Hi all. Found this wooden prototype for the rear vents, for a 60 Corvair, at my grandfather's house today. I remember him showing it to me 45 + years ago. He worked at Fisher body, at a time when prototype cars were still made from a wood composite model. The steel dies, were then eventually copied on a kellering mill. He brought this home after it was no longer needed. Thanks Dave.
Forgot to mention, Grandpa made this. He would be 103, if you were still around. He was quite a woodworker.
Back then, all prototyping was dome in wood on milling machines. I watched a British Pathe` newsreel story about Lesney, the company that made Matchbox cars, and in their work, the engineers would first mill out a 10X size piece in order to ensure the drawing was correct and all proportions of the model would be correct, then they'd use a special mill, that was controlled by a pantograph, to make the prototyping model the size it needed to be for the actual toys to be made.
A Keller was basically a huge, hydraulically operated Pantagraph. Blocks of Steel large enough to Stamp Out quarter panels, were mounted on large vertical tables. The full scale pattern was mounted on a table adjacent to it. Buy mounting the dies vertically, it enabled the chips to fall out of the deep cavities required to produce body panels. A casting would be taken from the wood model to create male and female dies.
This got them close. Then all the hand grinding and stoning for final fit. A lot of work went into those sculptured fins in those days.
