Dash wood restoration

[Clayton]

I found my driver side wood 1" short and not original. Off to Ebay I went. I bought a package deal with 4 driver side and 2 pass side. Not quite the condition I hoped for. So, does anybody know who can restore the dash wood pieces?

Clayton

[66andBlue]

Clayton,
check our suppliers list in the technical manual: http://www.sl113.org/wiki/Suppliers/Start
East coast: Heritage Woodworks, or West Coast: Madera Concepts

[Clayton]

Thanks so much....I was starting to thinking I was in no man's land. BTW, are you attending the Pagoda gathering Dec. ?

[pj]

Hi Clayton,
do I read this correctly? You have 4 of the driver's side wood pieces?

[zoegrlh]

I have restored my in pass.  Not a hard job. Need to strip old finish with wood stripping compound.  Then very light sanding, stain and finish with polyurethane.  I put satin finisl, 7 coats sprayed on.  Can do it for you if you would like, can give you a price better then heritage Woodworks.
Bob

[Clayton]

Yes....it was a package deal. Not sure what I am going to do with the others.

[KevinC]

I did mine the same way that Bob describes. Not Concours but not bad...

My goal was to refinish them to look like they didn't need refinishing as opposed to just being done.

[Bonnyboy]

Hopefully your wood is in better condition than mine was.   May not be as easy as one thinks if the wood had been damaged by previous attempts at refinishing.  I have refinished several pieces of antique furniture and was still afraid to take on the dash wood on my car. I was going to just paint it black until I could afford a new set.  I went to a furniture refinisher and he said that they were junk - not enough materiall to work with.  

I ran across a guy (I call him Super Dave now) who makes high end guitars and asked him for advice on refinishing my wood.  Mine was pretty bad (garbage according to some) from past water and sun damage and as it turned out lmore damage from previous attempts of refinishing them.   He suggested leaving them with him to see if he could do anything after I stripped them a bit more using proper wood stripper.    I think it was more of a challenge - could he resurect them rather than taking this on as a paying job.  
  
They were partially stripped previously with something that left a wierd finish in areas (probably a furniture oil) and the veneer was missing in a few places.   After I finished stripping the rest of the old finish off with stripper made for furniture refinishing rather than autobody stripping, I glued my console box together and filled a missing chunk with wood filler and dropped them off with Super Dave to play with.  He was going to try to add colour and a satin finish.  He matched a final colour to a piece of wood from my hardtop that hadn't been water / sun damaged.  

Dave said that the past finishing / stripping process left oily residue in the wood which created fisheyes and wouldn't accept a finish or a colour,  so to get a consistent finish he had to seal the wood and then added colours ontop of the sealer to replicate wood grain.  He even ended up hand sanding out the edges of the resins he used to make up for the missing veneers in sections.  The speaker grates were the worst as I didn't spend enough time cleaning them and the glue I used didn't accept colour.   He was very apologetic as to the finished work but I think they look just great.  We argued but he finally accepted money for the job (not enough but thats ok too).  

I asked him if he wanted to do more of these and he declined saying that he really can't take on jobs where he was working for free, and he has all of the fancy spray booths and sanding and polishing tools and most important - expertise.  

[Clayton]

Appreciate the offer. That would be awesome. Wood work is beyond my pay grade. Here is the twist. My overall thinking is to have a great daily driver with some custom features that can be easily changed back to original. With that said, I stained the wood a darker color. That is when I found out the wood is not original and is 1" short of fitting under the crash pad. In talking with Bob Youngman, he thought somebody had broke the tip and spliced it back together. So, I would like to stain one piece to match my color and another set to the original color. Thus, having two sets. One custom and one original. I will probably sell or trade the 3rd set. Your thoughts?

[66andBlue]

Clayton,
I am not sure whether I'll make it to the Dec. 8 tire kicking.
I have re-veneered my dash wood since it was sanded down too much and you are welcome to come by and take a look and decide whether you want to do this also, or we can do it together.

[Clayton]

Alfred, that is like Wayne's world cool! I am working in SD Saturday morning and meeting my sister in Encinitas around 2/3 pm. Any chance we can meet up around 2pm Saturday?

[66andBlue]

Pm sent

[Clayton]

PM sent

[Clayton]

Here is my hot mess!

[Clayton]

One more