Time for a bodywork update I think
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As you'll know, we went for a wire-form buck because it's a brilliant way of visualising / creating shapes for the body. Within a few minutes, subtle changes can be made to a curve, a shape or whatever. Cheap as well: the whole lot so far has barely used £100 of materials.
So great, the perfect solution ..... erm
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The problem is this: the wire is great for freehanding a style, and going all of the way down one side of the car. The trouble is then reproducing it on the other side. Trying to bend wire so that it exactly holds the shape of side one is almost impossible. Also, the 'master' side's wire form is held in with a variety of props and inner wires, meaning that you can't map the inside of the form.
Bottom line is that the more I thought about it, I came to the conclusion that the only option was going to be to reproduce side two in wood (known as an eggbox buck), having taken forms from the master side. Right in the middle of this dilemma I was due to go on a jig-making course (for some more projects I've got in mind), so I held off until then. Just the chance that they might have a magic bullet to get me back on track.
No, it turned out that most people are working from full drawings, or can take sections from an existing car, which is in effect, where we are. Therefore they agreed that side two would have to be in wood. Now I might well be missing something, but I think for us now, wood is the way to go, and that's what we're doing.
No regrets with the wire though: there's no way that you could create this sort of shape in wood, and then convey that to the customer in a way that he could visualise the project.
Now the first side is pretty stress free (design apart): if it looks right, it is right. With side two, things are getting complicated. How do you know when the wings are level? Spirit level? What if the car's not level? What if the floor's not level? What about how far in or out the wing comes? There's no one straight line that you can measure from, and no easy centre-line either.
Sooner or later the bullet had to be bit, and a decision had to be made as to what is the centre-line, and what is 'level'.
Level: I decided that the only truly level part around the front, as far as the car (and not the spirit level) is concerned was the two uprights from the suspension. Someone had put a wire-form in the way, so that had to be bridged:
So that gets a level. EDIT: this thing is parallel to the suspension towers on the top, and at 90d on the sides. This now gives me something I can put a right-angle or straight-edge onto: very useful indeed.
Next thing: where is the master wing (in and out)? Measuring off of the supension arms, I marked a centrepoint on the front of the wireform, and luckily have the screenwasher hole on the scuttle as a rearward centre-line.
With the centreline in place, I could then measure out to the top-most part of the wing at the rear, and scribe in a board to sit on the wing (there's some logic to this ..... ), and keep it parallel to my new centre-line. The previous 'level' board gave something to support the wing board, and ensures that the wing board remains upright:
With these in place, I could now start scribing in some MDF to the existing wire, in order to arrive at something I could draw around to create each station for the wooden buck. The problem that I was stuck on for ages and ages, was to come up with a method that could be translated onto a board for cutting, that could be referenced back to the wing. To put it another way, it's all very well scribing in a shape, but to get that to marry up to the one ahead and behind it in height, width, and twist, is a tricky old thing.
Anyway, as you can see, I marked to wing board on both sides, and it's kept vertical. The process for making each station is as follows:
1) Scribe in scrap MDF into wireform, keeping to reference line on wing board, and ending up with scrap MDF fitting the wire and the board.
2) Draw around this onto thick MDF to form first half of station:
And then repeat for the other side of the wing board. Of course you do need to factor in the width of the board as well when drawing the stations out.
I'm hoping that this method will give me a set of stations with the correct relationship to one another, and that they can be mounted onto the inside 'sister' to that top wing board: i.e. ultimately the underside of the wing board will be drawn around, and this will give the shape for the main wing 'spine' for the buck.
I should point out that we are going to have a weird (and ugly) buck now, where the nearside, the front and the rear will be in wood, and the master side will remain as wire (it might as well).
In fact the wire side will be the first to be built, as that can then yeald some soft 3D patterns to confirm that side two is as accurate as possible.
More in a mo ...[/img]
DDK Member1243 07741 273865. Home of the RY Austin 7 Trophy's and Austin Single Seat Racers
One complication after another seemed to arise and it's the first time the Special hasn't obliged with an easy and first time modification. Maybe it wasn't happy with it's nose being dropped a few inches towards the tarmac 
Barry in typically modest style "lent a hand with a bit of cutting and welding" which ended up being horribly involved and complicated - thank goodness he lives local!
. As soon as I started wheeling on my £2150 wheel, following my three day wheeling course, £1500 with lost work, and having committed very publicly to this build (not to mention the Contour courses and at least a year at Rod's), it was clear that I couldn't wheel. For toffee. At all. 
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