installed. Applying pressure to the joints while the glue dries requires a little creativity. One of the ways I do it is to glue some temporary clamping blocks around the joint. This is a finger joint in what will be the upper piece of one of the tailgate doors, but the principle is the same. Have you tried Johnsons lumber? they show Ash up to 16/4 on their website, maybe not in stock?

The four front door frames are done for now. Still rough around the edges but wont be able to set the gaps till I have all the latches and dovetails. The tailgate doors should keep me going for a day or two.

The upper half of your door is going to determine where the window track in the lower half has to go. It is an extention of it, it all has to be in one plane. Do you have regulators yet? If you end up with clearance issues with the hinges, a fixed wing window might be a solution. The pictures of the old car don't show one, but it was something of a custom body to begin with, I doubt anyone would cry foul.

Looks good! A simple router circle jig would give you perfect inner and outer diameters, pretty easy to make. I make reproduction 2nd gen Corvette Teak steering wheels and that's how I do it.

Doors look good! If it were me I would finish at least one of them completely before starting on the real ones. Latch, handle, regulator, glass pattern, wood panel, everything. A fully functional sample door will eliminate any surprises later on. You will know not only what you are going to do but also how you are going to do it.

I'm not doing anything to the frame, it went back into the shipping crate right after I took these pictures. Some of the epoxy comes through the pores in the wood during the vacuum process. I scrape most of that off as soon as I can, before the epoxy fully cures. 80 grit does a quick job of smoothing everything off and removing the rest of the epoxy. It'll get sanded to a finer grit, I just wont be the one doing it. I don't know how fine they will go with it, but straight grained wood and clear finishes are about as forgiving as it gets, you could varnish this right now and you would have to look pretty close to see the sanding marks, so probably not as far as you might think. The Maple will have to be sanded finer that the veneer, the wider grain will not hide the sanding marks nearly as well as the veneer. Clear finishes in general though are pretty forgiving, unlike stain, which brings out scratches you were sure did not exist, no matter how much prep work you do.

All four panels are glued on. A quick once over with some 80 grit and I'm done. The larger panels are made of five pieces of veneer and the smaller ones of two. Can you find the glue lines?

You're not going to like this....... The best sander....a nice flat piece of wood 2-3/4" wide as long as you want it to be, and roll(s) of PSA paper in whatever grits you will need. Buy the best paper you can get. Take care to sand with the grain and you will get a nice flat finish without the cloudy look that a random orbit sander will give you. This really should have been done before you bleached it, the bleach doesn't go very deep into the wood and if you sand through the bleached wood it will show. A gloss finish on something that was sanded with electricity is going to look like a bag of rocks compared to something that was blocked out by hand.

It's not an opinion survey, but obviously the CARB has got antique cars on its mind. Seems logical, because that's what they do, that they are considering regulating them in some way. I can't see how participation in the survey would effect whatever they decide to do. If everyone reported very low usage numbers it would keep the total exhaust emissions down but I don't think you could get close enough to zero to keep them happy. They want current mileage and annual miles driven, are they going to start requiring mileage verification? The CARB thinks that a modern car exhaust is deadly poison, you might not even be able to imagine the level of disgust they feel towards your antique car exhaust.

What it looks like in the vacuum bag, and afterwards. The nice thing about a straight grained veneer is that you can make the glue lines disappear. I know where they are and I still can't see them.

Epoxy.

Correct. Wider at the top and getting narrower as you go towards the center. There are four glue lines in the piece pictured. I would like to be able to do the bottom corner in two pieces but have a feeling it will end up being three.

This is from a car that is being restored elsewhere. On these I break the veneer up into four sections the edges of which will be hiden behind the frame. There are five pieces of veneer fit together to make this panel. The pieces are as big as the shape will allow. This will get glued on by vacuum. I will probably glue all four sections individually, could possibly do two at a time but that's all I would attempt working by myself.

Don't fret too much, I can't see why the doors wouldn't turn out just as nice as the rest of the car.

Does anybody remember the day when laws in this country were debated in Congress and then voted on? Today the EPA, among way too many others, write up a "rule/regulation", post it for a short period of time for "comment", after which it is added to the federal register and carries the weight of law, complete with an enforcement mechanism and penalties for non compliance. We are not being represented, we are being ruled over.

I decided to build the rear armrests before starting on the doors. Those are done, and the drivers front doot is done as far as I want to go untill I get the latch hardware for it. The passenger front door is almost to the same point.

Whether or not he would have to get under the roof fabric depends on how far the rot goes, having to pull a few tacks wouldn't be the worst that could happen. I would probably start the cut by attaching a straight edge of some sort to the car somehow (there are a variety of ways to do this, none of them difficult) and start the cut with a zero kerf hand saw. That would get you at least a good start, then finish with chisels, sandpaper, whatever.