1946 Ford Roadster Pickup - Roadster Refinement

I'd made the front and rear sections in two pieces to save on materials. With the butt joints in their centers V'd, and the sections taped in position, Jimmy White TIG-welded them together on the vehicle. I wasn't too concerned about burning the paint on my unfinished truck.

Despite its 1/8-inch thickness, the aluminum was easy to bend, unlike steel of a similar gauge.

Here's the final shape I decided upon, with the rear edge of the window aperture leaning forward slightly, and a larger radius to the top corner, conveniently matching that of a gallon paint can, if memory serves!

The bows determine the final shape of the roof, and much standing back and head scratching brought me to this design, with the bows held in place with masking tape and C-clamps. I elected to put a slight bend in the center of the front bow, to transition the roof skin from flat at the rear to the V'd windshield frame. In hindsight, a gentle curve across its entire length may have looked better, but this looked right without the skin in place.

The framework above the doors came next. I cut another piece of 1/4-inch MDF to represent the window, which dropped down into the door a few inches, to determine the shape of the framework, and hence the window aperture.

I'd bought some 1/2- and 2-inch aluminum strap from which to fabricate the framework above the doors, and used a shrinker/stretcher to bend the smaller strap to match the edge of the MDF pattern.

With the 2-inch strap bent to match, the two pieces were welded together to form an L-section for strength, then welded to the front and rear sections to complete the perimeter framework.

The advantage of making a pattern like this is that I could play around with different angles and radii, then stand back and decide which worked best. Here's where I made the only mistake in the project, as I cut the MDF long enough to meet the aluminum around the back of the cab. Of course the window needs to drop down into the door, so the MDF should really have been cut to this size, and the roof extended over the door shuts. I'll have to add a filler piece to bridge the gap between the glass and the roof once the windows are fitted.

The top bows were formed from 3/4-inch aluminum tube, and bent using a hardware store pipe bender. Probably the hardest part of the project was determining where to start each bend, in order for the ends of the tubing to locate where I wanted them on the perimeter frame.