26 27 Roadster Floor Board Dimension - Revisited

[Eric Sole]

This post from 2013 https://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/3 ... 1366131784 got me looking more closely at the floorboards in my 27 Roadster.

After some inspection I was surprised to find that the upper board (nº 1) is made from not 1 piece but 5 pieces of wood which are dovetailed and the riveted metal pedal slots hold them together. This shows the 4 pieces which are dovetailed to the upper piece.

The dovetail cut can be seen here and the little piece between the reverse and the brake pedals is removed. I had to reposition it because the dovetail had broken off and was pushing it downward, making it hard to fit the floorboards in place.

Using Jim Thode's original drawing as a base, my floorboards appear as follows:

Can anyone confirm if this is Ford original issue? It sure is quite a bit more ornate than any shipping crate could have been (reference to old wife's tail about Ford repurposing shipping crates to make the floorboards).

[OilyBill]

Ford did not use packing crates, but he probably DID use what is called a "Linderman Machine". This takes small pieces of wood, and edges them so they can all be glued together into usable wood boards. The reason I know this is that the Franklin Automobile Co, used a Linderman machine in their production, as I have found it called out several times in different Franklin Factory drawings, which call out: "Use stock from Linderman Machine" or "Make from Linderman Machine material". I was puzzled about what a "Linderman Machine" even WAS, but I finally found a picture of one on an old machinery website, with a description of how it worked.

Likewise, I was always puzzled by the description in early Ford literature that they formed their front axles with a "Bulldozer". My assumption was they modified an actual bulldozer to do the forming, because Ford was just getting started. But in actuality, a "Bulldozer" is like a vertical forging press, but operates horizontally, using press dies against a massive group of supports. The metal is laid on the flat, polished table of the bulldozer, and then a heavy press blade moves along the table, pinching the material between the forming dies, and forcing it into shape. It is like a slow-motion forge. Instead of repeated vertical blows, it puts tremendous force between the shape bar and the die supports, and just squeezes the metal silently into the desired shape. The hydraulic system makes noise, but the actual forming is completely silent. I could hardly conceive of how one of these would actually work, but then a friend who makes jewelry equipment, demonstrated with his 50 ton press. He put a piece of angle iron in it, and brought the ram down, and the angle iron literally went completely flat, and then squeezed out like peanut butter. It he had put a forming die in that spot, the metal would have been pressed into it like Play-Doh into a kids plastic mold. The steel seemed to simply go soft and gooey, and just flowed under the pressure. Apparently, this is the machine that Ford used, until he could afford to purchase an actual Forging press. Ford literature mentions it in connection with forming the front axles. I actually found one such machine for sale at a used equipment place in Casa Grande, Arizona. The table was about 5 feet wide and 6' or 8' long, and the piston that drove it was about 12" in diameter. The pins and bars it drove against were all 8" to 10" in diameter. It struck me that such a machine would be perfect for forming frame parts. It would be similar to forming aluminum aircraft parts over wood blocks, but on a larger and more powerful scale. I think it was rated at 100 tons of force. If you go to an equipment resale site, you can still find them listed under "Bulldozer Forming Presses".

I am STILL constantly learning in this hobby, even after 50 years of being interested in old cars.