I like the headliner, I too want to go original. And if I can get one and put it in the container with the truck, that would be my preference. However, I did download and file away the PDF you sent out some time ago, and if need be, I suppose I could fabricate one that was maybe a good clone. I was thinking I could use my original as a sample, or even try to restore it.

One of the newer tools in my shop that is not seen (its actually in a friends shop at the moment) is a 52" x 138", 9 metric ton vacuum press. It would probably be quite useful for your firewall project, and I might use it when it comes time to shape my headliner. I was thinking I could carefully remove mine, dampen it slightly for pliability, and then flatten the hell out of it. Or better yet, make a form out of MDF on my friends 5 axis CNC, and then press it to shape. But first, I have to get the old girl over here.

As far as tools go my shop is very old school, and I personally prefer to work with solid wood, but I have also come to appreciate the engineered plywoods, and particleboards since I skipped over to this side of the pond. That and all the tools are bigger...heavier... But I am most proud of my American built tools that I brought over.

Until next time...

 

I like hardwoods, too. Place not too far away called Crosscut Hardwoods that carries a bunch of varieties. I made this out of two pieces of zebrawood dominoed together. Nothing fancy just the top of a pony wall. Looks better than the plain jane top that was on it and wider so it's more useful. Oh, and I made the dog bowl stands on the ground below.



A friend gave me an older outdoor table that the white painted wood was nearly rotted away, and the frame was hand painted white and rusting some. Really looked bad but I removed all of the wood from it and sandblasted the frame and got it powder coated black and then made a teak top for it using the same rough dimensions as the rotted planks. Came out pretty good.

 

Another fun project. White oak work bench. I used my 24" Porter Cable dovetail jig and two PC routers to make the drawer corners. Full extension slides rated up to 100 lbs. each.

 

Ha! UPS just sent me an email saying my dash pad from Just Dashes would be here tomorrow - one day before Just Dashes said they were going to ship it. Good on them as long as it looks great.

 

Got the dash pad. Some trimming required and of course gluing it down. I'm glad I have not installed much else yet in the vicinity since it would be a serious pain with the windshield and instrument cluster installed. But I think I can make this work. Glad I have other trucks with original intact dash pads so I can see what they did originally in some of the small details.



Also got the rotors, calipers and pads today in the same drop off from UPS. I'll have to install some bearings in the rotors but then I can probably mock it up just to make sure my 16" innies will clear as I suspect they will as others have found to be true. The calipers are not a very tall profile which is nice.

I was telling Matt today would have been my wife's birthday (Cinco de Mayo) and we would be celebrating had she made it this long. Here's a picture from days gone by with my mom and dad to the left. Odd to look at any photos where I'm the Last Man Standing so to speak.

 

Hope you had a great day today in honor of your wife. Looks like you’re really making some great progress on the projects.

 

I'm starting to move forward on things with a bit more motivation. Things were really tough for a while there after I lost my motivator. And I took early retirement last year so I'm not working for someone else all day long which has really helped a lot with my own projects. The nicer weather helps, too! I've never said it before, but I learned CPR in the Army amongst other places, too, and had to use it on her on that fateful day. I know that is TMI, but it still haunts me some that things didn't go my way in that regard. Motorcycle cop showed up within about the first 4 minutes and when he came in the front door and saw me, he didn't have me stop so I figure he thought I was doing it correctly. He had a portable defibrillator and charged it up and used it a couple of times at least as he had me hold off in those moments. The whole ordeal was absolutely heartbreaking for me. Saying it out loud these days is the only way I'm going to get past it. Sorry guys but thanks for letting me get it out...I'm sure I'm not the only one.

OK, whew, back to your regular scheduled programming. Days like today are tough.

 

Chad, That dash pad looks great from this angle, and I see that you blacked out behind where the instrument cluster goes, which seems like a good idea, was that factory? I had my cluster out, but don't remember if the area was white, red, or black. Also, how did you end up treating the floor area, and are you planning to add any sound deadening material as well?

