12:05 Garage- ’70 Duster build

So here's the last of the custom touches for a while, considering the car is practically done.

I bought a cheap tuff wheel on ebay with a junk grip and tor off the remaining grip to expose a perfectly round 3/8" diameter rod as the structure under the foam. Since I had other walnut wood details in the car, I thought it would be fun to make the steering wheel rim out of walnut also. While probably not a direct correlation to an A-body, I know the rim blow steering wheels were "wood". I took this opportunity to make the rim the size I wanted. I used the wheel in my 2019 Ram as a guide because that wheel is really comfortable. You can also see the groove is offset making the overall diameter slightly smaller. It may have only saved me 1/2" but any extra leg room will help. Especially with the fat bolsters on my seats. I realize this look isn't for everyone, but I think it came out pretty good and it really feels good in the hand.
This wood started out as an 8' long, 8" wide 5/4 piece of walnut. I planed it down to 3/4", cut to length and joined two pieces together. The first picture is the wood on a friends CNC router table. He help with cutting the circles and putting the grooves in the pieces. I did some chisel work to fit the spokes of the wheel and also did the roundover routing.

Forgot to mention I painted the spokes of the wheel the same grey as found on the console and other places throughout the car. There is no chrome anywhere and all the stainless and aluminum trim is brushed.


cnc.jpg groove.jpg hoops 1.jpg after glue 1.jpg




after glue.jpg glue up.jpg finshed.jpg