after building my last car, a 25 dodge roadster, and having to do some major rust repairs to the body, i thought it would be great to build a car with nice new panels. so, me and a mate have started to make our own A model roadster pickup from scratch. because we want to build one each and i also want to build one for my son we have made all the hammer forms out of steel so they will last. so far we have the cowl done, and the door posts. am working on the roadster doors at the moment, will post some picks of these when i get a bit further craig
I have the Covell Hammer form video. It shows some basic form production. I'd really like to see what the forms look like for the cowl pieces!
we also watched the covell videos and they gave us a few ideas. first of all i borrowed some original A panels from a mate and pulled them apart with the intention of making each panel the same as henry did them, but with out the huge presses and using hammerforms instead. the cowl looked the hardest as it has the curves going in 2 directions. first i cut out the rusty fuel tank and cleaned up the inside so it looke like a single skin cowl top. then i ran some 5 mm by 30 flat bar through a large roller to get the approximate inside shape of the skin. i cut and bent to hoops for the front and back of the cowl. basically i welded up the whole structure inside the cowl and them had to pry the skin off. then it was just a matter of filling in a lot of gaps and bracing it up really well. this buck takes 2 guys to lift. then you clamp the 1mm sheet onto the buck using shitloads of clamps and start bending and hammering till you get the shape close. the outside edges sorta pucker up so we used a little bit of shrinking with a torch then a bit of wheeling to get rid of the wrinkles craig
the firewall is easy as its flat, just add the swage lines to the top half. the cowl side are also pretty easy as the can be folde up on a bender then english wheeled to get the right curve. the door posts are a bit harder. the buck for these are made from 10mm steel run through the roller to get the right curve, 25mm flat bar welded on to represent the swage line. again you just clamp the steel on, using as many clamps as you can find and you start hammering. i find a piece of 400mm by 6mm aluminium flat bar is a good drift to hammer into the swage edges to get a nice sharp edge. at the end of the day you have forearms like popeye craig
the inner doors skins are a little bit harder. split a door open so you get to see exactly how it goes together i wanted the doors to be 75mm longer so allow that in your measurements. again the buck is made up from really heavy steel with a 6mm round rod welde around the edge to replicate the original panel wich has this to hide the edge of a door panel if used. i am not putting any holes in the panel, just a swage pattern which should be added before you start hammering the inside of the buck is open so that the swage lines dont interfere with the sheet being clamped down
the inner skins have rounded corners at the bottom and you end up with an excess of material once you start hammering. i used snips to cut close to the corner so both pieces would overlap. hammer a bit more and then you have the problem of 2 thicknesses of metal so i run a 1mm cutting blade right up to the corner, this allows us to weld a small section which will be right at the bottom of the door
someone should sell hammerforms so i can buy and brag i built a model a and so I am not tempted to buy a brookville.
thanks for the comments they might not be the right way to do them but they work for us, and as long as the finished product looks good thats all that matters craig
thats why we decided to do our own, as all the guys doing replacement panels in australia are on the east coast. also when they are that far away you cant see the quality and i would have been pissed if i had of bought some panels and they arived looking like flat pieces just bent up in a folder, which is what i had been told some of the stuff doing the rounds at the swap meets looks like craig
some of his videos may put you to sleep, but they are well worth it. i would love to have half his skills
the doors are nearly finished so we are about to start on the back of the cab. problem is we dont have one to copy or measure from. most of the model a rpu's over here are glass and the back sections have been made up. i would rather get some good measurments of an original one if i can. here in australia our rpu's used coach built backs not the ones you guys have in the US. anybody able to put me onto a site that might have some measurements and drawings or if someone has a rpu back section, how about doing an aussie a favour and running a measuring tape over it. will post some pics tommorrow of the nice smooth inner door skin craig
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