A Little Woodworking for the Gray Ghost Restoration

Hello Gray Ghost fans!

Well, spring chores are almost done.  What a relief!  I had more gumballs from the sweet gum trees in my yard this year than ever before.  They are almost impossible for the leaf blower to dislodge.  Late falling leaves are gone, blown into the woods.  Fertilizer is down and showers are due this weekend.  All is well on the back 40....  That means that I finally have some time to do something, anything, on the Gray Ghost.

Even though the spring chores have been eating up my time, it doesn't mean that I haven't been thinking and planning my next tasks on the Gray Ghost.  So today, I spent a little time in the garage doing wood working.  I know what you're thinking.  How is woodworking related to an antique truck restoration?  Easy.  It's related to the third brake light!  Remember?  We talked about this in this post about the third brake light.  Anyway, I had actually started this work a couple of weeks ago and wasn't satisfied with how it turned out.  So, in my spring chore downtime, I tried to think it through.  Today, I made those changes to my initial effort and I think it's going to turn out pretty nice.

The whole point of the woodworking is to provide an attachment point for the third brake light.  The light will be centered on the back side of the bedside frame that I'm making.  It will sit just under the rear window, so it should be easily visible to cars that might be behind me.  Especially considering that when I restored it, I used a super bright LED bulb:

And that brightness level is in a lit garage!  In order to keep the light stable, I decided to add side assemblies that are attached to the back.  The thought is that it won't rock back and forth if it is attached to the side parts.  So, on to the woodworking stuff:

Mostly, it is standard woodworking for me.  Even though the outside of the truck will be kept "ratty", I wanted this to look nice, as it's something that everyone will see when I'm finally driving down the road.  With that in mind, I took the time to add a few finish touches to the wood.  At this point, I'm not done with the actual construction, just the rough fit on one side and the back.  So, once all of the actual construction is done, I'll disassemble everything and run it through the router to soften the edges.  Then it'll be sanded, stained a light color and given a coat of polyurethane.  After all of that, I'll reassemble it onto the truck.  Then I'll be ready to add that stunning, 60+ year old light!

Here are a couple of shots showing the "high tech" technique for laying out a radius on the stakes in such a way that it is repeatable:

This is a small jar of wood filler.  Add a little painter's tape and 2 marks.  The marks were determined by aligning the jar onto the piece of wood that needed the radius until I liked the curve.  Then I marked the jar so it could be used as a tool.  Here's another shot of the jar being used as a tool:

The "X" shows me what needs to be removed.  I could have used either the band saw or a jig saw, but chose instead to use the oscillating spindle sander.  Gray Ghost fans know that I wouldn't lie or hide the truth...I stink at using the band saw!  And frankly, didn't want the hassle of taking out yet another tool.  So off to the spindle sander!  Here's a shot:

Pretty straightforward stuff.  Just need some patience and a bit of eye hand coordination.  In the end it looks like this:

Just take it right up to the line.  When I run it through the router, it'll round the edges over and the pencil line will be gone.  I don't have any shots of the partial assembly on the truck, but that too was straightforward.  Using 1/4" x 3" carriage bolts to hold it all together.  Right now, everything is loose fit.  It'll get tightened down once it is installed for good.

Now, before I show you this pic, I have to keep true to my goals.  Showing the good, bad and ugly.  This pic may cover all three bases at once!  One of my realities is that I don't have a garden shed.  Right now, the back of the truck holds alot of junk that would otherwise be in such a shed.  It's just one of the things that people doing this have to deal with.  And now, without further ado, the passenger side and back bedsides:

Disregarding the junk, I think it'll turn out nice.  Like all my woodworking projects and the Gray Ghost, too, I can see it finished in my mind.  I just need to make the wood look like what I can see.

As a trivia point, the stakes in the middle are not attached to the truck, at all.  Only the front and rear stakes sit in stake pockets.  The other two stakes float, as does the bottom board.  All are approximately 1/4" above the metal bedside and cut on a 30 degree angle, which matches the angle of the bedside.  I did this to prevent further corrosion of the bedside.  At some time in its past, the truck had bedsides that touched the metal and caused it to rust.  This will prevent that.

That's all for now.  Just wanted to catch up.  Sorry for the rambling nature of the beginning of this post.  Once I finish all of the woodworking and install that light, I'll post a wrap up post for this project.

As always, it doesn't hurt to hit one of the buttons at the bottom and it's completely anonymous!