Over the last week I’ve been busy in my spare time, researching various antique cars and the details which will inspire the street rod I am building. It’s my desire to create a one of a kind automobile. I absolutely love steampunk and rusty steel too. I’ve decided to combine these ideas into a custom speedster. Because the original car that Norm and I built almost forty years ago was fabricated from rust free aluminum I’ve made up my mind to start the body build from scratch. This time around we’ll go with a heavy gage steel which will be allowed to gather a rusty patina. It will be all welded construction but will appear to be held together with thousands of half inch dome head rivets, another look I love. With the CNC plasma cutter and a host of other metal working tools at my disposal, the build will be much easier this time. I’ll also be able to tackle much more complicated shapes as well. With all of that in mind I decided to model the car with the general style of a 1910 Willys Overland. I’ve always loved Willys and the Overland logo was absolutely cool! This was the first piece I cut, along with the many pieces of the radiator housing and cowl. This afternoon I spent a few enjoyable hours in the shop welding the first pieces together. The rivets are in transit from Michigan and will be popped into place as soon as they get here. There will be 400 rivets in this assembly alone. This is going to be FUN!
Sign, sealed, delivered.
Today, we drove up to Mayfair Powder Coating on Majuba Hill and loaded the sign pieces on our flat deck trailer. We tied them on carefully and then took them back to our shop. It didn’t take long to assemble the Syl’s sign and letters which look fabulous in their bright colours. We assembled the sign vertically and then fastened it to a custom pallet before tipping it on it’s side so it would fit into a van semi-trailer along with the rest of the features we have crafted for them. You could say the sign is sealed and delivered.
Wood supports!
We were very busy today applying and sculpting the first fibreglass-reinforced-concrete on all of the ‘wood’ supports for our mystery feature. This type of concrete sculpting is the most difficult as almost everything was slightly out of reach and much of it was upside down. Getting the concrete mud to stay in place was a definite challenge. We spent about three hours troweling it all into place and then almost four hours carving in the details with a variety of tools. The end result was satisfying and a little bit ridiculous. This giant feature is pretty much over the top in every way imaginable. And a whole lot of fun!
