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Posted by David Sherman on Saturday, July 11, 2009 at 15:55:45 :
In Reply to: Re: Carryall and panels were WWII only. posted by Paul (in NY) on Saturday, July 11, 2009 at 15:25:25 :
I can easily see why the early van and station wagon type bodies were wood rather than steel; low production volume. Steel bodies require very expensive tooling that can only be justified by large production runs. In those days there were probably still carriage makers around who had the shops and the skills for building wooden bodies and were hungry for work.
Nowadays, we're not used to making complicated curved and fitted pieces of wood in production quantities, so we think it's an awkward way to do it, but back then it was a reasonable and practical method for small production runs. Good wood was not so expensive, nor was labor, but the capital costs of the tooling and the presses and dies for making sheet metal were high as they are today in relative terms.
Actually, if somebody wanted to get into building small production runs of woody bodies today, they would have two big advantages over the old carriagemakers; CNC wood mills and modern adhesives. They have CNC machines now that can zip out a gun stock in nothing flat, so building all the intricate curved parts for a woody body would be a snap. Sharp carbide tools would mean minimal sanding, and modern adhesives would mean simpler joinery and fewer metal fasteners. CAD programs would also make it a lot easier to design the whole assembly and ensure that it would all fit together and be strong the first time.
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