This ’34 is testing my skill set. Today I went to ALRO steel and got a piece of 20 ga. stainless to make the dash panel. I got a piece WAY bigger than I needed, thinking it’d come in handy to make something, sometime. I stopped at my buddy’s house on the way home and borrowed his bead roller. Great plan.
The first thing that happened was that I laid the panel out, and then rolled the bead on the mark for the outer edge, thus making it 1/4″ too big, and it hung below the dash. Damn. So, I laid out another, cut it, and while rolling the bead (the 20 ga. stainless really taxes the bead roller), I wandered off the line and ruined it. So, I cut out number three, no problems, got the machine finish on, cut the holes for the gauges with a brown blade in the cut-off wheel. All the gauges dropped in save one on the far right, so I began to carefully open up the hole with the cut-off wheel. Not carefully enough though, I slipped and ended up with a big divet (look over the ammeter)
that the bezel doesn’t cover.
So, I’ll cut out panel number four, use up the last of the piece of stainless, and spend another day doing it all over again. If I had the right tools for the job, it’d save me aggravation, but I’ll be more careful with the next one.
On the plus side, I did manage to make the package tray/seat back brace without any wrong cuts or trips back to Menards for more pine. The seat looks great in the car, the support makes the body much more solid, so I have managed to move ahead.
Cool McCool's Garage 
Mac-Cool – why not just make a thin-gauge, brushed “ring” (like a giant washer) to go behind each gauge and cover the minor goof? ;~))