I've realized that in my haste to get to shaping the body, I've probably cost myself time by not taking the time to build a wooden station buck up front...
When I did the second front fender, I really struggled with getting the same arrangement as the first fender. The rears are even more complex and after a couple false starts doing without, I decided to build a buck. The challenge is that the first fender is already built and I have to build a mirror image buck. Here is how I'm going to do it...hopefully it will work.
The lengthwise part was first. I have a 6' flexible contour guage and I carefully laid it guage on the completed rear fender front to back and transferred the line to some 7/16 OSB. This was then mounted to some feet, squared so it sits vertical and screwed to the table. A few holes were drilled in the fender and it was screwed into the buck to stabilize it while I made the stations.
Because of the extreme shape of the fender, I had to make this in two parts that I can assemble once the fender is in place on the front part.
Using some small contour guages, I made the crosswise stations. Each one is screwed into a 2x2 and that is screwed to the lengthwise portion. It is very stable but I'm not going to be using it for a hammerform. I didn't get too carried away with spacing them evenly but rather put them where I felt I needed the information. The other side is staggered for reasons that hopefully will make sense in part II of this thread.
Hopefully tomorrow, I'll get to reverse these and convert this from the right side to a mirror image for the left. It is not as simple as it might seem at first thought. I've been noodling over how to do this for a couple weeks now. I have a plan...we'll see if it works.
Still only have 1.63 hands but cabin fever drove me out in the shop and I managed to reverse the buck.
The hard part was making sure that the ribs were in exactly the right place and orientation on the other side. I came up with this idea. I marked both sides and the bottom of the OSB ribs and simply drilled a 1/8" hold ON the line and pressed a finish nail through the hole...
so it came out the other side...
and that gave me a perfect locator for the reversed rib.
Here is what I started with.
And here it is reversed.
Now I can make sure all the sub panels are in correct arrangement as I tack them together. This was a pain to build but in the long run it will be worth it and I'm wishing I had done the same thing on the front fenders... Ain't hindsight grand!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Overkill
Just wanted to mention this, as I watched the DVD last weekend. Ron Covell has a new DVD out on how to build a fender - using a 36 Ford rear fender as the demo piece. What I found interesting was his methodical method of building a buck. There are areas of the buck used for hammer forming, other areas just to keep you on the right track. John
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Yeah I understand....In retrospect, I should have built the chassis, then built a wooden buck that worked with the chassis...then when I rebuilt the chassis, I'd have to rebuild the buck...then when I went to chassis #3...well you get the idea... Nothing like having a plan right?
If I ever finish the roadster, and live long enough, I'm going to build a coupe version. I'll be able to make bondo bucks from the existing fenders and body panels. That will solve my buck problems on car #2