Harry P.

The plan in the back is to have a lower compartment that houses a shallow slide-out drawer. That drawer will be outfitted with a scratchbuilt hunting rifle set like the one Skip posted earlier in this thread. This lower compartment will have it's own rear door that will swing down like a pickup's tailgate. This compartment will be entirely below the main floor of the woody. An upward-swinging liftgate will be fitted above this lower compartment to access the main storage area of the woody. So what I need is a divider that will attach between the rear posts, at floor level, to differentiate between upper and lower rear doors. I cut a piece to length, beveled one face of it to match the angle of the rear of the woody body, and cut a slot (a "kerf") in it to receive the back edge of the new extended floor. My saw blade wasn't thick enough to make this slot wide enough, so I widened the slot with a small file, using the file's edge... Then I made a cardboard template for the new rear floor... I cut the new floor from the same cardboard that I made the template from. Then I glued the rear edge of that new floor into the slot I had cut into the rear crossmember, and glued the new floor/crossmember assembly in place.. The interior of the lower compartment was painted flat black, and eventually the whole main floor of the woody will be painted flat black, to represent a plain rubber sheet floor (no fancy carpeting in a woody!)... Now that I have the horizontal divider beween lower compartment and main compartment in place, I can measure and build the lower compartment's swing-down door.

Here I have the chassis temporarily in place. You can see the gas tank between the fenders... the trunk floor would cover this on the "stock" bodied model, but I'll have to make a new floor here for the woody body. I didn't get fancy here with a curved panel to match the curvature of the gas tank. No real reason to. I just cut a piece of medium weight cardboard to fit the opening and glued it in place. No need to waste perfectly good (and expensive) sheet styrene here when the cardboard works perfectly well. And besides, this panel won't even be seen on the finished model... from below, the gas tank hides it, and from above, there will be a shallow slide-out drawer in this lower rear compartment, so you'll never even see this floor panel.

To quote an old Herman's Hermits song... "second verse, same as the first"... ... in other words, I built the second rear side panel exactly the same way as the first. As you can see, the kit floor ends at the point where it would have met the forward wall of the trunk. Since there is no "trunk" on a woody, I'll have to extend that floor back to the point where it will meet the new back wall of the woody body. But first I'll have to take care of the open area between the fenders, as you'll see in this next photo...

Ray, don't feel bad about the poor hood fit. For some reason, hood fit on kits of cars from this era always seems to be a problem, for me too. Other than he hood fit, the model is a real beauty! And that red is killer! I hope you realize what a nice job you've done, and consider doing another classic or two. They are a lot of fun to build.

The vertical piece at the front of the rear side panel needs a notch in it to accept that curved piece that's already glued to the fenders: It also needs a slot (a "kerf" in woodworking lingo) to accept the edge of the panel, and above the panel, the "glass" that will ultimately fill the window opening:

I used my template to cut out the panel for the rear piece, then I glued that panel to the rear door post, then glued the door post and panel assembly to the fender. I used a piece of scrap wood that I know has a perfect 90 degree angle to make sure the rear door post is perfectly vertical when looked at from the rear: In the photo above, if you look closely you can se that "rib" detail on the corner post that I was talking about, and how by offsetting the rib piece I created that rabbet along the inside of the corner post to accept the side glass. If you look really closely you can see my piece of wood that I'm using as a square actually riding in that rabbet.

I'm using 1/32 birch veneer for my panels. Here you can see the contrast between the stained birch and the stained framework pieces. You can see the original color of the unstained birch on that little piece that's sticking out.

The rear corner posts have a few subtle details. First, they have a very slight curve to them. Instead of trying to soak and bend the wood, I did it the easy way: use a slightly larger piece and carve/sand the curve into it. The other detail is that each corner post will have a rib that extends outward a bit... just for some extra visual interest. I used two slightly thinner strips of wood for the rib pieces. I shaped them to the same exact curve as the corner posts, and sanded the exposed curved edge of the rib so it's rounded over. Very hard to even see that detail in 1/16 scale, but it's there. Then I glued the thinner "rib" to the thicker corner posts, offsetting the rib pieces so that the rib edge extends outward. By doing this i also automatically create a rabbet on the inside of the corner posts that will accept the birch veneer I'll use to make the panels:

I'm starting with the main rear crossmember. This is where the lower rear tailgate will hinge on. First I had to add chamfers on the ends to clear the fenders... And here it is installed...

I want to pre-stain the raw material... it's much esier than building the panels first and then staining them. Here is the raw basswood vs. the stained...

Next, with the cowl/firewall temporarily in place, I used a strip of wood to determine where the beltline of the body will be on the rear side panels. The important thing here was to make sure the beltline was parallel to the floor and running boards. Once I determined the location, I marked the are on my template...

While the revised cowl dries, let's get into some body construction. After going through the buidling sequence over and over in my head about a bazillion times, trying to figure out the most sensible and easiest way to build the body, I finally decided on this sequence: Rear side panels first, install side panels, tailgates, then do the door hinge posts/doors as an assembly and install the doors (already attached to the hinge post), then finally add the roof. So to begin, I made a cardboard template of the rear side panels. Remember, I had already made those curved lower pieces earlier, stained them, and then glued them to the fender surfaces using CA. Making the panel template was not any sort of scientific process... just some "eyeball engineering" until I got the template right (on the third try). The critical areas here are 1; Establish the angle/slope of the rear wall of the body, and 2: Determine the location of the rear door opening. The angle of the rear wall was determined just by "eyeball engineering" and what look pleasing to me. Another important point was to make sure the leading edge of the template is at 90 degrees to the floor, because I want the door openings to be perpendicular to the floor (except for the front edge of the front doors, which obviously will follow the angle of the cowl). Another detail I added was to put a very slight slope on the top edge of the template, so that the roof will slope slightly downward from the point where the rear side doors end to where the roof meets the rear wall of the body. I did this just because I think it looks better than having the roof be arrow straight all the way from windshield post to rear wall. Here the third (and best) template looks about right...

There's a problem with the cowl. As you can see, there is a recessed channel on the edge, against which the front edge of the "sheet metal" door lip closes. The woody doors will have thicker frames than just the thin outer lip on the "sheetmetal" doors, so if I left that recessed channel on the cowl in place, when the woody doors are closed you would see that recess as a gap between the door and cowl edges. Another problem: the lower corner of the cowl doesn't meet flush with the raised curved area on the fender: Both problems were fixed by using some styrene stock to fill in that recess, and extend the lower corner of the cowl back a bit. Some Bondo and sanding/shaping will be done to integrate everything and smooth things out. Then a new lip will be added to the inside surface of the cowl (using styrene stock) for the woody doors to shut against.

The steering system includes a multi-link tie rod assembly. You have to be careful to not get any glue on the ends of the links when you glue on the small round retainers.

"I don't know why sometimes I get frightened. You can see my eyes; you can tell that I'm not lyin'"...

The miracle of Photoshop.

I'll send you a PM with submission info.

Looks very nice, Ray... but those rear wheels are too far forward for some reason.

My guess: the OP thinks his thread has gone off the rails or has gone off in a direction he doesn't like. Wanna get back at them? Lock this thread.

The Beatles' version is my favorite.

This is the Camaro I wish they were still making... They'll never top that design.

Hey Ray... you've been a member here for what, a week? And already you're King of the Tutorial!

I did try to mix it up bit. The air cleaner can, valve covers, and long wiring looms along the cylinder heads are gloss black, the distributor caps, coils, and fan are satin black, the wire I used is flat black. You're right, the trick to realism is various levels of gloss/no gloss.