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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 7/14/2018 3:49 AM, JOSEPH MATO
wrote:<br>
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<div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1531561031390_4825">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</div>
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<br>
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." <br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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. :)<br>
<br>
<br>
Cheers.<br>
<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Michael Porter
Roswell, NM
Never let anyone drive you crazy when you know it's within walking distance....</pre>
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