A guy on another board was having trouble with the demensions given on GMCPaul's site also. Here's GMCPaul's response to his post:
This post and a few others on our bedwood page were pointed out to us and I felt I had better get on here and clarify a few things. The bed wood dimensions on our web site are precise. These are the exact same dimensions used by GM, Mar-K, and all the other bedwood manufacturers. The measurements allow for a 3/8" bolt with 1/16" clearance on both sides of the bolt. If you look at Solver's picture above you will notice that the bed wood is touching edge to edge this should not be the case. If you make your wood larger than these dimensions if your wood swells even slightly it will buckle as no room for expansion.
Check your beds before installing wood to make sure that the interior dimension is not slightly larger than it should be also before starting, the reason for this is there is enough slop in the bolt holes from crossills to bedsides for the space between sides to be up to 3/8" wider than they should be if pushed to the extreme outside of holes bolting sides to crossills.
Once your bolts are installed in the wear strips you will find after loosely installing all that the bed wood dimensions are correct.
Now its time to head out to my shop and get on our 67 SWB in progress. You all have a great weekend!!!!!!
GMCPaul
Click
here , if you want to see the whole thread.
I agree, that it's always good if you can make a "trial run" with scrape pieces.
