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Old 05-08-2009, 07:49 PM
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Kerry Pinkerton Kerry Pinkerton is offline
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Location: Near Huntsville, Alabama. Just south of the Tennessee line off I65
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Default The Art Deco Imperial Project - Part 8

THE ART DECO ROADSTER PROJECT
9/6/07
What is the sound of two doors latching?



Click Click.....Click Click

This one only took 4 hours.

9/9/07

I don't like working from hard bucks. Can't read them....don't speak to me. NO surface information at all! NONE!

The guys up at Dutchs who worked on fender parts from the hard buck I took whined about it also....especially Bob Baisden...

Not wanting to alienate all my help (not to mention I couldn't do it either ) when Bennett Chapman told me he had found a source for 2" thick DOW foam, I jumped a getting some in order to make some true surface full size fender bucks that would be used for making flexible shape patterns.

This weekend he drove over to play for the weekend with 4 full sheets and a a couple sheets worth of pieces parts. We have 2 full sheets and about another sheet in pieces parts left over. I'll probably use them for some of the other panels on the car.

Back on 4/1/7 up at the Bugly International Headquarters Meet, Rick Tucker and I (with advice from a ton of folks) tuned the fender profiles and cut out two each. These will be the core for the foam/bondo bucks. Below is the rear fender 5 ply plywood cutout.



We decided to use the pieces parts first.



Went pretty quick. Neither Bennett or I had ever done this before but Bennett thought I knew what I was doing in spite of me telling him I didn't. We simply marked the profiles to be cut with a sharpie and cut them out with a saber saw. I tried an electric carving knife but it didn't work too well on the 2" thick foam. Might do better on the 1" stuff.



Bennett and I sprayed the adhesive on both sides. Looks like a pretty thick stack but it's only 12 1/2" thick.



Here is what we used to hold the foam. Worked great. INSTANT grab. Everything else we tried had a 24 hour cure and we didnt' have that much time. I did notice that on the outer edges where the foam got a little thin after carving that some of the seams were getting loose so this may not be the PERFECT glue. Probably should have used this for the instant grab feature and the Liquid Nails foam board adhesive for the long term feature. The Liquid Nails comes in a caulking tube but doesn't set up for 24 hours. We could have used that and in retrospect probably should have since we stopped for the night after glueing them up. Originally Bennett was coming over earlier and we would have had another 6 hours on the first day. As it turned out we only had 4 hours and I already had my head fixated on using the spray on adhesive. Ain't hindsight grand?



Carving time. The old electric knife didn't work too well but a flap disk just ate it up. Messy process. We used two fans, one blowing, one sucking to keep it off us.





I had a bright idea that worked out great. We cut out the fender profile for the front 1/2 of each fender in steel and pushed it down into the foam at intervals. Then we could just grind away the foam until we got below the cut...a couple cycles and we were roughed out.





I've decided to taper the rears of the fenders and a hand saw cuts the foam nicely.



hung on the car for eyeball...we like.



The tire opening is just a tad larger than the tire diameter. We'll build the panels with about 1" extra material in the opening so we can turn a flange for the wheel well opening.



Bondo time. The first layer does attack the foam a little but not much.



Bennett test driving.







We also repositioned the lower dash support and tested the steering column fit on someone other than me. Bennett said it passed the big boy test. I wanted to hook up the steering shafts but the Ujoint I got from Flaming River is the wrong size doubleD.

If you've REALLY been paying attention, you may have noticed that the 'dashboard' hoop doesn't match the door posts. I'm going to build a new one. It's about 1 1/2" higher. Also the actual dashboard will be about 6" back toward the driver and cantilever over the compartment The firewall will probably go up about an inch. It's too tight to the top of the air cleaner anyway.



Sanding Bondo. The edges and ridges were knocked down with a DA and 80 grit.



This flexible board sander did a SUPER job with 80 grit. I got 30" one from Jerry Gulley at MM05 and have never used it until now. The sandpaper comes in rolls and is self stick. It has three 1/8" steel rods you can pull out to make it more or less rigid. I pulled them all so I could match the contours. Jerry carries a longer one also and I'll be getting one at MM07.



After two coats of bondo and block sanding a few small areas need to be raised with another light coat.


A guide coat of lacquer primer ( enamel doesn't dry enough to be sanded off) before sanding lets the low spots be clearly seen. Any pinholes or small bubbles can be ignored because the flexible tape pattern will just go right over them. I'm probably over finishing it somewhat considering the intended use but it's hard not to be anal about block sanding once you've painted a car. Back in 2001, Randy Ferguson coached me through a paint job on a 66 Chrysler 300 and I finally cracked the code on block sanding.



This is going to work really nice! Not quite through. This one needs about another hour of work. BTW, the wooden feet fasten to the 1/2" plywood center and are really handy. We clamped them to the work surface and sanded away with the buck vertical.
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