The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Making a Stovebolt Bed Plywood bed

My 40 1/2t was originally delivered as a cab and frame. It has a flatbed built by the PO of 2x2 pine glued together in a butcher block fashion w/black angle around the edges and a black 2x6 "skirt along the sides. It has no finish on it, is used to haul a variety of things on our flower/small animal farm, and(unfortunatly)resides outdoors. The bed is several years old, looks pretty good, and I take it to shows and even won once for best in class/year. If I would put a finish on it who knows what she could do at shows!! I am considering the purple wood option though.

I used Cardboard...Coated it with 100 coats of Marine Varnish, lite up a cigarette and exploded

If you have the patience, you can make almost anything look good. stain finish,sand paper and time should make your bed perfect. By the way, Purple Heart is kinda expensive.

Got that right... I priced it last week looking for some boards to get working on the bed of my truck...

After figuring out what 40 square feet of that will cost, it gets tempting just to buy a bed kit like Dave (58GMCNut) did and be done with it...

Still looking at my options though... hopefully an affordable one that doesn't involve tons of screwing around with it comes along...

~Trev

You know if you buy your own wood, and order the metal strips ect..you can put any finish on it yourself...you can make your own stains, your own colors. Stains are easy to make...oil based paint and thinners...then start making samples..you can get pieces of wood from lowes..depot ect...for free..get the remnants that they chop off for customers..Before you buy any stains or paints go to the Mistint area of the Paint dept and see what they have.You can make your own custom color.

I was after weight over the back wheels to settle down the Tire squellin that happened every time i gave it just a bit too much throttle ....so i went with a 1/4' thick steel plate ....painted it an whalla .....will take a long time for it to wear out !

I needed some bed boards for the Erwhipee truck just to have a bed, nothing fancy, just to hold it together and get rid of so many rattles. I just went to the lumber yard and bought some construction pine 1x8's and 1x6's that were straight and free from knots. I spent an hour going through the pile to find boards. Ran a dado blade on the edges and made a groove. I used some PPG oil base clear UV deck finish on them and called it good. It looks beautiful. I spent less than $50 on lumber, $50 for new carriage bolts, nuts and washers and $70 for new steel metal strips I could have saved $40 if I would have bought some used metal strips and cleaned them up. The deck finish I had already. The labor was mine. The boards look so good, I'm kicking myself for going through all the labor just to get some boards in the bed without giving the bed a new coat of paint too. Good thing I like patina. So, for around $170 I have less rattles and a bed that don't squeak. The plywood I had in the back layed flat when it got wet from the rain, but curled up when it dried in the sun. I didn't need all that flopping around anymore.

I also have a '51 1/2 ton flatbed that looks like it was made of oak floor out of a house. All 1 1/2" strips locked together. I bet it was real pretty when new.

Just posted this in a similar thread, this deserves to be here too... I notice not many people post pics here, but here is a pic of my plywood bed, and a link to the photos I took on the day we did the install.

http://www.grossepointegothic.com/71stepside/woodbed/

[img]http://www.grossepointegothic.com/71stepside/woodbed/image/pict4233.jpg[/img]

It was a good $30 solution when I had alot of other more important work to do on it, but I needed something back there. It was completed in one afternoon and has been in there for six months. It's the most expensive 3/4 wood they had available and it looks great to me. Most beds wouldn't need the border like I did on mine either, my bed is all ramshackled so it was a little to wide. I'll probably still do plywood when I redo the bed, along with a wood toolbox that will also cover the gas tank that is going to be put back there. I think the stain looks great.

welcome to the shops Thomas, look around a bit and you'll find lots of us have had plywood beds at one time or other

"I notice not many people post pics here"
lots of pics are posted here, but with links, not inline - the reason being the owners prefer you use a link [like to your album] rather than putting the pics in lne ... see the Glovebox Manual for details

Bill