[Zmagnette] Refinishing dash (facia!) Types of wood it is made out of?

[Steve Hanegan]

It would be quite MG to make them out of whatever came to hand on the day. The wood work was done as piece work by folks outside of Abingdon. If you look closely under the dash top, there may be the remnants of a crayon signature by the actual maker. Also, there are numbers stamped on the back of the door caps so that they could keep them together in sets. The wood in the Magnettes was very much a hand worked set and very traditional British cottage industry. A couple of the dashes I have done had tops that had an olive hue and a grain pattern that were dead ringers for teak and others looked like mahogany. I haven't seen any with the very tight grain pattern of walnut, though this would not surprise me given the prevalence of walnut trees in England. Remember that Jolly Olde was still pretty much in empire mode in the early 1950s, and the sources for both teak and mahogany were colonies.

I usually use a warm cherry stain diluted 50% - 60% with mineral oil to gently tint the non burled bits of the woodwork. When the varnish adds its' amber tint, all of the different shades fade and blend together nicely. 

Steve H.



On Feb 4, 2014, at 3:17 PM, Edward Brorein <edbro03 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hi all, I've been having a lot of fun restoring my dash. It's been a real education to say the least! After a lot of small repairs required, inflicted by the PO attempting to restore it (it would have been a lot less work if it had never been touched). I've gotten all the veneered parts re-veneered with the appropriate veneers and they are looking really nice. I'm now working on the dash top which is a solid piece of wood. I've gotten it all stripped and sanded smooth. I need to do some work on the cowl or binnacle(?) that sits over the speedometer, which got me investigating what kind of wood this thing was really made out of. I know its been said it is mahogany, but really studying this over, doing some research, and matching it up to a lot of samples of other woods I have, its looking like a dead ringer for walnut actually, and not a very good match for mahogany. Could it be the factory that made the wood dash assemblies possibly use different wood at different periods when making them??? Thanks, Ed
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