Nice looking family, except that freakishly tall dude on the right....just kidding....as I wrote elsewhere, you look like a combination of your folks, but also a mix of Tom Hanks and Dave Matthews, and again I mean that as a compliment. Sheilah was absolutely stunning and I imagine she lite up every room she entered. I for one, can't imagine what you were going through, and pray I never have too, but can also understand loosing your motivation. From what you have shared, she sounds like she was a pretty remarkable woman. And if saying it out loud helps, then say it loud, write it ALL CAPS and we will read it with sorrow for we all have had some kind of of heartbreak or another. And I will say a prayer of thanks that you were with her in the end, even in that loss, that terrible moment, I am sure she felt your love and loved you back, and more, no one can hope for. There is a great song by Willie Nelson and his son, called "Just Breathe", and if you get a chance, take a listen, it is a beautiful song about love and loss, and music can often be a salve for our souls.

Thanks for sharing and warm wishes from Germany my friend... Matt

 

Chad... can't even imagine, my thoughts and prayers are with you, tis your thread, lead it where it may need to go! Oh yeah, dash looks awesome!!

 

Thanks man! Dennis Carpenter used to sell the dash pad and maybe they still do and now I'm just not finding it. Last I saw they were changing $500 plus shipping but often was listed as Out of Stock. They still sell lots of others dash pads so not sure what happened there, but I also heard it was actually made by Just Dashes, and they were reselling them or playing the part of distributor. Can't say for certain if that was the case or not. They might have gotten fed up with the prices continuing to go up since as you can see JDs is charging quite a bit more these days. OK, not quite double but within $5 of that. It does include shipping, but WOW, I almost had a heart attack myself. I can certainly understand people just going with the painted dash instead. Less work still looks great and a WHOLE LOT CHEAPER!!


And consider this, too. If you don't want the dash speaker to be completely muffled, you still have to cut a big ole hole in it!!

 

Holy shimoleans!! Glad I took the old one off of Shrek and liked the painted look better, WOW!

I've been debating on getting headliners for Mater my 63 and Shrek my 66... I'm afraid to look, had bad are those now?! They used to be $120 from John's F100's in Orange County, and I could drive there and spend more instead of shipping costs...

 

Matt, I almost missed your post above. The dash support bracket is blacked out now but originally mine was just raw metal and a bit of surface rust clinging to it. I thought some protection would be better and it's not seen so color didn't matter to me. The floor has two sprayed layers of Lizard Skin Sound Control and then the carpet with jute will go over that so it will hopefully be fine.

Love that song by Willie Nelson, too.

And the problem is now I keep getting shorter all the time. So not as tall as I used to be for sure.

Oh, and you had asked about the headliner cost - I bought it through Dennis Carpenter, and it was $175 plus $200 shipping plus tax for my location which is about 10.2%. Not cheap so if you can avoid shipping that would help a lot as you can tell.

 

Chad,
Your post about your wife is good for you and us. Thanks for sharing something very hard in your life. I am trying to help a new friend in the town she lost her husband a couple months ago. Its going to take some grieving time. It doesn't go away. The good times and moments will always be there.
You have wonderfully artistic abilities! Interesting to see your projects! Thanks for sharing.

 

Thanks Chris. I've probably got too many projects going on but it keeps my mind occupied. The three times we went to Paris were always in very later April to early May for Sheilah's birthday. We got to see the May Day parade each time with soldiers marching and tanks rolling down the Champs‑Élysées boulevard. Quite the sight!

On the first trip we stayed in England for one week before taking the bullet train under the English Channel to Paris which was a neat experience.

