The Stovebolt Site Forums Project Journals Project Journals 1949 Chevy Panel Truck

BED SIDE WOOD

(The bed side wood was the first project for the fall/winter of 2021. So these next posts will bring the project up to real time.)

I wanted to install some wood strips along the bed sides to match the bed wood that was going to be used on the new bed floor. I settled on a fore/aft strip along the LH & RH bed sides and three up/down strips on the front wall (back of cab). Since the panels have some slight curvature the wood needed to be bent a bit. So I had to learn about steam bending wood. I watched several YouTube clips and read a few blogs.

From what I read (and/or watched), quarter sawn white oak was a good candidate for the steam bent bed wood. So I ordered some 1 X 6 (3/4” thick x 5-1/2”) boards....these boards were kiln dried because that was all I could find (I'll touch on this in a later post). To make the bending easier, I planed the boards down from ¾” thick to 1/2” thick.

So I laid out the board outlines that I wanted (in green cardboard) and then cutout the boards to match these patterns. I also routed a fillet radius on the inward facing edge of the boards to soften the edge.

For the two fore/aft boards along the sides, I drilled some 1/4” dia holes in the boards in the position where I wanted the fasteners to go thru for mounting to the bed side. For the three board on the cab back, there were already some weldnuts in the cab back (under the interior stiffeners) that I had to align. I used the cardboard templates to match those up and drilled these boards full size (for 5/16 dia fastener) prior to steaming. Once the boards where profiled and drilled, I soaked these in water for 2 days or so before steaming.

While to boards soaked, I built a steam box. I had some scrap ¾ plywood around so I constructed a box that would fit the longer pieces. I also bought an 1200W portable electric burner, a cheap/large stock pot and a small cooking thermometer. According to what I read, I needed steam the wood at 180-200 deg F for about an hour.

First up was the two long pieces. I rigged my steaming contraption right next to the truck bed in the shop so I could immediately form the wood after removing it from the steam box. After waiting, and waiting, and waiting it was evident that the small portable electric burner was not going to get the job done. I then moved all of it to my kitchen and used my stovetop to heat the water. That worked way better.

After an hour at 180-200 deg F, I removed the 2 long pieces and positioned them on the truck to an outline I had scribed on it (around the green patterns). I then used some large self-drilling sheet metal screws and some fender washers to attach these to the bed sides (thru the existing ¼ dia holes in the wood) pulling it to contour as I progressed. I then placed some temp cross-bracing (2x4's) to help hold the pieces firmly against the bed sides in areas between the screws. Once these pieces were dried and formed (after a day or two) I then removed the strips and re-drilled the ¼ dia holes larger to accept 5/16 dia bolts and washers. I then re-drilled the metal bed sides larger as well (¾” dia) to accept a weld bung for 5/16-18 machine screws and re-installed the strips using machine screws into the integral bungs.

I then followed the same basic procedure for the 3 smaller vertical pieces except I just used 5/16-18 machine screws in the existing 5/16+ dia holes to fasten to the existing weld nuts to hold these pieces in place to cure. There was only a very slight contour for these 3 pieces so the force needed to pull these to contour was smaller than the two long pieces on the sides.

After doing this I realized that I would need to do some modifications to my approach if I was going to bend any 3/4” thick wood on the bed floor since the wood was still pretty stiff even at the reduced thickness. I will address what I changed later when I bend the ¾” thick oak for the bed floor.

I will sand and seal all of these to get rid of the water marks and such once I get all the bed wood done so I can do it at one time.