Dashboard...

[pereirac]

Has anybody considered using a wood finish film to recover their cracked dashboard rather than going down the stripping, re-veneering and varnishing option? it seems that some of the modern wood patterned films looks pretty good and hopefully you would not suffer with varnish running or cracking after a few years...

I assume it's what some mainstream car manufacturers use these days for their 'wood' trim interiors?

Just a thought

Carl

[elanfan1]

I actually surveyed the factory where a lot of this stuff is made for car interiors and it is very different from just vinyl film. The car interior grade stuff would be very expensive probably a lot more than a new natural wood one. Wood grain vinyl film is relatively cheap but you need to be good to apply it well - also if there is a crack in your dashboard this will show through the vinyl so it couldn't easily be used to cover a problem.

[grassyknoll]

I did consider it
Along with replacing the veneer with a new sheet
In the end I stripped the varnish and stuck the cracks down with pva and clamped overnight
I then used coloured waxes to fill gaps (theses are furniture waxes. They look like crayons in shades of different wood)
Where I had lost veneer completely I removed a strip from the bottom of the dash where it is masked by the tunnel trim and used that to fill in the gaps !
I posted the rest of my refinish in the plus 2 discussion forum....