Timber for old MV's

The favourite wood seems to be Ash. A great number of cabs and bodywork also seemed to use wood and metal. Rebuliding the WS10 the Ash would have come out prohibitivley expensive. Fortunatley for this job we have been able to get away using treated soft wood.

Cheers Tony, I did wonder about using treated pine. If the scammell was rare or unusual I'd make sure it was original but I'd rather get this one done and get on with saving something else!

Jack will proably be able to give chapter and verse, but as I understnd it the Ash has a tight straight grain that makes it flexible.

Yes have to agree with Tony there. Not to hot on the materials used for lorries but ash would be a safe bet. Highly resistant to shock so can take also sorts of grief - just look at tool handles and cart wheels.

It is/was readily available, easy to work and is also a wonderful wood when it comes to steam bending (as long as you have no knots). Seasoned ash can be as hard as iron.

- incidentally, the name Ashley is Old English for a clearing (AKA field) in an ash woodland.

Thanks Jack, so to pick futher, what sort of subsitue could you get away with? Is Ash still grown commercially in UK?

Hi all,

Apart from the scammells I presume that a number of MV's use timber in their construction and I would be interested to hear what you restorers out there have used?

 

Does anyone have any suggestions of what to use, or indeed what not to use?! And are there any online suppliers worth speaking to?

 

There's quite a lot of wood missing from the scammell so I need to find something relatively economical, there was so little left of my scammell I'm not too concerned about originality although I welcome any comments!

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Duncan

Duncan, have you seen Scammell Explorer gallery posts 623-632 for info on Keruing? :-D Daz

Steer clear of Tanalized pre treated timber as paint does not adhere very well to it, if using softwood do all cutting and drilling then soak in a wood preserver that is made to be painted over.

A good tip is that when wood dries it mostly curves away from the heart, so when fitting planks to a frame put the heart side out, when the wood moves the joints will close up instead of opening and this gives a much nicer look.

If you look at the end of a board (a wide board is easiest to use as an example) you'll see the annual rings. The annual rings will tell you how the board will cup. It will generally cup the opposite direction that the rings are running.

Duncan,

I'd say it is really a matter of where the wood is to be used.

If it's for framing the cab or load carrying sections at the back I would go for Ash. As Jack said, it's one of the best woods for absorbing shock loads and is very strong. It's also great to work with and takes screws very well ( I was about to say 'as long as you drill pilot holes' but then remembered that if you don't, you won't get the screws to go in anyway - it's that tough).

I'd say it's money well spent too. You'll spend many weeks of spare time using £100 worth of wood! If you used a weaker material you would have to consider re-sizing sections and redesigning joints to get what you want/need.

Regarding supply, imported American Ash will be cheaper than locally grown timber and far more likely to be available in long clean lengths. If you don't have woodworking machines of your own (bandsaw and planer/thichnesser at least) you'll have to either get the timber merchant to prepare it for you or find someone local who will do it. You'll have to design carefully to know what to buy and how to cut it down to what you need. The preparation will probably add about 20% to the cost. Talk to the nearest timber importer/merchant you can find - from my experience they will be very helpful to an amateur woodworker, they see hundreds of them.

If your vehicle is going to be outside for much of its life make sure to apply preservative to the framing before you paint. Ash, like most woods, is a good host to rot and it is top of the menu for wood-worm - they just love it, so much so that (before preservatives were in wide use) Ash was used as a decoy to protect other timber from attack.

On the other hand, if the wood is for flooring or siding (and it's not going to get much abuse), preserved softwoods should be fine.

Phil

Hi all,

Apart from the scammells I presume that a number of MV's use timber in their construction and I would be interested to hear what you restorers out there have used?

 

Does anyone have any suggestions of what to use, or indeed what not to use?! And are there any online suppliers worth speaking to?

 

There's quite a lot of wood missing from the scammell so I need to find something relatively economical, there was so little left of my scammell I'm not too concerned about originality although I welcome any comments!

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Duncan

Madrat, send a PM to Croc and ask about plans for the rear body of Scammel Explorers, he has Scammels rear body blueprint plan, it is fairly large, but may be able to get it copied.......

As you might imagine there is even an EMER for wood! It is covered in EMER GENERAL N 800. This 1960 edition runs to 28 pages & details properties of some 300 types of wood dependant on their origin. All the locations refer to places that in 1960 were under or had been under British influence or likely to be so. Obviously so local repairs could be undertaken using materiels to hand. There are no great surprises in the list & indeed some seem sadly still relevant today.

Below are a few key pages.

In the first table in the right hand column it rates Termite Resistance, probably not relevant up a mountain in East Ayrshire :-\

An important issue is corrosion of metals by the wood & vice-versa. From the last table it looks as if you would be on to a winner if you used pine, spruce, walnut or mahogany glued together with blood albumen :shake:

Watch out for 14 (a) "Galvanised volts"

Watch out for 14 (a) "Galvanised volts"

Are these only available from Zinc carbon batteries? :rofl:

Bit worrying about the Oak being most corrosive. That's what the original planking on the rear deck of the Ward La France was. I was intending replacing like for like but having seen what happened to the original rear body and reading this now I'm not so sure.

