1947 ford ranger...

[d1gbethdave]

Oct 31, 2020 17:20:27 GMT Dez said:

Oct 31, 2020 17:04:53 GMT d1gbethdave said:

How much was the ply?
And what texture does it have?

It’s a super shiny gloss finish on the back, and this finish on the front. Matt with a fine bar grip imprint.


24mm stuff isn’t cheap, it was a few pence short of £100 for a 8x4 sheet inc. VAT. And I had to go to fakenham to collect it as I could only find two suppliers in the whole country, but I was going that way-ish to collect something else so it worked out ok.

It’s usually about £60 for 12mm and £80 for 18mm.

We use 'hex board' for doing flightcases.
Tends to be BB ply, but costs about the same.
But we get good prices on all of it.
Try avoid the stuff from China/made from palm trees, literally smells like curse word when you cut it, and it lingers.

[Dez]

Oct 31, 2020 18:05:46 GMT d1gbethdave said:

Oct 31, 2020 17:20:27 GMT Dez said:

It’s a super shiny gloss finish on the back, and this finish on the front. Matt with a fine bar grip imprint.


24mm stuff isn’t cheap, it was a few pence short of £100 for a 8x4 sheet inc. VAT. And I had to go to fakenham to collect it as I could only find two suppliers in the whole country, but I was going that way-ish to collect something else so it worked out ok.

It’s usually about £60 for 12mm and £80 for 18mm.

We use 'hex board' for doing flightcases.
Tends to be BB ply, but costs about the same.
But we get good prices on all of it.
Try avoid the stuff from China/made from palm trees, literally smells like curse word when you cut it, and it lingers.

Yeah this is birch. Seems pretty nice quality tbh, I’ve not found any cavities or inclusions when working it.

[colnerov]

Oct 31, 2020 18:14:35 GMT Dez said:

Yeah this is birch. Seems pretty nice quality tbh, I’ve not found any cavities or inclusions when working it.

Yeah, I should hope not at £100 a sheet.

We used to have it on the trailers at work but it was treacherous to walk on in the wet, our MT had to smother it in slip resistant paint which kind of defeated the object of having a nice looking finish to the deck.

Colin

[ndg]

I found Chiltern timber were good for various thicknesses of Riga board (brand name for their phenolic ply). I've used 30mm for my work bench.

[Dez]

Oct 31, 2020 19:02:56 GMT colnerov said:

Oct 31, 2020 18:14:35 GMT Dez said:

Yeah this is birch. Seems pretty nice quality tbh, I’ve not found any cavities or inclusions when working it.

Yeah, I should hope not at £100 a sheet.

We used to have it on the trailers at work but it was treacherous to walk on in the wet, our MT had to smother it in slip resistant paint which kind of defeated the object of having a nice looking finish to the deck.

Colin

I’ve had a fair bit of experience with it, also mostly on trailers, and not found it too bad at all. Granted it’s not a totally not slip surface, but it keeps away the slime you get on normal plain wood which makes a big difference.

[Dez]

Oct 31, 2020 21:56:21 GMT ndg said:

I found Chiltern timber were good for various thicknesses of Riga board (brand name for their phenolic ply). I've used 30mm for my work bench.

I think they may have been the other supplier who had it.

You can get 12mm and 18mm everywhere, thicker stuff has limited suppliers. But obviously the thinner sheets would have needed additional metalwork to support it with a 12mm deep groove.

[Dez]

So, that £100 sheet of ply. First I chucked it on the trestles (upside down of course) and cut it down to size. That was the easier bit, but it is difficult to mark with anything that shows up. Silver streak welders pencil was what I used in the end.
The bed is 7’ long exactly, and is 46” wide at the frame but the swages add 3/8” either side as it’s widest point, so it was cut to that and then I’ll notch out the corners where the swages aren’t afterwards.


I just used a hand held evolution panel saw that I use for general building work, as I heard phenolic is hard on ‘normal’ blades. It cut it with no issues and the blade wasnt exactly new. I used a guide clamped on for cutting the foot wide bit off the end, then used the edge fence for ripping the narrow bit off the edge.


The high-stress job is mashing the router through it multiple times to do the big (34mm wide X 12mm deep) grooves for the tracking. After much measuring and marking I decided to have it at about 9” in from the edge to the centre of the tracking, as this looked about best and it’ll mean they act as slide rails as well as tie downs. A strip of steel was clamped down offset by half the router base measurement to act as a guide.

The router I used was only a trend t5, so quite a small machine really.

It’s a messy job, huge amounts of dust and many passes so as not to over face the router. I was doing each cut 3x times to get the depth, and I only had a 16mm bit so it’s two cuts wide with a little tidying pass down the middle to remove the last couple of mil after.


The tracking is a snug fit and just drops in with a slight tap of the rubber hammer.


Turn the whole thing round, make a lot more mess-


And then you have two.


I like the way it sort of echoes a stock earlier style bed with the wood planks joined by metal rub strips. By this point in time ford beds actually had a steel skin over wooden planks.

Here how the tracking sits in relation to the surface. Proud enough stuff will side on it, low profile enough that it’s not hindering you moving stuff about.


After talking with people who use it commercially, It’ll get the cut edges painted with epoxy resin and the tracking sikaflexed/tigersealed into the grooves to seal it.

I’m fairly relieved that bit iOS over, I was envisioning all manner of ways of it going wrong and destroying my expensive materials.
Just the corner notches to do and I’m ready to test fit!

[jamesd1972]

Nice, was wondering about sealing it up and whether you use epoxy or pu and the answer was both ! proper job.
James

[d1gbethdave]

Are you bolting it to the ply?

[Dez]

Nov 2, 2020 13:41:12 GMT d1gbethdave said:

Are you bolting it to the ply?

