Greetings Folks,
With all that Dash talk, I figured it was about time to give my latest
progress report. After the great concentrated effort starting my
restoration project, I now find myself in the "it takes how long it
takes" phase. At last report, I had finished the interior prep, carpet
installation, and new upholstery and was trying to get the right door
window winder working. Those of you who followed my progress may
remember that I too wanted to replace the old plastic-covered dash.
After checking out the availability of wood-grained dash (Classic
Sunbeam $345, <CLASSICSUN(at)AOL.COM>) and other options, I decided on
building my own out of a solid piece of hardwood.
Two weeks ago we had our annual hot rod and classic car show here in
Sandpoint, Idaho and two Tigers showed up. One had the wood-grained
dash from CS and it did look pretty good. Personally, I remain quite
pleased with my decision to make my own, although it is a lot of work
and requires some fairly good woodworking skills. I am using a piece of
African Bloodwood, deep scarlet red in color with a nice grain pattern.
The stock is 3/4" thick, which is quite a bit thicker than the original,
thus requires some router work on the back side to fit the gages and
switches. Another option would be to plane the whole plank down, but I
decided against that just to maintain more strength in the dash. I used
the old plastic dash as a pattern for the hole locations, then flipped
it over to repeat the shape on the glove box side. This will give me a
glove box door cut out of the panel as well. After tracing the pattern
to the wood, I used a power jig saw to carefully cut the shape.
Second step was to get the alignment of all the holes. After marking
the templates, I used calipers to double check the dimentions and make
sure the hole centers were all aligned correctly. You immediatly notice
that the holes are not all in a straight line due to the curvature of
the dash, so the must be aligned in a few distince "blocks". to get the
centers of the larger gage holes, I traced the hole through the original
dash pattern then located the exact center geometrically by using two
chords of the traced circle, subdividing the chords, then running
perpendicular lines to the chord to get their intersection at the exact
center of the holes.
Third step was to drill all the small holes for mounting to the car body
and to attach the lower upholstered frame and the switch holes up to
5/8" diameter. These are easy because they are standard drill bits.
Next comes the bigger holes which require hole cutting bits up to 4". I
cut throuth the back side of the dash until the pilot bit came out the
front side, then turned it over to drill out the rest of the way. This
is to prevent splintering of the front side of the dash. All holes
should be drilled on a drill press to guarantee precision and alignment.
With all the holes drilled, next comes routing out the back side of the
dash to get proper thickness for gages and switches. Also during this
phase the heater and blower controls can be made. The bigger gage holes
are easy. You simply use a router bit with a guide bearing on the lower
tip and set it to the thickness determined by calipers on the old
plastic dash. Then rout a thin indentation just enough for the gage
mount bracket to slip into. The switches are a little more trick, but
not too bad. Since the body of the switch must also be recessed, you
must rout a slot in the back that crosses the whole block of switch
holes and spreads out enough to easily set each switch. Then the most
trickey part is the heater controls. These need slots that go clear
through the front of the dash. The best way not to lose control of your
router is to set up a temporary jig over the dash that prevents the
router from going beyond the hole.
Finally, cutting the glove box hole. This is done with the jig saw and
preferrably a jig. The glove box door will be the piece you cut out of
the dash, so this job must be done VERY carefully. Probably the most
delicate part of the project since there is not trim strip and your
accuracy will determine what you get. Cut the door out with the jig saw
blade slightly angled so the door will open easily and seat well.
Then you brush it off, step back, and VOILA! A nice pretty new exotic
custom dashboard! To finish it off you can either lacquer it or oil and
beeswax. DO NOT use polyurethane varnish because those are not too good
for UV resistance.
Conclusion - Building your own dash is a very nice woodworking project
and adds a touch of class to your car that can not be obtained any other
way, but it is not for everybody. It requires either a good full day of
work in a fairly well equipped wood shop, or several days of spare time
in a good shop, or a lot of tedious careful hand work in a poorly
equipped shop. If you like wood work and have the tools, the job is fun
and very rewarding. If you want a wood-grained dash but do not want to
build your own, the ones from CS are nice and I certainly would not
build one for someone else for less than they charge. The commercially
available dashes are usually marine plywood with a hardwood vaneer. I
am very happy with my new custom dash, which is not yet in, but
everything fits. The last part to fabricate before reinstalling all the
pieces is the brackets to mount the heater controls. These are mounted
on the old one from plastic nubs that stick out the back side. On the
new one, mounting brackest must be fashioned to screw onto the backside.
Now that I am well into the rebuild part of the whole restoration, I
don't even mind the slower pace that at first. That is the key to an
enjoyable project - enjoy the process!
May you all enjoy your projects as much as I am mine.
Best wishes,
Steve Van Ronk
<glblitnpwr(at)nidlink.com>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Sep 05 2000 - 09:43:46 CDT