Gabriel Carbajal and I were talking the other day about how we used to buy the bed strips from Chevrolet. They only came without holes and they were about 9 feet long. We would cut them off and I had a square punch that after we drilled the holes in the proper locations, Gabe would take the Square punch and make the whole square for the carriage bolts. We had a whole table set up just for making these. It was pretty time-consuming. Then I met Mark and Kay from Oklahoma City who were making Ford parts. I talked to Mark about making the bed strips for us and he agreed to. It was Mark’s first endeavor into the Chevy Truck Parts. Their company later became the benchmark, Bed Wood and bed strip company long before there was anyone else doing bed strips and Bed Wood. When we made our own bed strips, Gary Born from Newhall California made our Bed Wood. He was a woodshop teacher and it was one of the students projects. We would pick the sets of Bed Wood up 10 at a time when they were finished.
I recently visited with Mark Sharp and we reminisced about this and many other projects we did together. Another interesting connection with Mark was that one of the projects I got from General Motors was the 1967 1968 body side molding, I knew right where to send the tooling. Mark is one of the most talented tool and die people I have ever run across. He did a great job cleaning up the original GM tooling and producing an awesome product!
It sure is great to keep in touch with these people that helped me over the years. I would’ve never got to where I am without their help.
