Need help with building wood frame for truck cabin

Now this might sound like it dropped out of a tree up in the top paddock, but, this vehicle DOES have a wooden frame, so, it was most probably built, using the very same techniques, as what were used to make old horse drawn vehicles. Now these coachbuilding fellas had to do something, or they were unemployed, so they just changed over to building 'horseless' vehicles.

There is a book that is freely available, called Practical Carriage Building compiled by M T Richardson, the ISBN is 978-1-879335-50-9.
It's extremely WELL DETAILED, showing you how to join all the various bits of timber together, with ALL the different joints used and showing a lot of the tooling required as well.

This can be obtained from this site, scroll down until you see it.

www.ploughbooksales.com.au/12.htm

No affiliation with the seller, just a satisfied user.

BlacksmithPete should be able to say if it would be of interest or not.

regards greenie [smiley=vrolijk_1.gif]

Bernt,i have built about 4 wooden frames for truck cabs.
# 1 try and get as much of the frame out of the truck to use as patterns,
#2 The timber we are going to use will be klin dried Vic Ash selected timber.
#3 the timber sizes that are in your truck are going to be hard to get so put thru a machine to bring to the right size this can done thru the place where you buy the timber,
# 4 All timber should be dressed.
When you get to this stage get back to me.Dave

Bernt, welcome and good luck, I believe or at least hope for his sake, that Blacksmith Pete is on the road at this very moment next stop Tamworth

Which means ... yes folks... clever fella completely rewired the Volvo, no east task at all, a new screen, some new paint (on some bits) load up and go.

He has done coachwork, and would be happy to chat when he gets back in about a fortnight I'm sure.

If anyone is going for a Ye Ha at Tamworth look him up, he has a Blacksmith shop on site in town.

Sarge :-X

Bernt,i have built about 4 wooden frames for truck cabs.
# 1 try and get as much of the frame out of the truck to use as patterns,
#2 The timber we are going to use will be klin dried Vic Ash selected timber.
#3 the timber sizes that are in your truck are going to be hard to get so put thru a machine to bring to the right size this can done thru the place where you buy the timber,
# 4 All timber should be dressed.
When you get to this stage get back to me.Dave

Dave, I am possibly at that stage already.
I have the best wood that I could buy for the job. Vic ash/Tassi oak.
I have a bandsaw, radial arm saw etc.
I only need advise with building the door frames. the rest I can/have managed. These are basically 3 pieces front, top rear and they are compund curves / angles. Nothing straight.

The timber is dressed and it is furniture quality kiln dried.
I have been additionally seasoning it for almost 1 year now.
To be honest, I think kiln dried sucks. I have had lots and lots of problems with kiln dried wood being unstable during my past live as a piano rebuilder. That said, kiln dried it is.

The original 3 curved pieces of each door frame were cut from single pieces of wood.
I have not found solid beams thick enough to replicate this so the new parts will have to made of multiple pieces joined to form an arc before cutting out the pieces. I am unsure what joints to use for this and how to fo it.

The thickest beams I could buy were about 120mmx120mm. It would need probably 180 x 120 to do it the original way.
Also, these 120 beams are already laminated out of 3 thinner layers. I don't like it because I don't know what quality the glue is but I could not avoid it.

Also, the the A-pillars will have to be made from 3 pieces as it is nopt possible to fit them back into the cavity as a single piece. I would have to cut the cab into pieces to do it the original way.

Where to from here?

Kind regards
Bernt

Bernt, sounds like you have a good background to attmept this. Did you get my second PM?

Hello all,

Have a look at the pictures of the wood parts.

home.bigblue.net.au/~berntd/LS315_pics/

There are some pics of the cabin and under /wood, there are some pics of the wood bits.
Feet not included

Regards
Bernt

Looks like you have it well in hand Bert. There is a fellow down Geelong way called Herbie Voight who has restored a similiar Benz. Apparently he had a lot of trouble with the woodwork as well.

That looks little like a cab i'm doing at the moment but i dont see to much timder in it . Dave