Everybody out there in hotrod North America---thank you for the responses. I have a hinging and latching mechanism with stay rods about 3/4 fabricated for this 31 model A project. The thing that brought progress to a standstill was the poor fit of the hood at the grillshell. No ammount of fabrication will fix that bad fit, so being a cheap but innovative old fart, here is what I am going to do. I am going to build a simple wooden jig (a 4" x 3/4" board) that spans across the underside of the hood , just behind the grillshell, and sticks out about 4" on each side. I will screw a couple of wooden spacer blocks on top of those protruding ends, and run another board across over the top of the hood (screwed to the top of the spacer blocks), that is about 1/2" clear of the top of the hood. This will give me a rectangular "frame" of wood with the front of the hood inside it. Then I will take some wooden shim shingles and stuff them in between the underside of that top board and the top of the hood, untill the hood deflects downward in the appropriate spots to give full contact with the top of the grillshell. (this will all be done with the hood setting in place on the car, and I will screw the bottom board to the hood flange, one screw per side so it doesn't shift) Then I will lift hood and frame together off the car, flip it over on my bench, and lay up 3 or 4 thicknesses of mat and resin, in a strip about 4" wide, from side to side of the hood on the "inside" of the hood, starting about 1 1/2" back from the leading edge of the hood. I will probably even cut a profile from 3/4" plywood and glass it in too. When that glass has "kicked" and set up for 3 or 4 days, I will remove the wooden frame and I'll bet you $5 that I will have a perfect fitting hood that will stay a perfect fit. This will not cost anything but my time and agravation. I will post a picture of the hood with the jig on it later this week.