New build thread - My son's first car

[Steve Jelf]

You're in place, Bill. Thanx...

[dlshady]

Now that school's out for the summer Daniel is starting to make a little progress on his speedster, so I thought I should post an update (being that I did title it a build thread...) We dug out an old frame that I had stashed away for another project and he's using that to dummy up the body out of cheap pine. This way he's learning a lot of valuable skills such as laying out patterns, keeping things symmetrical and most importantly keeping his workspace clean! So far I've been very proud of his progress because we showed him how to make the first bulkhead pattern and he's been off and running by himself from there. He just informed me that tomorrow he's planning to finish the next bulkhead (or station) which will serve as the door latch posts. Once he gets all the stations erected we'll rip some thin pieces of wood and string them front to rear along the body to see how well everything flows, and then make whatever adjustments are necessary. So far his eye for that kind of stuff seems to be pretty good, but time will tell. He does have some funky ideas floating around in that little head of his... Once he's got all that like he wants it then we'll go back and build the body structure out of ash, but he'll need help with that since I'm not yet comfortable letting him use anything but the band saw.

So far I think the proportions look pretty good with the exception of lowering the steering column. I told him that I'd help him dummy up a seat tomorrow so that we could figure out just what needs to be done with the steering column.


Stay tuned!