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This would have worked, but I didn't shrink enough at the inner part of the bowl shape, and at the point I figured that out it was too late to get the tuck fork back in that deep. So I cut it out and will make a separate bowl shape to weld in. Looking back, it would have been easier to do this from the start, but it was a good learning experience, and now I have a tuck fork for future use. I didn't get any pictures of the bowl shape before I cut it out. It looked good but the shape didn't quite match.

The ramp was formed by stretching at the base of the transition, then bending on the lines over a piece of tubing.

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Since the floor has a ton of straight beads I made a depth stop/guide for the bead roller. I also clamped a piece of flat bar to the guide to keep the edge flat. The dies were wanting to flare the edge upward since they were very close to the edge, the flat bar prevented the edge from raising up.

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Started making a new corner for the right hand trunk panel.

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Trimmed the panel to size and turned the edges 90* to create a flange.

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This was and interesting spot to make...

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To start the layout of the center section I stretched a piece of tape across the floor. I marked off a section 26" wide on the floor pan, and made matching marks on the tape. With the tape pulled off, I measured the marks on the tape- 26 and 7/8". There are 7 beads, so each bead is drawing in enough metal from the sides to make the panel "shorter" by 1/8" each. If I were to lay out the bead pattern on the new metal without taking this into account the panel would end up too short, and the beads would be too close together.

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Bead pattern laid out with an extra 1/8" between the beads compared to the paper pattern I made earlier.

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First bead in the center trunk pan. To end the bead cleanly, I used a air chisel tip with the end slightly rounded over to sharpen up the shape.

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On the top side, I ran over the end of the bead with a surface conditioning disc on the 3" grinder, then finished with a scuff pad. There's really no need to do this step other than it looks good while its in bare metal, so I won't do it on the rest of them. Just showing what's possible if you wanted to go the extra step. Some Packards had trunks that were "flocked" and that process would hide details like this.

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Test fitting the right side trunk pan.

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Been catching up on a few other projects around the shop but I'm back on the Packard now. We've been finishing up our new paint room, the owner of the '55 International was in town a few weeks ago so he brought it back to have seatbelts installed, plus we started back on the Model T firetruck project.

I've cut out 90% of the bracing, its no longer needed now that it can hold itself together again. I did make bolt-in braces that mount in the door jambs since the body will have to come back off the frame later on.

I also finished the lead work on the upper quarter panels. Got it in epoxy and today I'm skimming it with filler to smooth the file marks and get the shape 100%. I'll get the other side finished after lunch and shoot more epoxy to seal it up.

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This isn't going to be a "no bondo" restoration... but that's not a bad thing. Filler gets a bad reputation because it's been badly abused over the years, like some of the previous repairs on this car. Modern fillers are very stable, and I make sure that the metal is as straight as possible before I apply filler. It typically spreads on about 1/16" thick and 80-90% of it is sanded off. You can see how thin it is on this spot- the red epoxy is visible in spots. I feel more comfortable using a product that was meant to be used as a filler to get the body 100% straight than using repeated coats of high build primer to do the same thing. High build primers have solvents that have to evaporate out which can cause shrinkage if it's piled on too thick... body filler doesn't have that problem.

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I finished making the driver side trunk pan and made corners for both the left and right sides.

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Over on the HAMB site, a poster is asking about how to make floorboards for his project car. I suggested he view your project blog on the AACA site. I posted that there is much to learn from your work.

(o[]o)