Tech week! Lets make an ashtray door using rocks and sticks and fire!

I am adding a helper bag system to Cool57's cool 57 fairlane,



and he asked if I could hide the controls and such in the ashtray opening.

Like a dumbass I said sure! His Fairlane ashtray lid rolls under/inside the dash and while the opening itself is big enough to do what needed, the space taken up by the door inside the dash made the hole to small.

Looked at it for a bit and figured that I could modify the stock door to swing to the outside. The stock door didnt follow the countours of the dash very well either, it had to be flatter so it could curl under.



Add to the fact that the step in the bottom would have to go too so after a little more thought I got it in my head it would be easier to make a new one.

easier,, hmmm ok how can I screw that up? I know,, lets do it caveman style, no special tools. No bead/step roller, no brake, nothing more than a couple hammers (rock/sticks), a vice and some scrap steel.

The idea here is to make it so anyone can do this at home. Yeah its an ashtray big deal right? Well if you change the measurements a bit this will also work for making glove box doors too.

Hell if you blow them up big enough you could make a door door lol!

This took about 4 hours or so to finish and half of that was spent figuring out how to do it without cheating. Lets get started shall we....

first thing, I had a door to copy so it was fairly easy to get dimensions for the start, if your missing your door, just cover the opening with masking tape and cut around the edges and use that as your pattern.

we arent looking for contours yet, just overall size so a flat pattern works good.

take you pattern over to the bench and draw it out on your sheetmetal. I made it a bit oversize so once the contours and such were added I could trim to the perfect size.



This will be the inner skin, and it will need a step in it to make it rigid. No step roller,, hmmm. good thing I fixed the floors in the falcon, cause you can use the same beading technique from that on this one too.

I marked the outline of the step



and clamped it over a piece of 1/8" thick steel plate with the edge of the steel along the outline.



The outline should be 1/4-5/16" in from the finished edge.

edit: remember this is slightly oversized, so measure in 3/8" in from the outer edge so when its trimmed to fit it will end up at 1/4-5/16". Hey it was real early in the am when I did this thread.


Hammer the edge down using a deadblow rubber rock on a stick.



Once that side is done move to the next, make sure the corner of the outline is lined up with the corner of the plate underneath.



DO NOT DO ALL FOUR SIDES!!! leaving the bottom unfinished will give you a cheat later.. We'll get back to this in a minute.

 

now for the curve,, I just bent it by hand till it was close. This caused a couple of puckers in the raised portion. dont worry yet, we have to shrink that part anyway to make it stiff.

This is one of the few times that I use a torch to shrink anything, propane torch works smurfectly. FIRE WOOO HOOOOOOOO!!!! (put the kittys in the office for this part, they are no help with this one and burnt whiskers stink!.)

in order to get it to shrink properly you'll need more heat in the corners, marked that out with fancy squiggles so you can see where to heat it more.



YOU DO NOT HAVE TO HEAT THE METAL HOT ENOUGH TO CHANGE ITS COLOR FOR THIS TO WORK!!!!

Several light heatings will produce a lot nicer finished product. I heated and cooled the piece and checked against the dash several times before I was happy.

Now for any puckers that you put in manhandling it for the curve, put your rubber rock in the vise, hold the pucker over the sweet spot and lightly whack at it with a smooth faced rock/stick.



You may have to work this a couple times too, again smaller whacks will get you a nicer finish.

this is what you should end up with,, note the one spot that is darkened, thats all the heat required.



now double and triple check your fit for size and contours!







once you know its gonna be ok you can finish stepping the lower edge. The idea about leaving this open will allow you to adjust for any top to bottom adjustments without getting the step to close to the edge.




sometimes rolling in a contour can change things on the hyperspace level and then it wont fit.

okay now lets fit it to the hole.

tape your new piece in place, then using more tape layout the overall outside dimensions. dont use a straight edge to do this, tape has enough flexibility to allow for any curvature of the openings.



Keep your gaps the size you want them to be once the outer skin is layed in place. We are going to use the inner as the pattern for the outer skin, and will trim the inner back a touch to make it fit inside the outer. once you have it taped up with the proper gaps, draw a line against the outer edge of the tape and hack it to size. Dont try and cut to the tape, it can squirm around a bit and change the shape of the line.

now before we get any further we need to address how to attach the hinges, being that this one was total custom piece of crap that wont fit anything else I just welded a couple tabs at the edge of the step to bolt the hinges onto.



love my tig! for those of you with a mig, you can cut a slot and slide the tab into that and weld from the other side so it wont show.

Now for the umpteenth time check it again the opening, we are about to start making and installing the outer skin and if it dont fit now, its for sure not gonna fit after!

 

Cool ! Like the idea.

 

ok, now for the outer skin, hold the inner down on your next peice, and mark the areas that touch, add witness marks where it starts to lose contact.


then lay it down and finish marking the outline. If it slips line your marks back up and go again!



measure out 1/4" from those lines and layout the cut lines. you'll need to cut the corners off so it has room to fold, leave a bit hanging over at the corners so you have something to work with when we round them.



