[Flathead Fever]

.060 over is the maximum allowed on any car drum. They are trash at that point. When they get too thin they will flex when the brakes are applied. They could overheat and get warped when the brakes are applied.

When you machine them you need have enough material left to account for the wear from the current brake job. Maybe you would not want to go past .050 so that during the life of these new brake shoes the drums will not go past their .060 limit. Also, drums on the same axle should be machined to within .010 of each other or the brakes might pull to one side. That's was what was recommended back when their were licensed brake adjuster shops. A larger rotating drum, as little .010 larger, sounds like no big deal but a larger rotating surface has more leverage, so the force applied to the shoes will be different. You want everything thing as equal on both sides as possible if you want your drum brakes to stop perfectly straight. They are not as forgiving as disc brakes.

"Always" install new brake springs. The break when they get around ten-year's old.

Remember on early Ford shoes the "long" shoe goes towards the front because these are not "self energizing" brakes. Everybody has been taught the long shoe goes on the rear when doing a brake job. That's true on everything except Early Ford brakes.

Arcing brake shoes became illegal, probably in the early 1980s, Shops were inspected by Osha and fined big bucks if they found a shoe arcing machine in your shop. That was because of the airborne asbestos they caused. I went to a Bendix brake class. The instructor said our brakes do not contain any asbestos but that does not mean what's in them is not just as dangerous. When you buy brake shoes they are arced to be used on a drum diameter from standard to .060 over. That is because on a daily driven car the shoes will rapidly wear into the diameter of the drum. The braking will improve as the shoes quickly wears in. On a collector car that's hardly driven this may never happen. That's why its a good idea to arc them. There is not single shop in my town that does this so I went out and bought my own Ammco one for $100.00, That was dirt cheap, I got lucky. on Craigslist.

I was thinking that if you did not have the machine maybe you could use contact cement (Gasgacinch gasket sealer) and stick some sand paper to the drum surface and use this to arc the shoe to the drum. The long strips of sand paper for doing body work would be good. If I remember correctly, the arcing machine uses an 80 grit drum.