Here's the first step I take in grooving tires. It depends on what goove pattern you want. But in this pattern I place the soft rubber Goodyear slick in my hobby vise and squeeze it until it has a nice round top surface. This is done to keep from cutting a groove all the way across the tire. Then with a coarse hobby saw I cut the groove across the middle of the tire. You will be only able to cut a few grooves at a time untill you have to rotate the tire to cut a few more. Be careful not to cut all the way through the tire. This is a simple process it just takes time to get all the way around the tire. I usually space my cuts by eye about 1/8 to 1/4 apart.
After you cut the center all the way around pull the tire up about halfway and clamp the vise to hold it in place. Then take the saw and cut grooves at a slant to meet the cuts in the center. Rotate the tire and make the cuts all the way around. Then turn the tire around and do the other side the same way.
To the left is what your tire should look like after cutting the grooves. I will show you how to finish out this tire in the next few steps that I will show next week.
Here is the first important step that I like to show in roll cage building. As I mentioned earlier, in my supplies I use soft tie wire and hollow plastic rod. First I cut pieces of wire the same length as the piece of rod that I am going to use. Then I slide the wire inside the plastic tube. As you can see in the picture above this lets me make a smooth bend without the plastic going flat. This is only the first step and I will be showing more pictures as I build both of the models.
This is the car I am usuing to make the 41 Chevy coupe. As you can see I first marked the model with 1/8 inch tape and then used my dremel cutting tool to cut 1/2 inch of plastic out of the center of the body to narrow and shorten and because the center door post has to be removed anyway. I cut across the center of the body.
Here is the 41 coupe body with the sections removed and left in four pieces. I will be back soon with more build pictures showing how I will be putting this body back together.
This is the 34 Ford coupe that I am building. Here you can see the difference between the stock body and the modified body I am working on you can see that I have hogged out the windows and smoothed out the body to rid it of chrome and door hinges.
Here is the rear view of the 34 Ford. I used my dremel cutting tool to cut some of the windows to look like the old modified. I also used a file to finish it out. There will be a little more cutting and removing some of the body but for right now I want to leave the body a little stronger as I build the chassis and I will have more pictures on this project soon.
