MTFCA Forum

Just finished building this for a goodfella in MD's '06 Ford Model N. Complete box and four coils, correct down to the anti-rattle leaf spring under the lid.

A work of art RV, a work of art.

RV: Wow That Is More Than Awesome! Good Job!

Incredible work.
I'm drooling.

Gene

Absolutely marvelous RV. I was fascinated by the grain in the box front. I presume it is a result of the way that particular board was first cut. It would certainly make it hard to duplicate when making the matching lid, as is shown. I presume they are the same species, just milled differently.

Allan from down under.

R V, Your work is beautiful!

Keith

So it looks like RV has invented a time machine. Finally.

Cheers, Bill

Sure wish I had a car worthy of such a great looking coil box!

Thanks for the kind words, guys. Allan, you are right; the wood is all from the same mill run of partly quarter sawn Honduran mahogany but from different planks. I try to buy 16/4 mahogany whenever possible; first, to avoid glue-ups when cutting large sections for later sawing into individual panels, and second, to allow for more wiggle room when the planks are partly or even fully quarter sawn. Trouble is, fully straight sawn 9 to 12 inch wide 16/4 can be tough to find so I usually have to settle for 12 or 10, or sometimes even 8 if I (and my customers) are desperate. Since I have to take what I can get, when I can get it, completely grain-matched lids and boxes only happen about once every three or four builds.

Beautiful!
R. V. may I ask how these coils are hooked into the wiring?
I saw this thread, hopped up to grab a coil out of my curio cabinet and it's this type and wondered what for.
Says Splitdorf New York in a diamond on the Bakelite top.
I'd guess that the rail is positive on the posts closest to us. Is High tension on the bottom post?
Where do the four wires from the commutator attach? The other top post on the adjustment mount? That knurled nut is TIGHT.
Perhaps I can say I have the start of an N...
Thank you.

Duey, you have it right. The timer connection is the one closest to the large knurled adjusting screw. The primary is the one in the corner, and the high tension post is on the bottom of the unit.

RV, I am still a little unaware of the timber nomenclature you use. What is 16/4? I presume from the subsequent references to 12. 10 or even 8 represent some kind of grading.

Allan from down under.

It's a measure of rough stock thickness. The top number refers to the number of "quarters" the piece has; hence, "16/4" (sixteen-quarter) would be roughly 4 inches thick; "12/4" (twelve-quarter) would be about 3 inches thick, and so on.

I wouldn't expect anything less from R.V.

RV, that's interesting. Here we used the actual inch measurements of the flitch. A 9 x 2 was 9'' wide and 2" thick. I presume there is a story behind the 12/4 type of description which would convey more than just the timber dimension. I'll have to do some Googling!

Allan from down under.

I believe that the system developed for use on rough stock and allowed for a small range of actual sizes; measurements like those you cite were reserved for planed dimension stock.

Thanks R. V.!

Thanks RV. On our scale the 9 x 2" example I used, the 9 is the width of the plank at sawing. The actual measurement is 9" less the thickness of the sawblade. Likewise on the 2". A 1" thick board is roughly 7/8"+ off the saw. By the time it is planed all round it comes down to 7/8"- or 22mm in today's measure. These days the equivalent board is just 19mm thick, PAR, as they try to squeeze as much footage as they can out of the log. Trying to match old stock dimensions with new timbers means buying oversize, and wasting some to get it back down to the old measure.

Allan from down under.

"...they try to squeeze as much footage as they can out of the log."

Yep; they do the same thing here. Nothing wrong with that, but that's the reason why, on my new boxes, the lid grain doesn't usually match the box grain: in order to maximize the salable number of board feet, the logs are usually sawn in a combination of straight and quarter. For my use, straight sawn is vastly better but is a lot less common, especially in the thicker cuts. Quarter sawn means, for me, a lot of (expensive!) waste.