Now we can just load it up in the brake and bend the edges to a 90 and,,, yeah,, no tools,, gotcha...

Ok heres how ya do it with no brake....










Soft rock/stick for this,, helper is optional....
work your way around the straight lines, and dont worry about the corners yet.




ok now lets worry about rounding those corners, grind a radius on the corner of your dolly, lay the piece over it and whack away, hard smooth faced rock for this one...

 

now we can trim the inner to fit the outer, it wont take much, about a pen width or so, this isnt critical if you over cut it, as long as you can get within 1/4" of the line it wont show.





it was about this time I realized that I needed something to hold it shut, the stocker was spring loaded and that wasnt gonna cut it here. I just made a couple legs that grab the opening when its shut and welded those on too.


alright! now we are ready to stick these arguementative suckers together!

I primed and paint the insides of both pieces and let dry.



now fold the bottem edge over far enough that the inner can be slid under it and begin folding the sides over.



once you get to the deep part of the curve things get real fun, I would work one side then the other and kinda walked the 2 together.

I did end up using a lot of downward pressure on the inner to get it under the fold. had I wanted to I could have used the shrinker to help it a long, but that would have been cheating...

 

wheeew I hate typing,,, last one!

since I had to put some extra pressure to get the 2 parts into one, the assembly flattened out a bit so I coaxed it back into the proper shape by squeezing it a bit in the vice...



then final adjusments were made by hammering a bit on the backside over the padded open jaws of my vise, dont hit it at the edge when you do this, it may cause damage to the front (show) side of the outer skin, so hit it where the purple thing is pointed..



I also ended up with a slight "gather" at the corners, so I hit them real quick with the welder to shrink them up and ground them clean,



and it did need a skim coat of mud, there were a couple dings and the center of the outer skin was a bit lower than the edges, but it is less than a 1/16th deep.

after filler/primer.




heres the inner with the hinges on it,,


and with the controls and such in the mockup dash. minus the holder closers. all the gaps have since been filled to, more pics of that later.



see how the hinges work as stops too, so when its open there is a gap between the lid and the dash. the screws are 4/40s, nuts are 1/4" wrench. hard to get the scale but they are pretty small. it will have acorns holding it all together when final install is done.

I also added a 12 volt outlet in there too, nice to be able to charge a cell phone or ipod while your driving, the added bonus to the hinges and the latches is that when charging something it can be laid on teh open door and both sides have guardrails, so when you go round a corner you wont have to chase it all over the floor.

Hope this helps!

any questions feel free to ask!

 

Best ashtray door ever.

 

Even more awesome in person! Tinman is cool knowing that no one, unless shown, will even know the dash is modified; and no one will realize the work that went into this (unless they lurk here). I like it

 

Just shows that using 'back yard' techniques doesn't have to mean a 'back yard' looking job.
Nice work!

 

Nice work!

 

Awesome, and i could do it w/ the tools in my garage. Thanx forthat!

 

Slick idea, great outcome. Inspiring write-up!

 

Great job!
Most folks have NO idea how long it takes to make nice stuff from scratch. Very well done documentary, as well. Easily understood.

 

cool tech piece. easy to understand and well done........congrats

 

I'm sure it would not have turned out as well if you didnt have that cat as your "in-house Quality Supervisor".

Cats are known to have excellent eyesight....

 

Very nicely done!

 

Not only great tech, but Jay brought the finished piece to breakfast for show and tell. It looks better in person than in the photo's. Very nice Jay. Stu

 

Very nice indeed! I hope you get paid by the hour!

 

your cat is learning how to put you out of bidness, keep an eye on him

 

Very nice. That cat has mad skills. Most people would have butchered the stock ashtray. good job!

 

Man that came out really nice. Very clean install, good job!

 

Very nice. That is one trick little ash tray door. Nicely done.

 

Nice work Jay, you may wanna look into this metal work thing as a career?!

 

looks great, as always.

 

Well done ! shows what is possible with minimal tools and ingenuity!

 

Wow! thanks for the replies!

Thankfully sheetmetal responds very well to the simplist of tools, I can be simple minded at times.

and I dont have to worry about the cats stealing my ideas and running me out of biz, I tried teaching the boy to solder. He burnt his paw and went screaming to his sister. He is such a pussy......

 

great work, love the fact you showed us how you did it without a brake. thanks!

 

Excellent project and shown with the lesser skilled/experienced in mind. A lot of tasks in car crafting can be accomplished with little experience if approached with an eye to logical steps to the goal.

Frank

 

Thats beautiful man, this is my first tech week and i can see i'm not going to get anything done this week,i'll be glued to the Hamb

 

For those of you don't have the skill level as this nicely fabed hinge. Here is a very nice over the counter hinge.
I use this style of hinge, they're only a couple of bucks.

This a style of Hidden Hinge