Dateline - 05/17/2014 - Worked on fitting the center wood dash pieces in the car this weekend. I have not had the whole dash in the car for a long time and I need to finish up the woodwork on the dash, so I thought this would be a good weekend to work on that.
The situation is that the center dash piece that holds the five smaller gauges was cut a bit too small in height originally Matt and I did the best we could, but changes happened in the dimensions of the car over the build out and there was a significant amount of space to fill. So last fall, we added a piece of the backing material (9 layer plywood) to the bottom to extend it about 1/3 inch and also so that it would "wrap" around the edge of the center console. We cut it as best we could to fit, but knew that some sanding would be needed to fit it correctly. The sanding is what I did this weekend. This is very fiddly work because I need to sand the wood down to precisely fit between the left and right hand wood panels, the dash pad and the center console.
Now that I have the shaping done, I need to glue a book matched piece of maple veneer to the backing and shape it to fit. Then it will need to go through the flat bed sander to get the faces even. Then I can concentrate on final finishing of the wood (shellac, grain filler, lacquer clear, polish)
Since I had the whole dash in the car, I thought it would be a good idea to test mount the five gauges and see how they fit in the car. I was very disappointed to find that they don't! They are much deeper then I thought and with all the wire in the center area from my re-wire, there is just not enough room, especially around the oil pressure and water temp gauges. So, I am yet again re-routing the wiring! I will be glad when the wiring is done! It sure turned out to be more work than I ever expected!!!
