Did Shasta use cheap paneling where they could?

My Airflyte is the same way...plywood in the rear of the wardrobe, hidden away, in a spot which didn't require the finish of the shellac. It seems matched to the cubbie behind the refrigerator cabinet.

And by the way, I believe that everybody that ever built campers used cheap paneling, an cheap everything else, anywhere they could.

Shasta built a very low cost trailer by using every piece of material, they threw nothing away if it didn't match it was used in a place they felt didn't matter. Price was more of a sales factor than perfection.

I went back and looked at the pictures we took when we were doing the un-building. The paneling was a different color where it had been protected from light. It looks as though the paneling on the closet side wall was just two pieces, the part behind the closet door just wasn't finished the same way. I think they must have slapped the polyurethane on after they put the walls up, or maybe just being away from light for 50+ years changed it a little.

I also suspect that they didn't try to match grains at the factory, which we so often do when we do a restoration. They just pulled sheets of a big pile, and if they didn't use the whole sheet, they used the leftover someplace you wouldn't notice much. Wise, and it didn't affect the integrity of the whole. After all, these weren't luxury homes, they were travel trailers meant for use in campgrounds that were not nearly as nice as ones we have now.

I discovered the same thing stripping, sanding and prepping the wood for stain. It is impossible to get it all perfectly uniform because of the exact things you described . I about lost my mind. Where the grain is very close together because of the cut if the wood, it is naturally darker and looks like a different wood. My cubbies look like they were made if different wood but they also have a different grain pattern. I think the reason Shasta used the opaque paint/ wash whatever on the ash was to make it Ll look uniform. My drawer doors are totally different from my cabinet and closet door. But they all looked alike with Shasta's finish.