The plywood monocoque car guy

On Apr 19, 8:05 pm, wrote:
Trying to bend it with the grain (grain parallel to the bend
line) will usually fracture the core plies, since it's pretty hard to
get moisture that deep.
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Try adding two ounces of household ammonia and ONE DROP of liquid
detergent (or a drop of Kodak 'Photo Flow') to each GALLON of water.
Soak over-night then heat the soaked wood to 165 to 185F degrees.
Bend to the desired shape and allow to dry. For extremely deep
curves, do the bend in graduated stages, keeping the plywood moist
until the desired shape has been achieved.

Thinner is better; make the part as two shells if needed to achieve
the desired thickness.

This procedure does not work with all plywoods.

-R.S.Hoover

wrote:
On Apr 19, 8:05 pm, wrote:

Trying to bend it with the grain (grain parallel to the bend
line) will usually fracture the core plies, since it's pretty hard to
get moisture that deep.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Try adding two ounces of household ammonia and ONE DROP of liquid
detergent (or a drop of Kodak 'Photo Flow') to each GALLON of water.
Soak over-night then heat the soaked wood to 165 to 185F degrees.
Bend to the desired shape and allow to dry. For extremely deep
curves, do the bend in graduated stages, keeping the plywood moist
until the desired shape has been achieved.

Thinner is better; make the part as two shells if needed to achieve
the desired thickness.

This procedure does not work with all plywoods.

-R.S.Hoover



And - do the ammonia test as a test.

Because the wood may stay quite rubbery afterwards...

On Apr 18, 1:15 pm, Bart wrote:

First, I'm guessing that marine plywood was used in the construction
of the Marcos line of cars because it was the best laminate wood
material available at the time (early '60s). The car I'm building will
be very much like the Marcos, in that it will be a multiple "stressed
box" semi-monocoque structure bonded at the sills and front and rear
bulkheads to the open-cockpit fiberglass body I'm using.

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2006/...ny-sports-car/

Mechanix Illustrated, September 1956

Nothing of any technical value, I think, but it's the same sort of
project.


Mike