Might go for the Kerouin as recommended by a friend as it's widely used on truck decks these days.

Might go for the Kerouin as recommended by a friend as it's widely used on truck decks these days.

Only two countries listed. Although there could be other sources in the world that have been outside the sphere of British influence.

From Borneo.

In lb/cu ft it rates 64

Durability - Moderately Resistance

Permeability - Moderately Resistance/Resistant

Appears not to have been tested on Termites

From Malaya

In lb/cu ft it rates 51

Durability - Moderately Resistance

Permeability - Not rated either way

Appears not to have been tested on Termites - Perhaps they don't like the taste of it?

I've never seen Ash used on WW2 military trucks, my Albion CX22 cab was made from Oak and Mahogany.

The rear body and cab floor was softwood.

My radar trailer was entirely from Oak, floor-boards nearly 1" thick.

1952 Sentinel living van was also Oak frames and floorboards.

Ash is excellent for steaming and bending such as in car bodies but not the best for general construction.

Don't use Teak, you will have a job painting it because of the oily texture. If you use wood preservative ensure that any subsequent coats of paint will stick.

Have a look at http://www.lanarkshirehardwoods.co.uk

Wood used internally should be kiln dried as it won't split. As a wood carving hobbyist I only buy kiln dried wood and have found the specialist sawmills go out of their way to be helpful and advise on the best use of various types of timber. Hope this is of use for your project.

you could also try a reclaimed timber place, you might need to spend some time removing nails etc, and might need to buy larger pieces, but once cut down, you've got good wood at a fraction of the price.

I know that when restoring, we want the vehicles to be 'as was', but practically will they be undertaking the same job? If not, does it need to be the same wood?

We used to use Keruing for staight sections, pillars etc, but invested in Ash for any curved sections such as wheel arches, roof sticks and so on. There is another wood as good as keruing, but the name escapes me, a good wood yard can advise, even Arnold Lavers can be pretty helpful, unless you get the trainee.

my Albion CX22 cab was made from Oak and Mahogany.

 

Surely mahogany was an imported wood, sourced in Central America and Africa if memory serves, so would it have been available in Britain during wartime........doubtful :confused:

Honduras Mahogany during world war two was the specified wood for the US Higgin's Boat landing craft. It was only after the orders had been placed that the US Military found out the entire last two seasons production had been bought by one person , by the name of Mr Higgins. :-D

I would be surprised if a wonderful and useful timber like oak would be used in cab construction. Oak has such structural properties that it would be over kill in a cab? It would be used for heavy duty work like beds etc etc but the demand for it else where would be incredible - there are many other suitable woods that could be used. But as we all know, nothing is ever clear cut in war time.

It is the tannin in oak that will eat steel.

On a side note there where around 5000 'Timberjills' akaWomen's Land Army Timber Corps and they worked the woodlands as the men where away at war. I had a great chat with one many years ago and it was a brutal way of life for here.

Even though Portugal was neutral during the war - they 'lent' us their cutters to help fell our timber!

Tannin is a marvelous stuff, makes incredibly tough leather as well.

If it's any help, I know that Ford in Dagenham used Beech frequently in their vehicles. There are several pieces in my WOA2.

Don't forget about using oak to make cask's to age a verity of alcoholic based beverages , of course the inside first has to be suitably charred to release that tannen and other elements of the oak also .

As I understood it from my museum days, at the time of WW2 most body builders already had sizeable stocks of wood, as they used to leave wood to season for years before using it. With the advent of war, I should imagine that this stockpile was quickly used but not replaced sufficiently due to wartime shortages. Any new supplies could not be left to season but were used almost straight away.

Any pre-war buses we used to work on had good bodies, as the wood used was well seasoned, anything wartime or immediately post war, was invariably rotten as the wood wasn't allowed sufficient time to season.

Bit OT but I was told by an antiquarian book seller that the wartime shortage of wood also effected paper production. Many books published during the war were produced using pulp with a high content of rags, cloth etc. Consequently many wartime books were a lot more durable than peacetime publications.

Thanks for all the posts guys, what a fantastic collection of information and knowledge! All your help is very much appreciated!

Regards,

Duncan :yay:

As everybody else has already said - ash & beech are favourites for framework . You can still get ash but at a price - can remember how much mine cost for the repairs to my wagon frame but it was scary .

A good reclaim yard is also a very worthwhile place to try - we recently laid a floor for a customer using boards which had been salvaged from a BT workshop somewhere - pretty sure they were British Columbian Pine & came up beautifully for what seemed a very reasonable price .

As for contacting an importer direct - not so sure . Maybe our local one is the exception but contacting them , even as a trade customer for a quantity purchase , they didn't want to know .