home made wood

silversink

silversink

Senior Member
I'm making my own top wood and the side window and back window wood. Other than time consuming its not that hard as long as you have a half way decent piece to copy.
Anyone else done this with success? The only thing I can't do is bend the arch in the top bows so I cut the curves from 1X oak. they seem to be plenty strong.
The coup I bought was a Special that someone 50 years ago had fiberglassed the top with cloth and resin instead of stretching the fabric and it drew moisture and rotted the metal beyond using(with my skills) so I bought a standard top to replace what I had. I quickly found that very little wood from what I had could be used on the new metal and what could was rotten but still enough of it was there to copy. The quarter windows is the biggest challenge so far but I haven't tackled the header yet.
What are your feelings about doing this rather than spending 700.00 on the body and top kits? I have been buying wood working tools with the savings that I lacked to do the job and bought the wood(maple and oak) from a guy that has a portable saw mill that cuts for the local farmers. It just so happened that the pieces that I needed were in his reject pile.
 
Silversink i'm an owner of a special coupe, posted pics of it so you are changing a special coupe to a standard coupe the wood kit or pattern might be different. did you try to see if you can purchase or find good used sheet metal that you need? Buy the woodworking equipment might add up to all the stuff you might to keep it a special coupe.
I bought my top and body wood kit from Snyders and installed it myself.

good luck on taking on that challenge.
 
somethingspecial said:
Silversink i'm an owner of a special coupe, posted pics of it so you are changing a special coupe to a standard coupe the wood kit or pattern might be different. did you try to see if you can purchase or find good used sheet metal that you need? Buy the woodworking equipment might add up to all the stuff you might to keep it a special coupe.
I bought my top and body wood kit from Snyders and installed it myself.

good luck on taking on that challenge.
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I checked all over the Internet and couldn't find any Sp. coup parts so I decided to go with the Std. top I already had.
This wood thing is a real learning exp. I cut the pieces out of fir to get the feel of doing the process before using good wood for the end result. The pieces over the doors were the hardest so far but I haven't tackled the header yet. As far as the tools go they will be here forever only because I'm a tool hoarder and never get rid of a tool until I loan it out and forget who I loaned it to and the other guy forgets to return it.
I'm keeping all the Sp. pieces(even the rusted ones) incase the next owners after I gone and the wife sell everything for what I told her I paid for this stuff wants to change it back. I would of liked to stayed with the Special Coup as I like things a little different from everyone else. The daily driver is a good example(1948 International).
 
to get the arch in you can steam or boil them and then slowly bend them and let them dry, I have done this many times and has always worked well for me (I have never done if for a Model a though)
john
 
Hi Silversink,

So few today would attempt to even "try" what you are doing with wood -- hats off to you.

With today's computers, watching TV's, cell phones glued to ears, texting, electronic games, etc., etc., future generations will be thinking much differently for hands-on work or hands-on hobbies.

John in reply #5 has good suggestions -- boil wood, clamp in a form shaped with an arch, allow to dry, & it will keep the same shape as the form -- made several fine wood instruments as such -- works extremely well.

Keep up the good work.
 
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The '29 CCPU in my avatar was lengthened 6-1/2", so I had to make all of my top wood. Used white oak and was able to buy some wood pieces from a broken kit to use as patterns. Tough part was making them 6-1/2" longer. Started with cheap pine to get the feel and proportions. A lot of trial and error! Band saw and power planer were my friends.
 
I bought the top wood kit for my Special coupe back in the early eighties from Fordwood.com (Cubels) and everything fit perfectly with some minimal sanding of the outside rear corners. I don't know if that kit is still available but I would recommend keeping it a Special coupe if possible.
 
As someone who made a lot of my own wood, (1930 Town Sedan) I'd like to chime in here with a few suggestions. First of all, for some unknown reason, body wood to this day (Morgan-UK) is mostly Ash. British car builders will not use oak (For reasons that I don't understand) I used an Ash tree that we took down in the back yard. I also used Maple (From a pallet) for the bottoms of the doors. But I think I found Walnut in the doors, but again, mostly Ash. Someone had the original prints and in the "Box" down in the corner where they write their names etc., under Tolerances, they had listed +-.010.That's practically unheard of! Before reading that, I had used +-.015. I did not make the top wood, most of mine was too far gone to be used. I bit the bullet and bought both the top wood and sills(Bottom wood) Radii and hole locations were scaled. this meant a lot of work with the handsander. There are very few right angles on the wood. Do not ignore these very small angles and curves as they will probably affect the fit of something else further down the line. Get yourself an angle gauge.
For screws, I haunted local flea markets for correct slotted head wood screws. They're getting hard to get or very expensive. I could buy a jar or can for a buck or two for something that might $.20 or $.25 apiece ( I even found a can with a lot of 12X24 oval heads for $.50) The temptation to use modern screws is great. Good luck to you! As has been said, most won't even try it! My pics are under my old acct of Terry, NJ

