Paul,
the act of transforming a piece of rosewood into an Alpine dash should not
be too difficult. You have a template, the holes are round, and you should
just take your time and make it look professional. The door panels on the
other hand have some technical considerations. It's a large area you want
to cover and wood is not particularly dimensionally stable with humidity
and heat. The optimal solution would be plywood. Plywood must be balanced
though so if you put rosewood veneer on the front (inside face) of the
plywood panel, you must balance it with a simular thickness veneer for the
back. The tricky part is making the edges look good also.
The next consideration is moisture. With drips coming in riding on your
windows or streaming past your furmolding, it can get pretty humid on the
backside of that plywood. Good sealing here will help but you should plan
on inspecting quite frequently and touching up the finish on the backside
of the panel.
Another consideration is the finish for the front side. Polyurathanes are
notoriously prone to UV degradation. The sun beats in and the finish
yellows quickly, cracks and eventually peals off. A tung oil finish will
work better but does not have the moisture resistance. It is still
probably the best bet with a couple coats of wax on it.
I dream of a hardwood dash and leather interior also but....
vbob SJ,CA
B395002095
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On Thu, 17 Apr 1997, Paul Gilbert wrote:
> I saw a beautifully figured piece of Honduran Rosewood at the lumber
> yard several years ago and bought it knowing that some day I would have
> a project that would justify this extravagance. It is large enough for
> my S.V "in progress" restoration. I have looked carefully at my broken,
> plastic, uckkey old dash and it is absolutely flat. This makes cutting
> a dash from any fancy hardwood a reasonably simple task. It also makes
> possible putting a door on the glove pocket hole.
>
> My problem now is, can this wood be matched on a steering wheel? Last
> month at the British Car Day here in New Orleans I saw a Tiger with a
> three spoke wheel with what appeared to be oak on the outer perimeter.
> It had equally spaced large brass rivets holding the wood onto the metal
> frame. I don't want plastic anything in my "new" car, and want
> everything to match.
>
> I checked out the door panels which on my "in the box" project were just
> masonite covered with black vinyl. The doors appear to be perfectly
> flat which should make a wood replacement simple enough. Has anyone
> tried gluing up some panels and fitting them to the door panels. A
> rosewood and leather interior would be awesome.
>
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