Wood dash maintenance

[Guest]

I have a 1950 RMB Riley that makes extensive use of wood around all the windows and the entire dashboard. It still has the original english lacquer finish,accompanied by the tell tale signs of age, ie. hairline crazing and cracking. My question is, what is the best way to minimise further damage???

[Guest]

Many higher quality cars, not just the cars we call "classics" (typically the largest, most powerful luxury cars of the 1920's to 1942) use fine woods in their interior decorations. To my knoweldge, virtually all finishes were sprayed lacquer until only a few years ago.

I recommend you take the thing completely apart, use a carpenter's glue, slightly dilluted, to get behind and bond any over-lays to the base wood, let it dry for a week under clamps, then LIGHTLY sand it with no coarser than 200 grit, then re-spray with laqueer, letting each thin coat dry over the course of several days before "color sanding" first with 400, then with 600 grit.

If you fail to take the wood completely out of the car and properly re-surface it, the glues will continue to de laminate, and eventaully this interesting piece of automotive history and technology will be lost.

Of course the modern two-part epoxy based clear finishes are MUCH more durable, and have a "shiny" look ( and is much faster - one coat "does it").

More and more modern restorers, recognizing the average car buff today is clue-less as to how these fine quality woods are SUPPOSED to look, use the modern process.

Personally, I think the softer look of hand-rubbed laqueer is so much more elegant, and of course, it is historically correct, giving the "feel" and "look" of a by-gone era.

Good luck !

Pete Hartmann