Cool McCool's Garage

I’ve always like engine turning, and try to have some in all my projects.  It’s fun to do, looks good, and people seem to like it.  I’d made a gauge panel for it last winter, but due to a layout error, it didn’t fit the dash properly.   Not thinking, I rolled the bead on the perimeter mark, which made the panel 3/4″ to wide, and the bottom hung of the edge of the dash.  Duh.

So, inspired by my buddies Roadster’s Auburn dash insert, and some photos I took of Auburns and Dusie’s at the Gilmore Museum this past summer, I designed and made some new inserts today.  Like the Diamond T Deluxe cab dash, I made side panels to match the center panel, and did a machine finish on them all.  The bead rolling went much easier than I’d thought, I was able to make a raised bead on the polished stainless, and have nice crisp corners.  I like ’em!

I decided to make the pattern a little bigger than the original one, and used a bigger mandrel to make the swirls.  Hard to get in the corners, but the mounting screws will take up the blank space, and it’s under the deep “eyebrow” of the Auburn-like dash anyway, in the shadow.

The gauge layout will be the same as this, with the speedo and tach on the outside, the four smaller gauges in the center, and the blank area in the middle will have the light switch, wiper control, dummy choke and throttle knobs, and ignition switches.  The new panel is much crisper looking than this one, and I laid the pattern out better.