The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Making a Stovebolt Bed Assemble the bed on saw horses or on the truck?

I have see pics of beds assembled, including the wood, on saw horses and, I assume, then put on the truck. Then I hear it's better to get it bolted down on the truck before putting on the wood.
My thought would be to align and bolt the sides together then put on the truck and then add the wood, strips etc.
What's the real answer?

BIG CHEVY 3600 writes, "My thought would be to align and bolt the sides together then put on the truck and then add the wood, strips etc."

How many crossmembers on those wood beds, five or six? I need to go out and look. Sure would be difficult to assembly a wood bed on sawhorses and keep good alignment for frame bolt holes. Obviously a lot of people do this just fine.

My deciding factor was not where and how to build my bed rather should I go with a wood bed or go with a steel plate bed. Have a complete oak bed, still boxed, along with metal bed strips, sitting in a corner gathering dust, went with a diamond plate 1/4 inch thick steel bed.

Reason for this is I want to be able to lift off my bed, fenders, spare tire carrier, the works, lift off the bed with ease using a four arm car lift. This allows access to clean, polish and wax the back of my cab and the front of my bed.

Personally, I would build your bed right on the frame. Seems like this would be an easier and smoother going job.

Billyray

..... in my opinion I would assemble the sides/front and the rear cross sill and then set it on the frame...then make sure its square ...then put the wood and remaining cross sills in. It worked good with my 37 doing this but it may not be best for you...and it depends sometimes whether you have any help or not.

Yeah I kinda have help, my 23 yr. old son.
I have sanded each board front, back, and sides with 150 grit then with 220 grit. I also rounded the edges ,eliminating the sharp edges. I thought I was ready to paint on the protective finish when I read the directions and remembered that you're not to do that until you have drilled the holes for the frame.
I really didn't want to mock-up the bed after mocking every other part on the truck. But looks like I'll have to do that. I wish MarK would be able to ship with the holes drilled.

I found it easy to loosely bolt down the bed wood and strips to the truck, add the side panels one at a time, bolt them to the front panel and finally add the tailgate. Then I was able to rack the entire bed around until it was square. This is on a 55.2 3100, not sure if that helps or not.

Good luck.

Was that before or after you drilled holes for the side wood?

Big Chevy 3600
I should have been more specific because the first time I put the bed wood on there were no holes in the wood. I loosely bolted the bed strips down to hold the bed wood together. Then I rested the bed sides on and bolted the front panel and tailgate. Once it was racked square, and the distance from the cab was established, I got a long 12" 1/8th bit and drilled up from the bottom through the frame and cross sill holes and through the wood. That gave me the center hole to drill from. I think I measured 1/8th (don't quote that distance, because I can't remember exactly!) from that center hole toward the cab to give me the center for the offset washer. Then used a Forstner bit to drill the shallow hole. Make sure you do this before opening up the bolt hole to the correct size! Once I had the the main bolts in, I moved to the bed side angle brackets. Mine did not have holes pre punched so I drilled through (from the bottom again) through the cross sill holes, through the wood and through the metal. Then I went through the long and time consuming process of squaring the holes for the bolt. I worked my way around until all holes were done.

Finally, I took it all apart to paint the wood. It is drying as I type. This weekend it all goes back together again.

Hope that doesn't make things even more confusing. I read about this process here on the forum somewhere.

Michael

I would pay good money for a detailed video of someone putting one together step by step. MarK should make and sell one of theses.

Big Chevy,
I found the article that I used to drill the holes, it is from MarK. See link below and scroll down to drilling mounting holes in bed wood.

drilling holes in bed wood

Great, thanks for the link.