I’m on nights for the next few & the boys are off from school for Fall Break so I don’t plan on getting much done on the hot rod for the next couple of weeks. I did manage, however, to sneak a few trips into the garage this weekend, including one this morning immediately after waking up on my way back in from taking out the trash. Like a kid coming home from the store, I just didn’t find the straight way back to the house. 

To get my welding fix in for the day I walked-in, turned on just enough lights to light-up where I was working, fired up the welder, started solidifying the driver’s side wheel opening and began making a second pass over the passenger’s side to fill in any gaps leftover from the first go ’round. There’s still some hours left to go back here. ’ just showing where it is at the moment.

A few trips in-and-out of the house to find everybody doing their own thing afforded me the opportunity to go back out and start the rear pan after breakfast. I know “real” hot rods don’t have hitches tucked-away under their trunks, but I can see fabricating a teardrop trailer to go with this family sedan in my future. But there’s plenty of time for that stuff. I’m just thinking out loud.

Thanks for visiting. I’ve got to go. I’m gonna try to catch a few Zzz’s before I go into work. We’ll keep the lights on for ya’.

It’s hard to have visitors in the shop when I’m doing a lot of what I like to do. There’s just a lot of noise when the bodywork is going on and when somene stops by either conversation or productivity suffer, usually the latter. It’ll be easier when I get to the actual mechanics, but in the meantime here’s some real time video recorded in the shop around 8:22 tonight to let you see where I am… no editing. 

The white plywood is a pattern cutout from the passenger side to keep everything symetrical and the music in the background is from the Blues Hour segment of the Vintage Voltage radio show broadcast over the airwaves from the local college radio station every Saturday night.

 Enjoy!

Thanks for all the messages in response to the last post (email, FB, etc). The support is greatly appreciated. I was going to start this one off by writing about how my rotary sander, an ’heirloom’ I acquired in 2000 after my father’s passing, breathed its last heated breath two weeks ago, but looking at the date on the pictures I can see that it was already more than a month ago – Aug 27th to be exact. Since it was ‘vintage’ enough that even basic parts like brushes were no longer available I’ve done a few things to it over the years to keep it going, but be that as it may its time had come. Continue Reading »

Shortly after our family’s return from the DC roadtrip, I had someone invite themselves into our home & garage to give their unsolicited input on the ’36 and all things life in general – not the least of which included how I should be raising my kids. I won’t even get into the other, but regarding the car I was told which engine I should use, that this body was too rough to start with, that I didn’t have the right tools or shop, etc. When I finally and politely responded with, “When you do yours you can do it the way you want.” the answer I got was “I would do something like that but I don’t know how to weld”   Continue Reading »

Click the Images to Enlarge

Some time ago I wrote about using the old rear door tops to get the oval shape I’m shooting for on the rear-side windows. To stretch the curve in that piece, I cut slits in it and the existing rear-side surround every 1/2″ and started reworking the peices into the shape I was looking for.

The rear curve still needs to be worked and put back in but you can see the old two-window opening taking its singular shape with the slits now welded and rough-ground. The bracing is still installed in the interior, a leftover from when I did the chop, but I’m leaving it there for good measure until I complete both sides. There’s a shot of the same opening from another angle here.

Continue Reading »