Yep it bolts through with countersunk bolts every 4” to be load rated. Some will then go through the framework as well to tie it all together.

[d1gbethdave]

Nov 2, 2020 18:54:20 GMT Dez said:

Nov 2, 2020 13:41:12 GMT d1gbethdave said:

Are you bolting it to the ply?

Yep it bolts through with countersunk bolts every 4” to be load rated. Some will then go through the framework as well to tie it all together.

Tee nuts?

[Dez]

Nov 2, 2020 19:31:07 GMT d1gbethdave said:

Nov 2, 2020 18:54:20 GMT Dez said:

Yep it bolts through with countersunk bolts every 4” to be load rated. Some will then go through the framework as well to tie it all together.

Tee nuts?

I have a bag full but I’m not sure if using something that damages the integrity of the ply is a good idea when I’m looking for maximum longevity. Flat washers and nylocks might be better, it’s not like they’ll be in the way of anything.

[Dez]

A significant development has occurred.

After months, nay years of looking, these have just fallen into my lap.




They are off a 48-52 f2 truck, so are very long. Which is good as it means I need to shorten rather than lengthen. And they’re exactly the right shape for my rear fenders and bed so will just bolt straight up at the back, it’ll be the front end I need to reshape.

Truck running boards are so hard to get, they never seem to come up for sale so I jumped on these like a fat kid on cake. The catch? They were in Manchester and I was in Colchester.

Luckily I was visiting my northern estate in Yorkshire to do some works, and more conveniently they were on the east side of mank, so a quick blast over woodhead one very foggy night and I was in soon in gorton relieving a chap of them.

And here they are once I got back to Yorkshire. Mega happy with those, mostly because the patina is about right to match the rest of the truck, whereas if I made new ones they would look new and stand out.

[glenanderson]

Good stuff. I imagine that, when the trucks worked for a living, these were easily damaged and soon discarded when the cost of replacement outstripped the value of the truck. Looking forward to seeing them on. 👍

[brc76]

Nov 14, 2020 11:35:41 GMT Dez said:

Thats a doll's chair for scale. Right?

[Dez]

Nov 14, 2020 11:49:37 GMT glenanderson said:

Good stuff. I imagine that, when the trucks worked for a living, these were easily damaged and soon discarded when the cost of replacement outstripped the value of the truck. Looking forward to seeing them on. 👍

Pretty much. They’re definitely the first thing to get bashed up, especially the drivers one. They’re not really strong enough to take a lot of standing on unless you’re directly over the iron that bolts to the chassis underneath as they’re only made from 17 gauge, but people do and they start to crack, then road and drivetrain vibrations spread those cracks all round the brackets. They’re complicated pressings that are difficult to straighten out properly too, even with it off the vehicle.

You’ll also notice that they rust where the diagonal strengthening ribs weld on, mostly due to them being a really poor design afterthought and not being sealed to the elements. Even dry state ones rot out here.
I’m hoping to lose most of that when I shorten them though.

[Dez]

Nov 14, 2020 11:50:53 GMT brc76 said:

Nov 14, 2020 11:35:41 GMT Dez said:

Thats a doll's chair for scale. Right?

😄
Not quite!
The corner where the ceiling/wall meet in the top left of the pic is at 8’ though, making them over 7 feet long. Definitely caused a bit of an ‘oh sh1t’ moment when I got to Manchester and saw how long they were!
They just went in a s-max with the front seat all the way forward and the backrest wound up so it was touching the dash.

[merryck]

Are those holes in the metal three-quarters of the way up intentional, or is it just coincidence that it's on both? Will you repair them?

[Dez]

Nov 14, 2020 16:36:36 GMT merryck said:

Are those holes in the metal three-quarters of the way up intentional, or is it just coincidence that it's on both? Will you repair them?

It’s where the aforementioned strengthening ribs rot through.

“They all do that sir” 😂

[Dez]

Back at the workshop after my northern excursion, to find bits from all over the world have arrived.

Speedo has turned up. Don’t actually look too bad for something from the budget end of the market. £80 is still a fair whack, but you can spend 3-4 times that and end up with something no better.
(Excuse the dust and marks on the face it still has the protective film on).


Was supposed to be from China and take forever but turned up in only a week or so and had a RM 48 postage sticker so I guess they’re shipping from UK distribution centres if they have stock.
Predictably the bezel is a fair bit bigger than the gauge diameter stated, I’ll probably have to cut the surround a bit for it to fit, but not into the actual dash so I can still make it look ok.
The push button for programming Is also much smaller than the images suggested, it’s barely bigger than the warning lights so is probably usable, although is black plastic and I’d prefer chrome.

Auxiliary gauges also turned up, India this time. Again arrived in much less than the quoted time, Although fedex are trying to charge me £17 duty and fees on an item that didn’t cost that much in the first place, so they can get to f-k.
There’s also the fact they’re 59mm diameter not 52mm as listed 🙄
So I’ll have to rejig the panel for them to fit. Good job I forget to order the ally to make it or I’d Proabaly have already cut em out.
I Bought a set of 4 but I don’t want the ammeter or oil pressure gauge, just these two.
Most important thing about them is they’re a pretty good match in terms of face, bezel and needle design to the speedo. I liked the half sweep rising needles as it echoes the originals. I’m tempted to do the needles green though as I liked the colour continuity with the originals being green and matching the indicator stalk and overall colour scheme, but i Probably won’t bother tbh.


Lastly a bag full of warning lights. Nice little chrome bezels with satin silver logos. Look pretty decent to say they were about £2.50 each. These did actually come from China.


I ordered some ally to make the panel, it cost a whopping £4 delivered.
once I’ve done that I’ve got to decipher the existing wiring to get them connected up.