I didn't mean to minimize the challange. Just that we all have a lot of faith in you, Bill.

But to me, that kind of work is much more straight forward than, say, rebuilding a carburator. But you are right. One false move with a razor or contact cement can really put a kink in the project plan.

 

So what happened to this project? A few things. The frame was bolted to the chassis. The next step is to restore the five pieces of wood trim that frame the top. You can see them in their original state above. Each piece must first be stripped of the old cover, cleaned and then repaired as needed. Then the new material is cut to shape and then glued to the wood and trimmed to fit.

Here is one of the two curved pieces with the original cover.







The cover is carefully pulled off to prevent the glue from splintering the wood.







This piece had a split across the middle and a little bit of rot on either end. After cleaning, the split is repaired with wood glue and some JB weld is used to fill the rot defects.





Then the new material is cut and glued and trimmed to fit.



Here is where it fits on the frame.

 

The same is done for the pieces over the side windows. Here is how they look before I get started.




And here it is recovered.



Here it is in place.

 

Good man Bill. Good to see you are moving along with the project.

I painted four wire wheels yesterday and have been setting them outside each day, now that we have sun in MI. Now they are hopefuly completely dry, they are in the back of my truck waiting to be mounted with my new tires..... I'll let Belle Tire do that part.

 

The four small pieces were in relatively good shape. The large front piece is another story. Here are a couple of close ups of the front wood bow before it was stripped. You can see the leading edge looks rough.





Here it being stripped of the material.





The wood underneath was as bad as expected, and then some. After some sanding of the rot and splits, this is what the leading edge looks like:













This is not usable. That front edge has to be smooth or you will see the defects through the cover and then through the canvas top. It has to be able to hold tacks or staples in order to attach the top and the "hide-em" strip (more on that in the distant future). But the replacement wood is expensive and needs shaping before it can be used. It will be worth the effort if I can save this original piece.

JB weld won't work here. It flows too much before it hardens and it gets to hard to drive in nails. Minwax makes a two part resin and hardener that is supposed to fill defects like this. I have nothing to lose, so I give it a try.

First, I drill some holes in center of the deepest defects. I will force the filler into these holes which will hopefully serve as anchors for the rest of the filler.





Next, we mix up the putty and hardener. The first thing that hits me is the smell. This stuff smells just like Bondo.







After two coats, I figure I should test out the ability of this stuff to hold a tack.



The nail went in and held well. It pulled out and i saw no signs of failure of the filler. So on to the last coat and the "finished" product.









Next, I have to cut the material and glue it on. After all five pieces are done and screwed on to the frame, I can begin fitting the top. Each one of these takes me a few hours and the front bow took a couple of hours a day over several days to repair. This is some of my least favorite work, so it is easy to skip a day or week between sessions in the garage. In fact, in the time it took me to photograph this and download the pictures to the site, I probably could have covered the last two pieces.

Stay tuned for more fun.

 

Dave, I bought some new chrome Dayton wheels, but I'll have to do that at some point with the original wheels.

 

Am I correct in thinking you could have just bought new wood pieces if you wanted to?

 

Yes, but they need to be "worked" to fit right and they need to be covered just like the originals. The originals fit right in place.

 

You did a great job with that front piece! The interior looks good. I forgot, but I assume you already restored that?

 

Well, thanks for posting it up anyway. We are always looking for updates! I see the seats are in. Looks like you are getting close!