What type of wood did they use to make woodies? I have always loved the look of them and I would like to add a touch of wood to my project and I am wondering what wood I should use???
I have seen a couple of rebuilds. The "framing" was generally oak usually with a lot of finger joints to use less wood. If you watch one being rebuilt you will appreciate how few straight lines there are.
Birds Eye Maple & African Mahogany for insets. Henry Ford had his own Birds Eye Maple forest, I've heard he hand picked all wood for the Sportsman's. Check with Doug Carr at "the Wood'n Carr" in Siginal Hill Ca.
Oak was rarely used, not aware of Ford or Dodge using it. CW is correct.. Maple, Ash and mahogany are the common Sawzall on here probably knows the most about woodies.. he has several, has worked on a few and is a Regional Rep of the National Woodie Club.
We make replacement components using either curly, birds eye, or hard maple. It depends on which is needed to match the rest of the car.
as a general rule most GM's were made of ash framing with mahogany insert panels. (of course there are exceptions often because GM used a numbr of outside body builders) most fords were hard maple or birch, with birch or mahogany inserts, and a limited number of ford wagons had "sweet gum" for paneling (my 40 wagon has it!) birds-eye is a defect in the wood (albeit a desirable defect) and very few wagons were ever made with full birds-eye.. one car I recall that had a full birds-eye body was a 40 ford wagon that had been owned by edsel(?) ford. finding birds-eye today has been proving to be a real problem
Mopar, their body company Briggs, used ash structure and maple and other vaneered panels on their wagons and T&C cars. Later production used metal panels with DiNoc vinyl wood decals.
If you find birds-eye be prepared to gasp at the price. I have a gun stock blank that is striped (called tiger stripe or curly by some people) that has a lot of birds-eye defects that cost me over $100 back in 1988.
I would be afraid to look at them now. The piece i have is set aside for a flintlock rifle I am going to build one of these days. It came rough cut to the shape for a full stocked rifle with a 42 inch barrel length. If it was figured up in board feet, I doubt I have more than 2 to 2.25 board feet in that stock blank.
Last I looked that would be $300+. I was looking at a 24" chunk of burled walnut for a blunderbuss and it was $150-175? last year. In relation to a woody, this shit is expensive and as noted hard to find with good pattern throughout the piece! Here is one supplier I found. http://www.bellforestproducts.com/birdseye-maple/
so about 25.00 a bd ft.. birds-eye here in the northeast is non existent if only I could weld those little pieces of wood back together
if you want samples of wood used just buy the new book by David Fetherston at: dfwoodybook.com - once there click on pages inside arrows and video icon and blog tab before looking at price. it is a nice one.
Ash is 1/3 the price of oak, and much cheaper than maple . Ash has a rather gaudy grain. Ford used straight grain maple, but I understand they would save pieces of birds eye until they got enough to do a special body for some big shot. I am building a woody roadster pickup using ash and I figure I will have about $ 600.00 in wood. Varnish is about $35.00 per quart. I figure I will use 4 quarts.
What will you being using the wood for? Framing or will this be just a decorative touch? For my Chevy, we used Ash for the framing and Oak for the inserts. I'd use Ash for framing, holds screws well and doesn't discolor like Maple can--though it does have a very exaggerated grain. If your just using the wood as decoration, the sky's the limit...use whatever you like the looks of!
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