LocostUSA.com

I bought a few of those videos. At $40 they are not locost but I'm trying to learn some steel forming. The two part "Building a Roadster Body" DVDs are the ones you are thinking of. Part one is building the buck and part two is the actual body fabbing. If you don't want to spend $80 you can still get useful information from the previews on his web site. I can't recommend "MIG Welding Made Easy" as it is mainly an advertisement for welding equipment. It's like what you get on some of the car shows where they show off products, except you pay $40 for the DVD. I wasn't happy about that but his other DVDs have been great.

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My car viewtopic.php?f=37&t=16434
1930s Style Sports Car viewtopic.php?f=36&t=16888

We are down to one large buck section holding frame work. If I need two halves I will cut and weld. Much research: found a local supply for baltic birch 1/4” plywood which is very flat and stiff so good for buck stations. Also found a sawyer who is salvaging ash in MSN. It is a good fit because I get the end dimensions I want (8/4 by what ever) he gets random and short lengths.

Brought home some baltic birch on my new trailer and find that the stuff is very stiff. Too stiff to bend even the 24” diameter wheel arches. What to do? Bending plywood on Google. This led to a youtube of a guy steam bending 2” thick white oak keel for a small boat! This launched me into today’s side project but this team bending shows real promise.
First the steam generator and steam box made from scrap:

Then the result of experiment #1:

This a piece of 1/4” baltic birch. As you can see the wood doesn’t follow the plywood form at the top of the arch. This is probably because the form needs to be rebuilt with a number of spots for clamps. I also learned this about wood steaming:
do it outside, the generator puts out a monster amount of heat
the parts will have to be trimmed after bending to get similar bend across the piece
the box should be tight as steam leaks are HOT
half hour for the box to heat up
15 min. per 1/4” of wood is recommended
I think the plywood takes longer

Nice work. I never got consistent results trying to steam bend plywood. Oak and cedar steam nicely though.

You might consider laminating 2 or 3 plies of thinner plywood. Bend one on top of the other, then after it cools and dries, bond them all together with fiberglass resin. I like epoxy more for bonding than polyester. I also had good results with gorilla glue. Strong enough to make skateboard decks.

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Too much week, not enough weekend.

OOPS I did it again
http://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=17496

Blood Sweat and Beers
http://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=15216

if you use gorilla glue you should clamp it as it expands

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this story shall the good man teach his son,
and chrispin chrispian shall ne'er go by,
from this day to the end of the world.
but we in it shall be remembered.

Too Busy
I would use thinner plywood if I could find it at a price I can afford. I plan on 3 pieces of 1/4". If this doesn't work my sawyer has tons of ash for cheap. That is good and bad. I hate to see another tree species bit the dust.

Further experimentation: turns out bending perpendicular to the grain works a lot better. also cooking it for twice the recommended time, (1/2hr per 1/4") helps.

Well I have come far since the pic above. First off the wheel arch seemed a little tight. It was the 3/4” I took off to accommodate spring back and turned out to be way too much. So I rebuilt the arch buck to full size and bent and laminated four new arches.
Next I built the top front station contour assembly. This came off pretty well with no major problems. It turns out coloring the contours in CAD and using the colors to describe them works out much better than coming up with some numbering system. which I tried last time. As I said this assembly worked out pretty well and I think the nose cone should fare pretty well.
On to the rear wheel arch and tail piece. If I were a better student of my earlier buck project I might have avoid this next BIG problem. When I built the frame that I am using under the station assemblies I didn’t pay heed to the location of the future body parts as relates to the frame. I merely tried to maximize the amount off volume I could fill. The problem lies in the joint between the back edge of the wheel arch where it is intended to dive under the tail piece. The front arch doesn’t have this problem as that arch ends in front of the frame. At the rear it runs into it. The solution was to drop the arch down further forward where the body dives under the frame. This might be alright although it required re drafting the whole rear end and remaking the rear and tail stations I had already made. This is, of course, the reason I try not to work ahead. At least the left side is still totally bear.
As I write this the revised tail piece glue is drying and I have no more 1/4” baltic birch. That means I have used six sheets to get a little more than half way. Most of the scrap is in mistakes and not cut outs. I am hoping four more sheets will do.

Some progress. Almost half done.

Yeah, that is looking really good. Congratulations for sticking with the problem. It looks like you have a great solution there.

Cheers,

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Damn! That front slip angle is way too large and the Ackerman is just a muddle.

Build Log: viewtopic.php?f=35&t=5886

That's looking great. I think there's a good bit of time in front of an English wheel in your future.

You planning to learn to oxy-acetylene weld aluminum or go with TIG?

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Too much week, not enough weekend.

OOPS I did it again
http://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=17496

Blood Sweat and Beers
http://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=15216

Bottomless time at the wheel. If this wasn't so satisfying it might seem like work. Tack it with TIG and gas weld.

Lots more steaming and laminating, some not so successful. I’m on my third try of an 8” R corner for the cockpit surround. It is hard to get shorter pieces to hold their shape even after laminating. The grille surround however proves the method can give good results.

Can you get any thinner plywood? If not that, how about some cheap, veneer from a woodworking shop and add in a slot of layers of it?

Cheers,

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Damn! That front slip angle is way too large and the Ackerman is just a muddle.

Build Log: viewtopic.php?f=35&t=5886