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A Woodin' We Will Go...

Having tried my hand at making the rear corners of the ROOF RAIL ASSEMBLY, I decided to dive head-long into making headers....specifically the FRONT QUARTER HEADER and REAR QUARTER HEADER.


As you can see from the above photo, the original passenger rear quarter header was rotted beyond saving. I removed the wood from the sheet metal covering (by 1922, the upper wood above the belt rail in the Center Door Sedan had been covered with metal. Prior years was just painted wood).


I made a paper pattern and traced it onto a semi-flexible piece of new wood as shown here. I didn't really like it, so I would eventually trace the original wood (which is slightly curved) and assemble it again. One paper pattern suffices for both pieces since they are mirror images of each other.

The front quarter headers were made by epoxying two pieces of wood together, allowing it to dry and then sanding/cutting the wood to shape (again, slightly curved) using a belt sander, band saw, and chisel. The headers to the left are rear quarters and the two on the right are front quarter headers. Corresponding tenons were cut to locate the headers into the PILLARS COUPE and the HINGE PILLARS and the LATCH PILLARS. Each should have a corresponding mortise to accept the tenon. These are then pocket-holed to the pillars. The holes marked through the middle of the wood are where the headers are screwed to the ROOF RAILS from inside the uppermost window channel and counter sunk. There are holes provided in the sheet metal for this purpose.


The two front quarter headers need to be sanded down just a tad more.


Here, below, you can see the two pieces epoxied together to make the bulk of the header.



And finally for this post, I've added the sheet metal covering over the wood for the windshield header.


This was a fairly straight forward task. The header piece comes as a single piece that is supplied by FordWood. However, the roof kit supplied by them comes with two roof rails, a rear roof rail assembly, two corners, a roof rail header, five headliner stringers, and a set of slats. The kit is generic to a SEDAN, and not specifically to this car. The roof slats were non-existent on Center Doors, my research showing that the cars came with a solid roof. MY car had only three headliner stringers when it was built. Sadly my original stringers, roof rails, headers and the corners from the kit were destroyed. However, enough of the kit survives from the previous owners for me to use it or make new.


If I were to use the slats for the roof, here is a FORDOR SEDAN showing that roof installation. This isn't 100 percent correct for a Center Door.


And that will wrap up this posting. Until next time....

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