Dauntless wrote:
Sam_68, do you have any additional information about the wood finished 7 in the photo at the top of this page?
No, I'm afraid not - I've never come across it before!
Despite the very reasonable conclusions you might draw from my limited posting history, so far, I'm not really
that much of a wood-head!
I have to reiterate what I said over on the Carbon Fibre thread - my main interest in timber structures (for cars; disregarding the day job!) is for the lessons they can teach for monocoque structures in other materials. Much as I love them as quirks and curios, I think we probably have to admit that wooden monocoques won't be as
structurally efficient (in terms of stiffness:weight) as those constructed the latest
man-made fibre composites.
...But they offer an interesting, sustainable and,
above all, cost effective 'locost' approach that is still capable of competing with steel spaceframe technology.
The other thing I think we have to remember - amply demonstrated by the very interesting video on the Splinter that you linked in your first post - is that they are very time-consuming and require a lot of manual skill to construct. According to one reference I have, the tub of the later (post-Costin) wood-chassis Marcos consisted of no less than 386 parts, each of which had to be manually bonded together. This is fine for the 'Locost' approach, where we don't count our labour time, but it made cars like the Costin-Nathan, Marcos and Amigo
fabulously labour-intensive, and therefore expensive, to manufacture for sale.