Backstage

Finally!

I've been sitting on a pile of pressure treated lumber for almost a year now at the shop... My neighbor (at the shop, not the house) has been doing a frame off restoration on his 70's pickup... This started a couple years ago mind you... The original plan called for him to restore the original bed... Then as time got tight last fall (he usually plows with this truck in the winter) he asked if I could whip a temporary bed together for him to get through the season... No problem says I... And then he got busy doing something else, and our season exploded, and well, the truck sat for yet another winter... So the lumber has been sitting around for a year... Pressure treated lumber has this tendency to start warping if you look at it strangely, if it isn't built in to something as soon as you buy it... Somehow this stack stayed almost dead true... The 4x4 and 4x6 I had for the cross frame beams twisted, but the 2x and 5/4 were straight as an arrow... A little work with a hand plane and the 4x material was perfectly fine. (I haven't used a hand plane in years... it was actually quite satisfying, and justified my purchasing a few nice old planes a couple years ago...) End result, is a pretty damn nice truck bed... I imagine I'll actually be sad when he refinishes the right parts and pulls mine off to scrap it... But then I'm pretty used to seeing my work tossed in a dumpster after not existing for very long...