Body Blocks - Type of Wood

[Vic in E-TN]

For Coupes, Phaetons and other metal bodied cars what is the type of wood used for the various blocks between the body and the frame?


Vic

[Martinbuilt]

I am not an expert, but the blocks i pulled out of my subframe looked like ash.

[BRENT in 10-uh-C]

Vic, I think most of my prints show these as a variety of wood, -likely what was native to Michigan in his Forests. Ironically, I rarely have seen Ash listed on all of my wood prints. Not sure if that was because of the lack of availability or something else.

[Vic in E-TN]

Martin & Brent:
Thanks for the info. I have a piece of new wood and want to duplicate it. If it comes from North Carolina, who knows but probably ash. This car will never be inspected and it cannot be checked for type. I will cut up a few pieces and hope they fit.


Vic

[Bob Bidonde]

I suggest that you use a hard wood so it does not easily compress and ruin the alignment of doors and hood. The rubber pad on the blocks will compress by 50% of their thickness over time, so the block wood should not add to this.

[Vic in E-TN]

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Just got back from Woodcraft. 3 of them and me looked over the new piece. I had painted the new piece black. Based on the end grain visible it appeared to be Red Oak. Red Oak will absorb water easily. They did not have small and inexpensive pieces of Maple, Beech, Birch, Elm, Oak or Ash so I went to my woodpile with White Oak and Hickory. I will fire up my equipment and make up two pieces to replace the pieces from the set. Now I will have a complete new set that will outlast me.


Vic

[Martinbuilt]

Brent, thanks for posting that tech drawing. I think it's interesting they listed all those species. They all work differently, and i'm suprised there wasn't one type specified.

[BRENT in 10-uh-C]

Originally Posted by Martinbuilt

Brent, thanks for posting that tech drawing. I think it's interesting they listed all those species. They all work differently, and i'm suprised there wasn't one type specified.

Based on veriage from quite a few prints I have, I think most of the wood was cut to size/shape and shipped to Branches from the Rouge plant. Ford owned many forests & timber lands in Michigan, so likely there was mixed species coming in by Ford's sawyers and mills.

Ford engineers wanted to produce a robust automobile, but I suspect they did not have long-range longevity in mind. If their vehicle provided a service life of 10 years, I'm sure they were satisfied. Therefore as long as the wood lasted long enough that squeaks and rattles were not prevalent, -they were happy.

[rackops]

I've had white oak advised as a replacement, particularly for my oddball Australian Model A with the wood subframe (the original species, Tasmanian Oak, is very, very hard to find in the US). The previous restorer in South Africa replaced pieces with acacia, as I assume it was easy to come by. That said, I haven't gotten to the point where I need to consider what species to use.

Point of my comment is...in my very general search for types of wood, I came across a government program where you can send them a piece of wood and they can identify the species. I've contemplated doing that with a piece of original wood to see what it actually was and what's close to it. Again...haven't gotten that far, but it's good to know the program exists.

https://research.fs.usda.gov/fpl/identification