April 21, 1999
Restoring 'Woodies' is a craft, not a job
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
In this era of high-tech materials, assembly-line production and automated engineering, Mike Nickels harks back to a simpler time. As the East Bay Township resident painstakingly and lovingly restores antique cars by hand, he is steeped in skills and practices of long-ago artisans.
His specialty is 'woodies,' the wooden sided station wagons produced from 1929 until 1952 by numerous car companies. Sturdy and stylish, these cars used wood frames and siding to allow for bigger interior space and up to three rows of seats.
"It's a craft, not a job," said Nickels, who bought wood for a woody at a garage sale 20 years ago and built a car using it. "I do a lot of freehanding. I pay attention to the original detail, like rounding the corners instead of leaving raw edges. If you miss a detail like that it just doesn't look right."
Nickels owns Nickels Automotive Woodworking and has built a nationwide reputation for his work on woodies. He usually has three to five restoration projects going at a time, and recently hired an assistant to help out. It is not unusual to have a semi pull up to his door and deliver a car for his handiwork or to take away a just-completed project for delivery to the owner.
Nickels does everything from complete restorations to making street rods to building a concept car from a sketch. Sometimes he just works on a car's wooden body, as car owners seek out his superior craftsmanship. He also restores wooden interiors of older cars.
"Mike is modest, but he is one of the best in the country," said Bill Small, Nickels' assistant. "He is one of only a dozen people in the country who can do this."
Recently, he restored just the body of 1947 Ford for a man in Hawaii. The owner wanted the wagon's wood replaced with Koa wood, a native wood of Hawaii, so he shipped Nickels 400 board feet of this rare wood for the job. When he was done, Nickels shipped the car to San Francisco, where another shop was going to work on the engine, body and paint.
In his shop next to his house, Nickels and Small break a car down piece by piece, taking pictures of each step as they go. With four or five projects always in various stages of completion, it is crucial to keep track of which parts go to which car. Nickels frequently farms out engine, mechanical and bodywork to local shops so he can concentrate on the wooden bodywork.
"Everything that comes off of the car we keep until the car is done, we never throw anything away," said Small, who in December left a long career in food sales to work with Nickels. "A car is a puzzle when it is apart."
After disassembly, Nickels begins precisely measuring all the wooden components, sometimes making tracing patterns on paper. He glues boards together, usually ash or maple, to make the correct thickness and then begins cutting and whittling to make the right shape. He makes sure it all fits together before sanding and finishing the parts and attaching it to the car.
With decades of experience as a carpenter, Nickels has found that this is woodworking with a special twist. In all his years of building houses, remodeling and doing trim work, he never worked on curves like he finds in cars. Building the components for these cars is almost like carving out the right shape.
"Nothing is straight here and most carpenters can't handle that," Nickels said. "You have to be able to visualize the end product and the steps to get there. If you are one-sixteenth of an inch off in the first six inches of a long segment, you will be two inches off by the end. You have to know just how to curve it so it's right."
Nickels has always been a 'car guy,' starting with his 1928 Model A he bought for $75 when he was 15. In the decades since, he has collected cars to drive and to show, currently owning an award-winning car that he restored and occasionally takes to car shows.
It is a labor of love to work on other people's cars, drawing Nickels and Small into the stop at 7 a.m. and keeping them there until sometimes 10 p.m. at night.
"I drove my Model A to high school and kept it going myself, learning by doing," Nickels said. "I still learn by doing; I learn something new every day, sometimes two things."