The second time we went my good friend from high school - his wife had a business trip to Paris at the same time - so we got to meet up with her about four times and had lunch on a riverboat and then dinner at a nice restaurant right next to Notre Dame. We even went to where so was having her meeting which was in the La Défense area and went inside of the Grande Arche (the huge modern arch). We would have otherwise probably not gone there since it's just a modern area with high rise buildings and lots of apartment complexes, but we really enjoyed seeing all of that. Wide plazas, elevated walkways, modern sculptures, the long axis view straight back toward the Arc de Triomphe… it’s a whole different Paris than the one around the Seine.

On the third trip, though, another friend and his wife joined us for the entire two weeks and stayed at the same B&B with us where we had stayed the two times before. Owned by a really nice English woman named Carol and previously her husband Michele who was a rotund French gentleman who had learned some English in high school. We could look out a couple of windows from the B&B down on the famous Berthillon ice cream shop. When they were open the lines went around the corner and down the block a way. So many memories. On the night of Sheilah's birthday, our friends broke out a nice bottle of wine from a local winery here in WA state that they brought with them. A nice Malbec called Timley named after the winery owner Tim - he designed all of their labels - and we took some plastic cups with us and sat on the edge of the Seine with a great view of Notre Dame which is actually on its own island in the middle of the river called Île de la Cité - island of the city - this was pre-fire days - and enjoyed the bottle. The sun was just starting to set as we were going to head to a nice restaurant, and my buddy took this picture. It looks like it was a 2009 and this would have been 2015 so it was nicely aged. No way to recreate that picture easily. Priceless. The Seine was near flood stage.

The B&B was on the other island calledÎle Saint‑Louis - the smaller, quieter sister island just east of Île de la Cité. across the bridge on the right side of the picture. So many excellent little cafés and good restaurants within walking distance that in the 5 weeks total being there we only went to one restaurant twice called La Tour D'Argent - The Golden Tower. It's been open for business since 1582 and almost exclusively serves duck with each one being numbered consecutively. The restaurant claims that King Henri III dined there in the late 1500s and that he consecrated the use of the fork at their establishment. Crazy, huh? Most French nobles still ate with their fingers and a knife at the time.



We also made it twice to Mont‑Saint‑Michel - the medieval abbey‑fortress rising out of the tidal flats off the Normandy coast. The cobble stone streets on the inner part of the island are quite steep. If you ever get out that way I can recommend it. Very cool place steeped in history.

Link to the winery here.
Stevens Winery

 

Truth is, I don't think that there is any way to fabricate an original looking headliner for less than $175 if you factor in materials and the value of time. However, it could be that I still have no other choice if I ship my truck before resolving a new one, and truth is, I am a cheap enough B****** that I will probably act like my father and cuss and stomp my feet (Ok, I have actually never seen him do that) and save myself into spending far more making it than I would be buying one and paying for the shipping.

So, as I plan with my elves...oh wait, I don't have any, that's Chad, (admit it, you have a plethora of elves working for you, how else would you have time to answer all or our...I mean my stupid questions and still have enough time for a cup of coffee let alone get any other work done)...right, where was I, no elves, but... However, I have a customer and friend with a large formate printer, so using the PDF file temples is no problem, also, I could scan an image from my original headliner to get the patten and overall look correct, and print that as well along with the headliner outline. Then press in my vacuum press the various layers of paper and card stock with either spray on contact glue or wood glue (paper is after all just really thin wood) and keep layering until I am happy with the thickness. Then cut out the form on the CNC, and maybe also drill a few thousand tinny, itsy bittsy holes, as well as make an MDF reverse form of the overall ceiling of our trucks. Then back to the vacuum press, dampen the end product (which might not work if I use wood glue as wood glue is often water resistant and I might be past the point of being able to change it from a single axis flat board) but for ****s and giggles, lets assume I can...then place good side down over MFD mold and press the hell out of the new liner...The vacuum press will remove any moisture, so the shape should hold after an hour or so of vacuum... and with time, materials and machine time, I am only at about 4K... but the result and satisfaction... would be priceless!