[TR] Triumphs Digest, Vol 11, Issue 168

[Michael Porter]

On 7/14/2018 3:49 AM, JOSEPH MATO wrote:
> Auto Restoration School  There are many metal men who will teach you 
> their trade and run free seminars where you can work on your latest 
> project. You can go to allmetalshaping.com and see basic techniques, 
> learn welding and make a needed panel for your TR. I love it and feel 
> good when I make or fix something. I'm useful in my old age, at least 
> for a few minutes!    Joe Mato

My favorite story in this regard:  back when I was fixing imports out of 
my house in central western Michigan in the late `70s, somebody 
recommended a big Healey owner to me `cause no one in the immediate area 
would work on it for him.  I did a little carb sync on it, made him 
happy, and he said, "y'know, I've been toying with the idea of making a 
stainless body for this thing."  I suppose I looked at him a bit 
skeptically, so he said, "come up to my forge sometime."  I did, and 
found that his partner made swords and knives and he made armor for 
people in the Society for Creative Anachronism.  He tossed me a helmet 
with a peak down the center and a flip-up visor, and told me that it was 
all made contiguously out of one sheet of stainless, and asked me, "how 
many hours do you think?"  I guessed.  Forty or fifty?  "Try 400."

Where'd you learn this?  "My mentor was an old German who'd been an 
apprentice in Germany in 1938.  He was part Jewish, so he was anxious to 
get out of the country, but he couldn't get a passport and other papers 
until he'd completed his apprenticeship.  His final exam was a 
suicide-door Messerschmidt that had been hit square in the left b-post 
and both doors, and he had to repair it without lead and without cutting 
and welding.  Everything had to be reshaped and shrunk back to original 
size by hand.  He had three weeks to do it, but he was highly motivated, 
and finished it in two-and-a-half weeks.  He got his papers and fled the 
country."

There are people out there who know how to tickle metal in ways most of 
us can't comprehend.  But, it's definitely one of those things one can't 
learn to do just by looking at it.  :)


Cheers.


-- 


Michael Porter
Roswell, NM


Never let anyone drive you crazy when you know it's within walking distance....

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://autox.team.net/pipermail/triumphs/attachments/20180714/136555c8/attachment.html>