The Essex automobiles originally had a roof built up entirely
from wood in opposite to for example a Ford model A, which had only a roof insert.
This one's supposed to resemble a steel roof when ready.  

 

Next up is the roof. The work was begun by cutting the outer contours of the bows one after one, here's the rearmost one bolted to the body.

Here all bows are ready and mounted to the body. A 1/4" x 3/4" strip of wood is used to try out the new roof line. This construction is close to stock, but will be clad in 1/4" thick bass wood and fiber glass.

Now the easiest part of the roof is done. The very much double curvatured sides will no doubt be harder... (December 2007)

Ok, it start to look like something. The right hand side is all "spruced up" and ready for sanding, but the other side still has to be done like this too...

The roof is glassed here, though it looks just like a coat of laquer, with very ligh weight glass cloth, 162gms/sq meter (about 0.5 oz/sqft). Polyester resin was used. The cloth went on pretty easily over the double curvatures even without any previous experience from glass jobs.

This is what the roof looks like after adding a gallon of filler and sanding most of it away, .

Go on to part thirteen