G.W.R. Autotrailer 169 News and Restoration Blog

29/10/2021 Further progress on the assembly of section 3 requires a further 3 Roof Hoops to be manufactured, and due to the imminent increase in electricity prices and the fact the there is a high demand for the said power for several hours we took the opportunity to save a few pounds before the 1st November. For those who are new followers of this Blog and all things Auto 169 this will be a new process to you although we have now produced 8 of these and will probably need a further 5 or 6 before we reach the Luggage end. Briefly they are made of 4 laminations of 3"x1/2' ash. The individual laminations are steamed for about 2 1/2 hours before being removed and clamped to the former. The first lamination is allowed to cool for about 20-30 mins until 'set' when its unclamped and lamination 2 is added. This process is repeated a total of 4 times when they are removed clamped together and then left for a couple of weeks to fully dry out prior to gluing. The pictures below ...

  Luggage Door Construction update. 25/08/2021 Progress on the manufacture of the first door stiles continues. Below you can see the first pair of stiles looking amazingly similar and the original for comparison. The bottom cross-member has also been made and fitted. Work will now continue with the remaining components Work has also continued on the seatback cushions along with the preparation of the main carriage frames to receive section 3 woodwork. The joining scarf joints on the soleplates has been completed and section 4 (the last quarter) has been partially marked out for mortises to be cut. We have also reached an agreement with the WSR Plc to store 169 at Williton for a further 2 years. Hopefully, we will be able to show our progress at the upcoming WSR Gala Weekend at the beginning of October.

 A few weeks back we reported that we had recovered the pair of 9"x3" oak sole plates for the final section of the carriage. These had been gently seasoning for 4-5 years in our workshop and whilst not expecting them to be perfectly straight (oak rarely is) one of the two was quite badly warped and twisted. One of the lessons learned from earlier sections was to ensure the scarfing joints between sections is manufactured prior to erecting the previous section. So we needed to attempt to straighten the timber to allow the joints to be made. Our previous experience steaming these big timbers has proven quite successful provided the process is given plenty of time. So out came our 12' steaming box originally designed for making roof hoops and the necessary steam supplies by way of 2 paint strippers plugged in and set in action. The offending piece of oak added and left for 5 hours to gently warm. The above picture shows the extent of the twist After 5 hours the twist had sub...