EZ BED WOOD
BedWood Helps Us Update an Old Ford Bed
CHOOSING THE PERFECT BED FLOOR FINISH for your build isn’t always the easiest thing to do. Of course, you can find red oak or pine just about anywhere, but to really set your truck apart, you need to think of what the bed really is. It is the largest flat surface on the entire truck and, with the right product, can easily be transformed to the main focal point of the truck. By choosing the correct species of bed wood from the BedWood experts, you can tie in little accents throughout your build and give your truck the contrast and detail it deserves.
CAll of the wood from BedWood and Parts is FAS, which is the highest grade of hardwood lumber that you can source. It possesses a minimum of 83% clear face. But the company takes that a step further by providing you a bed wood set that has 100% clear face. By hand selecting each wood species, the experts there ensure lack of flaws and make sure that the grain patterns will match throughout the bed of the truck. All BedWood wood is kiln dried so that it stabilizes with around a 6-8% moisture content. After it is shaped, planks are properly sealed with BedWood’s coatings, ensuring the wood will be dimensionally stable and won’t move, shrink or expand. The single most important thing when it comes to the longevity of BedWood’s wood is the proper sealing of the wood itself—sealing all of the wood, including the ends, edges, top, bottom and inside any drilled holes.
The wood species we’re using in our F-100 is Padauk. Originating from South Africa, this gorgeous wood has a red/orange color with chocolate or light brown grain patterns that completely transform the look of a bed floor. BedWood also offers pre-finishing services inhouse, so that way it’s ready to install right out of the box.
The exclusive pre-finished options use a premium H2X two-stage system. The first stage is an impregnator, which consists of a proprietary blend of biocides, fungicides and mildewcides, as well as an adhesion promoter. In other words, it’s going to protect the wood from the inside out. Then the second stage is multiple coats of topcoat clear finish, providing you exceptional protection and an amazing appearance. The BedWood machines do a lot of the hard work, with each plank sent down the automatic finish line to get the final topcoats of clear. After the final coat is properly dried, the kit is boxed up and shipped out to the customer.
This particular ’61 F-100 Unibody is a full frame swap with a ’04 Mercury Grand Marquis. So, the bed already had a raised floor with a raised access built into the center, but up until now it was just manually operated by pulling on a rope attachment. You can’t be doing it like that with this stunning BedWood kit, so we installed a set of Dakota Digital LACT-10, which are 10-inch linear actuators for an access panel at the touch of a button, which definitely adds to the overall look and function of the bed wood install.