Also, I wanted to give you a tip. When drilling screw holes, drill oversize to accomodate the larger Dia. of the shank and smaller where the threads cut into the sides of the hole. Also, Put some Butcher's Wax on the threads as this will lubricate the screw as it cuts it's way into the hole. Don't install the screws as if you were putting sheetrock up and you were just driving them into a stud with no hole.
Terry
 
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Ash is used because it gets real hard. And does real good with water. And not rotting as easy. We use ash to make sucker rods for windmills. And they will last forever. I have a friend that makes recurve and long bows out of wood. He has a plywood box that he steams the wood in.
 
I have been told that some feel the Oak gives off an acid that is corrosive to sheetmetal however Ford engineers specified Maple Beech, Birch, Elm, and Oak with no mention of Ash. We use Ash here along with Oak.


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Brent, Once again, I bow to your superior references! Not many of us have access to original prints. However, In my ignorance, I will say that the print you showed was for the rear beltline piece. Is it possible that this is the only or one of the few, or many for that matter, pieces that called for a different wood than Ash. I know my sills were made of Ash (Laminated, not solid as the new ones from Classic Wood are) andf so were many other parts, As I said, I think I found Walnut in the door frames. I'm not sure if it is something else or not (80+ years and rot and pyroxylin laquer make it a little hard to identify) And there's the Morgan Co in the UK. They use only Ash in their cars. I wish I had a URL for video clip I found of them making the wood body frames. Fascinating stuff! Thanks for point this out!
Terry
 
The two most water resistant woods I know are cypress and black locust. Putting a nail into locust is near impossible. Tough and hard and water resistant? It's black locust!
Terry



bart78 said:
Ash is used because it gets real hard. And does real good with water. And not rotting as easy. We use ash to make sucker rods for windmills. And they will last forever. I have a friend that makes recurve and long bows out of wood. He has a plywood box that he steams the wood in.
Click to expand...
 
Terry,

I've got the complete set of drawings for the cabriolet, and nowhere is ash specified. Most drawings have the wood specified as shown in Brent's photo.
 
Would the oak have been white oak which has closed cells and holds up to moisture well as red oak has open cells and does not hold up as well I also believe white oak is very stable.
 
I was curious about this and a while ago I looked at info on tree abundance in the UP of Michigan and other areas where Ford obtained wood. From what I recall, the usable biomass of maple, beech, and elm (which was historically abundant before Dutch Elm disease) far exceeded that of ash and the most abundant ash species was black ash which was known as the "slenderest broadleaf tree in the forest". The next abundant ash species are way down on the list of abundance and the ashes all seemed to prefer swamps, slumps, and other wet areas that may be skipped when cutting trees...

I concluded that it was simply a practical choice of what was readily available, ash was not, and you don't typically harvest skinny trees what with the waste of sawing etc. Any superiority of ash was offset by the cost of obtaining it. It ought not be assumed that English ash is the same as American ash anyway. Not even sure Morgan is using old growth wood anymore; although at the speed they build with low output they may be working off a stash of wood squirreled away 60 years ago!

The puzzler is oak, red oaks were more abundant than white oaks however none were particularly abundant compared to the other species used. I have seen a lot of great tall, straight, and wide red oaks so they would not have been passed up.

I suspect that forest areas were clear cut with the specified trees going to Ford and Briggs for bodies and the non-specified and small trees going to other purposes (crates, charcoal, paper mills, whatever).
 
White oak has the reputation of bending easily -as does ash. Red oak is much harder to bend, with the added problem that it likes to split along grain lines. Henry was probably looking for the easiest and cheapest way to get a strong, but easily fabricated structure and that would relegate red oak to the back of the line.

It would be very interesting to see if the woods used changed with time as the most accessible and populous wood would have been used up first. OTOH, Henry owned a lot of forest.
 
I have the scans for the Victoria Wood that I'm attempting, key word attempting, to clean up and sheet after sheet refers to "see wood specifications" I wonder if someone has those specifications or can get them next time they are at Benson.
 
Well, I guess that tells me! LOL, I still feel "vindicated" by the fact that if you order new wood from Classic Wood, you get Ash. In another note, I don't know how many sub species of Oak, Ash, Locust or whatever there are. Or how the species diversified with the tectonic division of the European plate from the North American plate. Oh there's so much I don't know! But I do know that Ash works and works well. And I know that the ash tree I took down was just under two feet in dia, at the butt, was it Black Ash? Probably not, because it was certainly not the thinnest tree in the forest. There are pictures of the log in my truck prior to taking it to the mill, Look under my old acct of Terry, NJ.
Terry
 
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