The station wagon bows are in some sense much simpler than trying to learn how to tie your shoe. But it sure takes a lot more time to make it. The bows are on the roof and they go side to side. In the station wagon there was 9 of them including one of which butts up against the piece in the rear that is visible when looking at the back.
To start the process we cut the wood to a certain length and then cut it to the width of an inch and a quarter. This was to allow us to be able to make the curve to follow the curve of the roof. After we had it all cut my Dad set up what he calls affectionately "The Bow Making Machine."
First we had to make a pattern and that is the large board on top. We cut and sanded this to match the curve that we wanted. Then we marked each bow and to save from routing and causing major issues we first trimmed it with the bandsaw. Then we finished with the router.
This is them up to that point. And then we used that curve to make the bottom curve. And how we did that was that we stuck it into the plainer. And planed it down to 7/8 in which is the height of the bows. This produced a whole other bag of sawdust.
This is what they look like finished! Of course this is all of them stacked together they really aren't that big.
Now for those of you who don't know anything about a Model A or who have never been in one before this would be the width of the car. Back in the day they said they could put three people in that amount of space. To give you a reference point that is a weight bench underneath them. Not very big is it? My Dad and I were joking about this when we were looking at it. When you look at it this way you just don't think your fat butt is going to fit in their. But haven driven a Model A I know it will as long as I don't eat too many Twinkies.
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