Stan’s 59 Chevy Apache

My daily driver is a 1959 Chevy pickup.

 Since I've had it the bed has been a mess. Original wood was all rotted out. It had a couple of layers of plywood on top of the original rotted wood, then the previous owner knew someone that did diamond plate so he put a bunch of diamond plate scrap pieces on the plywood when it had rotted, all hodgepodge, just screwed down with wood screws. When I got it I threw another sheet of plywood over the top of all that. An ugly mess, but it worked, I still used the truck to haul stuff, but I've been thinking about fixing it for 5 years. 

Finally this summer I ordered a kit from Mar-K and I'm in the middle of getting it painted and installed.

i forgot to take any before shots, but here are some pics of when I was just getting everything torn down.

Here you can see a scrap of the original wood.

Here's what the metal strips that hold the hold the original wood boards looked like when I got them torn out.

Had my wife and kids help lift the bed off to reveal the rusty frame.

I cleaned up the frame with a wire brush on my angle grinder, then painted it with POR 15.


The wood kit that I bought from MAR K is the yellow pine. I still use this truck as a truck and didn't want any exotic wood that I would cry over if it got dented. I also wanted some type of finish that would look good, but also be easy to touch up. I decided to go with tung oil. I bought a couple of quarts of the Pure Tung Oil from the Real Milk Paint Co. I got the DARK version of the tung oil rather than the natural color.

Yesterday I rubbed many coats of tung oil onto the wood. I cut it 50/50 with mineral spirits and poured it on, then rubbed it in, leaving the wood wet. I would wait a 15 - 45 minutes until it looked like the wood was drying out and then rub some more on. I probably did this 5 times. I forgot to say that before I started on the flats of the boards, I stood them on end in a bucket of tung oil for several hours so the oil could wick up the end fibers.

At the end of the day yesterday I waited about an hour after the last application, and then wiped the boards dry to set over night.

Today I went out and put two more applications of the tung oil on, then after an hour, wiped the boards dry again. Here is how that look right now.

Here's a close up, but the color is a little off in this phone photo. The real color is more like the previous photo.

I really like how the boards turned out. i hope that the tung oil finish will hold up. I have no experience with it, or any type of wood finish. I just didn't want any type of varnish or clear coat that would peal. I'm waiting for a couple of cross sills then I will put it all back together and get some finish product photos up.