1940 Packard 120 Convertible Restoration

[theastronaut]

Another round of stretching/plannishing. Getting closer.






Once the bowl shape was where I wanted it I blacked out the area to fold and scribed an line.

[theastronaut]

Started the fold using the makeshift tipping die. Had to alternate between stretching the flange and making passes in the bead roller. Once the edge was bent about 45* I finished folding it over with a hammer/dolly.






Finished piece.

[MP&C]

John, you're just out of control now..


Nice job of duplicating the part, I don't think there's a part on the car you couldn't successfully tackle....

[duallyjams]

Originally Posted by mp&c

john, you're just out of control now..


Nice job of duplicating the part, i don't think there's a part on the car you couldn't successfully tackle....

x2

[plainred65]

First place I check when I come to the site John, and you never disappoint.

[Low Elco]

Great stuff!

[Bomp]

'Fit and finish detail' is what amazes me. Excellent.

[theastronaut]

Appreciate the comments!!

Robert, you spoke too soon... I tackled a section of the trunk pan and wasn't very sucessful. Had to cut it out and start over. More on that later.


I started the right section of the trunk floor by laying out the bead pattern and rolling them. Not a fun piece to make; all of the beads in a tight area and at different angles made for some interesting distortion. Pre-stretching helped a ton but I still had some straightening to do after each bead.




Before rolling the beads I "tuned up" the edges of the dies. The sharp outer edges would sometimes leave a slight bend beside the bead. I made a mandrel out of 3/4" OD tubing with a hex nut JB welded inside and a tack weld to set the depth of the die on the mandrel. This let me chuck the male die in the lathe and slightly rounded off the outer edges.

[theastronaut]

With the beads done I laid out where the bends for the "ramp" would be.







I made a fork to form tucks that will allow me to shrink deep into the panel.





And started forming tucks and hammering them back flat. I made a few passes then started working out towards the edge making shorter tucks to curl the top edge inward more.






Flattening the tucks. You can see how much shrinking is happening, the lower part is flat while the upper part is still holding the shape of the tuck.







Bowl shape starting to form after one pass of full depth tucks.




This would have worked, but I didn't shrink enough at the inner part of the bowl shape, and at the point I figured that out it was too late to get the tuck fork back in that deep. So I cut it out and will make a separate bowl shape to weld in. Looking back, it would have been easier to do this from the start, but it was a good learning experience, and now I have a tuck fork for future use. I didn't get any pictures of the bowl shape before I cut it out. It looked good but the shape didn't quite match.

The ramp was formed by stretching at the base of the transition, then bending on the lines over a piece of tubing.




Since the floor has a ton of straight beads I made a depth stop/guide for the bead roller. I also clamped a piece of flat bar to the guide to keep the edge flat. The dies were wanting to flare the edge upward since they were very close to the edge, the flat bar prevented the edge from raising up.

[ajgriffin]

How does the fork thing work? Panel between the fork, pull up then hammer flat?

[theastronaut]

Originally Posted by ajgriffin

How does the fork thing work? Panel between the fork, pull up then hammer flat?

Panel goes between the fork, then you twist it from side to side to raise a tuck.

Here's a short video on the process.

Tuck Shrinking by Kris Pinkerton - YouTube

[ajgriffin]

Thanks for the video! I remember seeing a similar one a while ago now. Great work!!!

[theastronaut]

Started making a new corner for the right hand trunk panel.






Trimmed the panel to size and turned the edges 90* to create a flange.




This was and interesting spot to make...




To start the layout of the center section I stretched a piece of tape across the floor. I marked off a section 26" wide on the floor pan, and made matching marks on the tape. With the tape pulled off, I measured the marks on the tape- 26 and 7/8". There are 7 beads, so each bead is drawing in enough metal from the sides to make the panel "shorter" by 1/8" each. If I were to lay out the bead pattern on the new metal without taking this into account the panel would end up too short, and the beads would be too close together.






Bead pattern laid out with an extra 1/8" between the beads compared to the paper pattern I made earlier.




First bead in the center trunk pan. To end the bead cleanly, I used a air chisel tip with the end slightly rounded over to sharpen up the shape.






On the top side, I ran over the end of the bead with a surface conditioning disc on the 3" grinder, then finished with a scuff pad. There's really no need to do this step other than it looks good while its in bare metal, so I won't do it on the rest of them. Just showing what's possible if you wanted to go the extra step. Some Packards had trunks that were "flocked" and that process would hide details like this.




Test fitting the right side trunk pan.

[Russell Ashley]

That is beautiful work. I can only imagine how happy the owner of this car must be when he sees how nicely it is coming together.

[flashed]

I know Im always happy to see it and I dont own it ,what great craftsmanship and talent .

[Bomp]

Excellent work. Thank you for going into detail on how you went about laying out the beads and keeping them straight.
Where did you get these dies?

[theastronaut]

Originally Posted by Russell Ashley

That is beautiful work. I can only imagine how happy the owner of this car must be when he sees how nicely it is coming together.

Originally Posted by flashed

I know Im always happy to see it and I dont own it ,what great craftsmanship and talent .

Originally Posted by Bomp

Excellent work. Thank you for going into detail on how you went about laying out the beads and keeping them straight.
Where did you get these dies?

Thanks dudes!!

Bomp, they are Mittler Bros dies.

[theastronaut]

I've been working out a way to cleanly make the curved beads at the front of the trunk panel. Just rolling them into the panel badly distorts the curve since the "base" of the bead needs to be longer than the flat part of the curve.

To make the bottom longer, I made a linear stretch die for the planishing hammer. This allowed me to stretch the metal along the length of the bead without doing as much stretching from left to right.




I bent a strip of thick steel to use a guide and clamped it in place on a test panel.




After stretching:








The curve of the panel stayed flat. This was badly distorted if I just ran the bead roller dies up the curved section.




After beading the flat section using the bead roller, and also continuing up the curve to shape the stretched area to match. No distortion around the bead. Still needs some fine tuning but it's better than my first attempt.

[flashed]

Simply amazing ,love what you do and how you go about it .

[Russell Ashley]

I'm getting the shakes, too long without an update, LOL.

[theastronaut]

Been catching up on a few other projects around the shop but I'm back on the Packard now. We've been finishing up our new paint room, the owner of the '55 International was in town a few weeks ago so he brought it back to have seatbelts installed, plus we started back on the Model T firetruck project.

I've cut out 90% of the bracing, its no longer needed now that it can hold itself together again. I did make bolt-in braces that mount in the door jambs since the body will have to come back off the frame later on.

I also finished the lead work on the upper quarter panels. Got it in epoxy and today I'm skimming it with filler to smooth the file marks and get the shape 100%. I'll get the other side finished after lunch and shoot more epoxy to seal it up.








I finished making the driver side trunk pan and made corners for both the left and right sides.

[Zoomin]

Outstanding!

[plainred65]

Glad to see you back on this, can't wait to see it without the bracing.

[Alan's Classic]

I had no idea you had this thread. I will read it all in time. I always learn something while reading your post.

[flashed]

Look forward to updates again ,love this thread .