A 46 SCHWINN FOR CHRISTMAS!!

The 46 Schwinn Autocycle has been assembled and was delivered to the customer on Christmas Eve. it was great having this bike done for the Holidays. This was the owners dad's bike and most likley this was a Christmas gift for him so it was neat to see this bike come full circle after almost sixty years. We will be getting the bike back after the new year. It has to have it's carrier rack installed on the rear fender and I'am having an issue with the headlite that i need to get fixed. Shop will be closed from Dec 23-Jan 3, 2012. Then it's on to the next job so stay tuned.

54 Chevy Station Wagon Parts

Just finished machining a tailgate latch for a 54 Chevy station wagon. The originals are made from pot metal and normally pot metal will just turn to dust after 40-50 years and these where no exception. We duplicated what we had with some creative guess work to complete the shape. The new latch is machined from stainless steel and will be polished next.

32 Ford Firewall

We do a lot of joint projects for King Kustoms And Hot Rods. This one was quite a challenge. The job was to replicate the bead detail from a stock 32 Ford firewall into a new custom firewall being built from scratch. Real 32 Ford parts are worth a fortune today so when you get really nice parts it might be a good idea to not chop it up. We made up a set of dies for the bead roller. I started by pressing clay into the stock firewall bead. Then the shape was carefully measured and drawn in AutoCad. Then The shape was plotted every .010 then those numbers are put into a spreadsheet program to give me a chart of the coordinates i need to machine to. We don't have CNC machines here so we have to do complicated shapes this way and i have been thrilled with the results. We machined the dies from 4140 prehard tool steel as we wanted to avoid heat treating costs. you must have a hardened surface to bead roll a surface with four radiuses. 4140 is not easy to machine but we got through it. I just can't believe how good it turned out. check out the finished product in bare metal.

Back to Business

It's been a awhile since we made a post. It's been a busy summer in the shop. Work on the 46 Schwinn is coming to a close. Paint is done and the detail work is just about finished. The paint on these old bikes are very labor intensive to reproduce. The frame is wetsanded in the picture and we are now rubbing it out by hand. Soon we will be assembling.