Rick's Toys, I'm allowed in my wife's sewing room as long as I don't touch anything. She does come into the shop on warm summer days thou. I have a refrigerator in there that keeps beer just above freezing and she loves super cold beer on hot days. This also gives me an excuse to keep it well stocked.
Southertruck, back some years after my youngest kid graduated from college and was on her own, I started talking with my wife about getting a classic car as a hobby. She thought it was a good idea. It would keep me out of trouble, and I would spend less time on the golf course. Well funds weren't unlimited but if I got something that needed some light restoration, I could make the available dollars go farther. I found what I was looking for and brought it home to start working on it. Not wanting to upset a good thing, whenever I needed to buy expensive parts, tools or supply's I would talk to her first. She never stopped me from buying anything but occasionally would ask me to wait a month or two to set money aside for it. About this time, she was getting more and more into her quilting and having the same dilemma with needing to involve me with her purchases. We talked it over and came up with a plan to each get an allowance every pay day. I wasn't large but enough to cover incidentals and if you wanted something larger you needed to save for a while. We each opened our own hobby accounts and in the 15 years I've been enjoying this Hobbie we have never argued about money spent on our hobbies. I can't say that for time spent on them, but we always work through that. Sorry I got so long winded on this. My wife and I have lots of cars friends that we have made over the years and watched them struggle through this. And too often it ends poorly for everyone.
Enough with the Dear Abby stuff time to get back to the truck!
After saving my allowance for a couple months while I was working on the framework I had enough to buy the sheet metal for the skin for skinning the rear deck area, I wanted the sheet metal to be thick enough to keep it from oil canning but thin enough that I could wrap it around the radiuses. I had some small pieces of 16 ga, 18 ga, and 20 ga, in the shop so I started experimenting to see what would work best. Just like in Goldie Locks the 16 ga was too hard, the 20 ga was too soft but the 18 ga was just right. Their happened to be a sheet metal supply house right by where I was working so I gave them a call and they had what I needed in stock and better pricing than anywhere else I had called. That Friday I picked up 6 -4' X 8' sheets of 18 ga. sheet metal. When I got it home and unloaded them in the shop and seeing how floppy they were, I knew handling them by myself was going to be a problem. I thought about it that night and came up with a plan. I took a piece of 5' long 1" tube steel and welded an eye in the middle and then threaded a piece of heavy nylon rope through it and tied a 3" C clamp to each end. With this hanging from the bridge crane, I could put a clamp 18" from each end of a sheet and it would hang straight, it was easy to move it around and it would hold it in place while I was welding it up.
I started at the front of the bed because I knew getting around the radiuses was going to be the hardest and most time-consuming part. When I got all a lined with the 2X6 deck rail I spot welded the end of the sheet to the vertical rib that formed the window step at the front of the deck. I knew that this sheet was long enough to reach around the radius and to the door opening without having a splice in it. Then I worked my way around the corner shaping it one rib at a time with clamps and strong backs and spot welding as I went.
As this was going on I was also finishing cleaning up the bottom of the cab and painted it. To do this work I had to lay it on the side away from the truck. When finished I stood it upright and set it on horses where I could finish striping the old paint and get some primer on it. That made it a lot easier to see what needs to be done as far body work goes.
With the cab in primer and the sheet metal in place I needed to put the cab back on the frame so I could line up where I wanted the half oval trim from under the windows on the cab. I first talked about this when I extended the doors on the back cab and continued the trim from the front cab. This trim is a special shape. It's kind of 1/2 round and half square with round corners. I played around with my sheet metal break but had no success recreating the shape. Then I found a short piece of 1" electrical conduit in the scrape been and thought maybe if I cut this in half and flattened it out it might work. I ran it through the bandsaw and laid it on the welding table and started flattening it with a 2 lb. sludge hammer. I had to work it back and forth gently as not to dent it up too much. I worked it a little then I would hold it up by the truck and eventually it matched pretty darn good. Now all I needed was another 80 feet of it. It took me several days to get it all shaped then it was time to start installing. I laid it out carrying the lines on the cabs all the way back to make sure they were parallel and then started at the front again welding them on. I had to do relief cuts coming around the radiuses but for the most part it went well. A little clean up with the 4 1/2" grinder and some body filler and they will look like they grew there.
