Truck based woody

[GB SISSON]

Unfortunately we are getting really busy with work in the woodshop again so the wody has to wait a bit. My employee took Thursday off so I went at it all day on my project. Today, being Saturday I got to finish up and now I have the rear fenders set up for good and the plywood subfloor bolted down. The plywood subfloor is some pressure treated 3/4 ply leftover from a bathroom remodel a few years back. Then I used some 1/8" steel sides from an old fire engine to make inner fenders. I have a lot of maple and a lot of marine plywood stashed away. As far as the 80,000.00 needed to build this thing, so far it has been some galvanized bolts from the local hardware store. I have a good running 8ba and a bunch of carbs and distributers, not to mention water pumps and generators and starters. I have collected good used tires all my life as a secondary passion, so I'm good to go there too. This will never be the 1000 point woody some dream of, but it will be a solid example of how a truck based commercial would have been produced on a small scale.

[GB SISSON]

Work has indeed stayed busy, then we have had 6 members of my wife's family visiting since Friday. They caught the morning ferry off the island today so I busted out some scrap lumber, plywood strips and some sheetrock screws and started mocking up the woodie in three dimensions. None of what you see here will be a final part of the wagon, it's only a rough layout. Since I have seen photos of commercial woodies with just two doors like a panel truck, I was tempted, but decided to lay it out as a 4 door wagon. The rear passenger doors will have 4 square corners without a curved cut-out at the rear fender, making them easier to build and far stronger. In the photos you will see I used an extra panel truck passenger side door I had for the mock-up to lead into the shape of the body lines. The panel doors have a square top corner that mimics what I will be building from wood. So far just some sticks and screws, but it is still fun to look at and visualize the outcome. I have about a thousand board feet of clear 1" western white pine, sometimes called sugar pine or pattern pine. I plan to make the two main longitudinal roof rails from 3 laminations of this. It is a very close color match to the maple but easier to machine. It will be covered in black material on the exterior and only exposed on the interior. The structural body will be maple with maple veneer panels. We have a vaccuum press that will press up to a 4x8 sheet, so I can make the panels with exterior glue. My plan is to build the body with the doors and rear gates and retain the ability to lift it off when it's near completion. At that point I will install the engine/tranny and do brakes, kingpins etc without having to crawl around on the floor. I know it's kind of backwards, but I have to keep my interest up and I'm kind of like an excited kid wanting to see the woody come together. The mechanical part is not that exciting as I have done all the procedures many times on past Ford trucks.

[Ralph Moore]

Mock ups are good, gives you an idea of what the end result will look like. And this one looks like it will turn out great!

[GB SISSON]

Got an afternoon to make some progress. Working on the longitudinal roof stringers. They are quite clear pine and the boards laid out flat are shaped sort of like an elongated hockey stick. There are a right and left stack of 5 hockey sticks each laminated up. About 4x4 now and curved in two directions. I know with all the rattle traps I've written about and photographed here, many of you may be rolling your eyes that this beatnick is building some kind of woodie out of scraps and an old hammered pickup. I spend my days building furniture, doors, and cabinetry for clients, who along with their interior designers and architects who are very demanding. After work and weekends I have to do it differently. 'Free style' if you will. I am enclosing a shot or two of a dining set I recently built for our Washington State Treasurer and his wife so you will see I can do proper work when called upon to do so. I feel pulled to do a neat job of the woodie, might even spray on the paint when I get all the nice sheet metal I have saved in one of my sheds. Think I gotta brush the varnish though. Too many years working in boatyards in my younger years.

[Flowmeister]

I don't know about anybody else, but i'm diggin' what you're doing here.

[JSeery]

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Nice looking work!

[GB SISSON]

Thanks guys, I'm itching to build the door posts and rear corners now. Trying to work on parts that I already have the material for. Looks like I need to order some maple which would arrive a week from today. In the mean time I will work on the 59 ab that is the most likely engine for this project. With all the flathead trucks I have had over the years they have all been 4 speeds. Never owned or driven a car or half ton with a 3 speed. Are they syncro-mesh units? Like the general public could drive this thing when complete?

[sidevalve8ba]

Yes, second and third are synchronized and if working properly they shift, as my old friend from Jersey says, "smooth as buttah".

[jerseyboy]

Dining set is beautiful! I don't think anyone can question your skills. Besides, when building anything, there is more than one way to skin a cat.

Keep V-8ing and 4-banging!

[GB SISSON]

Thanks for the vote of confidence. The people on this site are so highly experienced and professional I sometimes feel like some kind of a hick the way I do things. 20 years ago I had occasion to stop at the 'Sportsman Shop' in Alger Wa. Bob Brown builds only ford Sportsman wood bodied convertibles. He does all phases from the ground up. A mossy old metal building in the woods, a bunch of homemade tools his son as his employee, a bunch of parts trucks and a hand painted wooden sign over the door. After I spent an afternoon there I was humbled and no longer felt the need for high end tooling and european made woodworking tools and cad drawings (whatever they are). My shop was kind of like his. His cars grace the likes of Pebble Beach and win high honors with the best of what comes out of the most exclusive shops in the country. Correct me if I'm wrong. I know very little about show cars having only been to one car show and that as a visitor. Didn't look all that fun to me, but neither does golf and that is hugely popular they say.

