Not as Bad as All That

We know two things:

• The old chassis definitely has the sills attached to the chassis in a different location than they would be on this chassis
• A rude and crude check with the bonnet, etc., show that this chassis can proceed without needing much adjustment, as far as I can tell.

I think it’s best put this way: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I have the rear sill boards rough-cut, slightly thicker than the originals, at 1 – 1/8th inches. The originals feature a half-lap joint which is the reverse of this; I figure I will let gravity help the joint instead of fighting it. It does mean the cross-member will be slotted between the tail end of the inner fender plywood and this board, meaning it cannot come out once the steel is on. But everything is getting glued anyway.

My band saw–a 14″ Delta made in the 1940s–works fairly well. At one point I owned a non-working 20″ Delta (a project I found a new home for), but which I have  seen the wisdom of owning. I have had several cuts so far on just these few boards where having a few more inches of clearance on the inside of the blade would make life a lot simpler.

I would say infeed/outfeed table size is the biggest improvement that can be made on any tool, and mine all suffer in that regarding, excepting, perhaps, the Unisaw. (It doesn’t help that the jointer, planer, band saw, chop saw and table saw all have different table heights, so you can’t really make a universal solution very easily.

There will be a lot of swearing when it comes time to make the inner fenders work with the cowl and the radiator.

I hope to tackle the machining of the plywood grooves today, we’ll see if we get that far. I bought a cast-iron router table to replace the left wing of my elderly Unisaw (said purchase has the benefit of giving me a bit more table space, always welcome) so it will be…fun? amusing? loud? to see how that works out.