Well I think I found something I'm actually good at! The glove box door is all done. It took me about an hour to do the turning. This is gonna look great once the dash is painted and installed. My buddy saw the door it before it was turned and with a look of bewilderment asked if I made that. I said yeah from scratch why? Almost as if he thought I bought it. Wait till he see's it now that it is all done. I don't think anyone offers an engine turned (anything) for 33/34 fords. I know they do in the 32's. Hell you can get anything for a 32!
In the 70's I remember in some model kit's there where Engine Turning stickers, I now want to make some inlays for my Sedan , My nephews the W need to make some out of pearl , but I like the engine turning better , I have a 42 inch table on my mill , But that is just gorgeous !!!!!!
These panels make the gauge panel look like crap so I'm probably going to do a do-over on that to make it look better. Plus the pattern doesn't match so It would probably bother the hell out of me every time I drove it.
I've bought some of those Cratex sticks. Couldn't see a major difference in the medium to coarse ones and they were only about $10 a stick. I'm using a 3/8" for my project and it looks ok, but it's not pronounced enough. I tried different things like dowel rods and sandpaper, etc., but the paper wouldn't stick even with 3m glue (too much wd40?) so that's why I used them. And it's too late to start over. I also have a 1/4" I would like to try, but my hopes are not up.
Yeah I didn't have good luck with them either. I'm just using a 3/4" hard rubber rod I found at work and some 80 grit lapping compound. I didn't want mine rough I wanted it smooth but still sharp and I think I found a good balance. If you want to go smaller I found some rubber stops (Bumpers) on FEEBAY that would work. Remember the smaller the diameter the longer it will take. http://www.ebay.com/itm/8-Hard-Rubb...200?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3aa34ea808
Thanks Duece and HRP your kind words and encuragement are greatly appreciated. I had some extra time on my hands after work tonight so I thought I'd put the dash all together. Though it can't be seen in the pictures, the gauge panel looks like crap. The swirls are zig-zag pattern while mine are 50% overlap and the swirls were all galled up with deep scratches. I'll bet I took .020 off before I got rid of all the deep scratches and swirls. I started with 280 grit paper and worked my way to 1500 and then some polish and now I'm ready to turn the gauge panel. I'll get it all jigged up and ready tomorrow night and probably turn it on Thursday (jigged? Is that a word?). Spell check didn't kick it back to me so It must be...LOL Thank god for spell check.
I'm really impressed that you can do this with the gauge holes, back in my Bugatti days the holes were drilled after all the turning. Bob
I suppose using the rubber helps with that. I'm also not pressing very hard on the edges but I am letting it sit there a couple seconds longer to make up for the lack of pressure.
I modified the jig to accept the gauge panel. It's all bolted down and ready for turning tomorrow after work. I used the gauge holes to make it even. The funny thing is after I was done turning the last piece I didn't notice I had left a lapping compound icicle on the tip of the rubber. So I used that to indicate the hole locations....LOL
Okay so this is the last dash pictures I will bore you with I promise. I did the gauge panel tonight and I think it was well worth the effort. Though I didn't get the horizontal plain to match the other 2 ( I started lower on this piece) I'm happy with it. At least the pattern matches. I included a before and after shot. Now I can move on to bigger and better things.
The Jalopy Journal