[GB SISSON]

Got my 3" maple a couple weeks ago. Have been mapping out my strategy from here. Today I got a rare break to finish up steel brackets and measure all the angles and lengths for the body pillars. During the last month I have been scouting up grille bars for most of the hulks I hauled from Twisp because if my property is gonna be covered with a bunch of jailbar trucks, they can at least have their jailbars. Work has stayed really busy in the furniture realm and that pays the bills so I guess that's a plus. Next weekend we will be going to Shelton Wa while helping my wife's son and his family move to a new job. Hoping to looking at the '40 ford woodie that resides there for inspiration, but also understand I won't be working on mine til after Christmas (or to some 'the holidays')

[VeryTangled]

Originally Posted by GB SISSON

Work has stayed really busy in the furniture realm and that pays the bills so I guess that's a plus.

Yes to that!

[willowbilly3]

Did you ever get your jailbars and windshields from the post office? I might have another jailbar ton and a half front clip next time I go to ND. He wants 2 bills but I can do some trading. I have a plan for 2 sets of those fenders to get cut up and make one set of rear fenders for an imaginary dually project. Anyway, any straight bars I find will have your name on them.

[Fordors]

GB, somehow I missed your post about visiting the Sportsman Shop, and I couldn't agree more. It is not the shop or equipment that accomplishes tasks, it is the builder. The truck is coming along nicely and that table and chairs ain't half bad either!

[RalphM]

Looking good! How did you tie the header in place?
I just noticed in the second set of pics, second picture you've got a tool I have. It's hanging on the post, nearest I can figure it's to bust down tires, off wire wheels.
Am I right?

[GB SISSON]

The header has 2 wood 'biscuits' , two dowels and a 6" x 5/16" star drive construction lag into each maple post. I have the steel now to fab the welded interior brackets as well. It will also have another wood member approx 2" x 5" attached to it at at near 90 degrees that will be routed for the ceiling slats. The front header will be similar in most respects. My truck woodie was never intended to look anything like the Ford built station wagon. It will look a bit like a '40 Ford woodie wagon, but not a whole lot. It would never get points at pebble beach, that's for sure....That tool is a tire bead breaker. I would be lost without it. I have broken down countless truck tires on split rims with it, as well as modern tubeless tires. I use a cheater pipe often on the lever. Beads come loose with this thing. They have to.....

[GB SISSON]

I was thinking about this last night.... The header is tied into the rails with biscuits, dowels and another 6" lag. It is the roof stringers that fasten down to the rear pillars. All the joints are also fastened with 3M 5200 marine adhesive sealer. Very tenacious and stays rubbery for flex. For 25 bucks a tube it ought to. At the forward header the stringers are mortised into the windshield posts with the 5200, but I couldnt be sure I had all the voids filled so I drilled a 3/8 hole from the inside and through the steel and the stringer and pumped in a half a tube of the adhesive like you would a grease gun. Messy, but it cleaned up ok. Well, back to the paying work in the shop.....

[nospartsman]

When you get your Woody done you will be swamped with orders to build more.
Back in the day(they still do) Ford offered "drive away: chassis with just a cowl. The one without a windshield was often used on moving vans with large overhang above the windshield of their own design. The cowl with the header would lend itself to another Woody. Although these are not for sale. There should be a few more stashed somewhere.

[GB SISSON]

I have a nice example of the cowl without windshield. It is exactly like the one you show. Today I mounted the wood header over the windshield into my woodie. After that it was the one larger curved roof beam at the B pillar. I will post a pic later, but my wife just got home from the mainland with 'take-out mexican food'. We don't have anything like that on the island. Thank God for microwaves. (and smart wives)

[GB SISSON]

The header has more curve than the beam behind it. I felt much better when I looked at the similar interior shot of a correct 47 woodie station wagon. My header has a curved bottom instead of Ford's vee shape. That just evolved through the build. It will have a valence covering it's rearward face so we don't see the unsightly spaces and gaps. I'm hoping to cut the other six roof beams in the shop tomorrow morning before we resume regular 'for pay' work because I'm all set up for the radius ..... The last photo is from a barner that build a correct ford style woodie wagon, not a renegade 'off the cuff' commercial job like mine. I am basing my version roughly on this and the youtube video by Alec Guerreo and what I think a small shop in a small town would have built from a pickup for a local resort to pick up their guests at the train station. I'm thinking in 1947 there were a lot of skilled woodworkers in the US job market. They got their training building wood airframes, boats and during the recent war would have been trained in the building of d-day gliders, pt boats and all manner of complicated wooden conveyences.