Thanks for the good words! The next-door neighbor is kinda to blame, as he asked me "So, what's your next project?", as if it was, you know, to be expected that Emu is always in the shop building *something*. Which, in retrospect, I guess that IS to be expected.
I knew the hood was gonna be a challenge; on the full-size HMMWV/Hummers it's a fiberglass piece with a million weird angles and asymmetries and curves and generally obnoxiously shaped. I absolutely LOATHE working with fiberglass, plus I'd have to make a positive to make a mold anyway, so I figured I'd try my hand at wood.
Shades of The Holy Grail: "Why do witches burn? ... Because they are made of wood?"
If it turns out utter crap, I can at least use it as a positive for a 'glass mold. In any event, the end result is not exactly what I had envisioned, due to both poor craftsmanship (or as we say "learning experiences"
) and also having to streeeeetch the thing vertically to make the wheel wells look remotely right as compared to the rest of the tub. Remember earlier when I said the scaling is not even across the axes, i.e. it's 1:3 or 1:2 or 2:5 or whatever, so it's distinctly taller than it should be, but has to be to fit people inside that have, you know, legs.
The curved parts are made with realllly thin lauan, less than 1/8". There's tons of jigsaw work, and more than a bit of my trademark wildly inaccurate measuring. Hopefully, however, car guys will look at it and say "Oh yeah, that's a Hummer". I suspect not-car people will look at it and say "That's a Jeep", but for those who know the AM General history that's actually not far off.
Jeep nerds will count the Right And Proper number of grille slats (again with The Holy Grail: Seven shall be the number thou shall grille, and the number of the grille shall be seven
) Daimler-Fiat-Chrysler-whatever they are this month actually has that trademarked, I gather, but AM General retains a license because they made postal jeeps at some point.
Lighting will of course be all LED to avoid overloading the tiny generator. Gotta love the Chinese cheap stuff you get on Amazon and Fleabay these days.
Here you see the design process and how often it changed (red Sharpie! black Sharpie! green Sharpie! Use ALL the Sharpies!) and inside are the aforementioned amazing "blueprints" (again, term used very loosely.)
For the front and rear markers, I 3D-printed cases to make the lights look less like round trailer lights and more resemble the military lights. Again, not perfect, but a fun touch. The red thing on the driver's side is also 3D printed, a (nonfunctional) blackout light. With a bit of masking and paint, I think it'll look right.
Though I'm striving for detail here, I have had to take some liberties. The airlift shackles that protrude through the hood, for instance, don't actually go to the tub for lifting. They do, however, mount solidly to the hood ribs, which make them a very convenient and comfortable way to shift the thing around. All told the hood weighs a bit short of 30 pounds, but it's a bit unwieldy due to the stupid shape. And yeah, there is a certain amount of wood filler (Bondo for wood.) That's the pink stuff there; I got the fancy one that goes on pink and then dries brown, so you know when it's ready to leave alone until tomorrow before sanding. (Just because it SAYS it's dry, doesn't mean it's ACTUALLY dry.)
Unpainted but installed, the hood ends up like so
and
with the doors. I've had fun with the hardware; got little rubber latches for the hood on Amazon, and the door latches are for like a truck toolbox. I'd have preferred to have them parallel to the ground, i.e. square to the door top, but I couldn't figure out a way to have them actually latch unless they're square to that back angled edge.
The door hinges are fabbed up, just flat stock, tube, and a solid round down the middle. To remove, you unlatch the door, then just grab at the front of the door and pull up. I'll say many times during this build, but it's nice to have components you can carry with one hand. Especially since this is like a
@Greg72 build, where you install and remove any given component what seems like a hundred times while you're making it.
You can see the "embossed" idea on the doors here, where the outer layer has the pattern cut through, and then is glued onto the inner layer. The back of the tub has the same thing above the wheel well. The doors have had the "corner" created by the cut filled in with wood filler and sanded (soo ... much ... sanding...), which is why they're lighter in color, and the tub hasn't had that done yet. (The tub isn't glued yet, just screwed together temporarily.)
Here you can sorta see the two layers of the tub sides
My poor Blazer, spending much of her time as storage for wood
Then the two pieces are glued and clamped. And yeah, that piece is warped a bit, as 1/4" plywood is finicky, even as two pieces together. I actually finished gluing them on the welding table, not seen here, so they should be mostly flat. And once it's glued into the tub the corners will be straightened with 1x1's, keep it fairly flat/straight.
Finally, we see that primer covers a great many sins. Discovered that B-I-N makes their primer/sealer, my go-to fave for woodwork, in a rattle can, so there's no brush marks. Of course wood is so much more porous than metal, one can doesn't go remotely as far as I'm used to with metal, but it does seal nicely and should help protect all of that wood filler and glue from getting wet.
And that's another month's work in one post. How easy it seems... and how much sweat and sawdust it really was
-- A
