Okrasa Special

[steve wright]

Louis I think it's actually a form of therapy for Barry - he's so wired at the end of a day that he needs to form of relaxation. I think writing about it probably acts as some form of catharthic pressure relief so the boy sleeps at night!

[Lightweight_911]

WOW Barry not only can you work metal magic but you are a carpenter also!

Is there no end to your talents?

It's rare that someone so skilled (& infectiously passionate) on a practical level is then able (& prepared to take the time) to describe the whole process in such an interesting manner - complete with accompanying close-up pictorial details.

Fantastic !

[Lightweight_911]

- he's so wired at the end of a day ...

[myatt1972]

Absolutely amazing Barry, I'm blown away by your skill and enthusiasm.
Keep the posts comming, I look forward to the next installment.

[Barry]

Thanks so much for the feedback chaps, it means a lot .

I must continue taking the 'big' camera up with me: it makes the picture-grabbing process a bit more rewarding, and it's nice to be able to get across in pics what I'm trying to do.

Can't wait for the weekend to get the next stage a bit further advanced.

I forgot to say last time, a couple of thank-yous:

1) To Steve, who, poor fella, found that every time he went up there to escape from work and the household of an evening, found me working on the infamous wheel. He was good enough to take it with good grace, but I imagine he would have much rather had the place to himself, so thanks Steve .

2) This is the one I keep meaning to mention: Gary was good enough to take some time at CLM'10 to explain a lot about the use of hammer-forms during his time at Aston Martin, and inspired the creation of the ones on the car. As is customary with these things, if they work, it's thanks to Gary for the idea, if they don't, it's because I've done them wrong . Should be O.K. though: I've got another course looming on the very same subject. Thanks old chap .

[Ian Donkin]

Blimey Barry - now I can see in pictures what you've been talking about; amazing!

[Barry]

Good stuff Barry.

I understand since writing the above you've made good progress and the buck is now finished - Steve was good enough to email me a photo.

Very impressive mate

I was rather hoping to reserve that reveal for next week .

[Bruce M]

Thanks for taking the time to share Barry. Very much appreciated. If I lived nearby I'd probably be hanging around like a sad fan-boy making you endless cups of tea

[Rustbucket]

Can I put the idea into your head to get all of this down and into a book Barry ?

[scotal]

Wow, just wow.
Not only can you make bits of vire and wood look like a car, you canthen make bits of metal look like the bits of wire & repair wonky bearings as well.
Really very jealous of your skill.

This thing is going to be one hell of a car.

I know Mr Wright does some stuff for the oppo, but surely this would be anexcellent ongoing build story for a quarterly magazine devoted to classic Porsches, no?

[Barry]

Time for a little update again.

First job, having got the fromt hammerform sorted, was to extend it downwards to form the front valance area. The actual stations were a doddle, as they're all the same basic shape, and are just stepped back in line with the nose's profile.

I did have to have a bit of a think as to how to attach it all together. In the end I made up a side-to-side station to tie the valance stations togther, and then took this side-to-side up to the main piece of ply on the hammerform. It occurred that I could do the same when it came to the 'bonnet's' first station as well. Trouble is they would be fighting over the same area, so it was a case of 'slot 'A' into slot 'B' ....

Front valance:



Ties into the hammerform's shape O.K. ....





Bonnet first side to side station (still to be profiled) together with valance side to side station ....



The next thing to sort was finishing the bonnet area stations. I had already cut the front-to-rears, using some plywood guides previously scribed in to the top surface of the wireform. I did have to think about how to set these at the correct height, which is a disadvantage of trying to do a lot of this buck off of the car.

Anyway, realised the best way to tackle this was to put a couple of scrap legs on an offcut, and then just measure up from the scuttle at the points where the front to rear stations would end up ... (ply guides in foreground, a centre, and then one each for the next two stations out) ....



This could then be trimmed .....



Using this, and with the front end dummied up, the front to rear stations could be aligned ....



At this point, I'd already cut the basic shape of the bonnet side-to-side stations, again derived from guides taken from the wireform. one thing came to light during this process. I just left all of the side-to-side stations high, with the idea of just resting some of our 3/16 round rod across all of the front to rears, and marking off the side-to-sides. It became clear that the rod didn't like the route the stations were asking of it, and it wanted to be higher in the middle. A tricky one this, but in the end it seemed prudent to cut the stations to the upper line (the route the rod preferred), rather than forcing it down in the middle.

I don't know, but looking at the rod, suspect that the line across the stations is a little off (i.e. the wireform is off), and for me to push the wire (and ultimately the aluminium) to this profile is going to look plain wrong.

In the end I took the centre route, and cut the stations to the higher line. I can then either plane these down later, or build up the front-to-rears with a skim of filler (it's only 3-4mm max, so filler would be more than adequate for this).

Cut to upper line ...



One thing I keep meaning to mention, and that's with all of these stations you need to keep thinking about which is the side which is tallest. because the MDF and ply are quite thick, as soon as they are on slope (like the wing or bonnet areas), you need to cut to the tallest dimension, and then later plane the thing down to the shorter one. In fact when the jig's bolted to the car, there will be quite a bit of final shaping, and no doubt a bit of filling, just to get everything to flow together nicely.

Station showing effect of slope ....



Time to throw it all together prior to fitting to car ...







We're now at the point where really this lot needs to be fitted, as the bigger the assembly gets, the harder it is to keep it all aligned. Also more and more time is spent trying to measure the car, reproduce that on a guide, move that to the jig part in question and then, finally, make the cut.

We've held back on cutting away most of the wire jig (all but the first side), as we're keen to wheel the thing outside for one final, final look around and picture session. After that we'll have to commit.

In actual fact, most of the wireform is an illusion anyway: none of the nearside was dimensioned at all, it was just thrown on quite roughly so we could get a very general feel for the shape. It's rather like having paper (and nothing else) covering some floor joists that you're stepping across: makes you feel much more secure, but basically it's all false. This is the same: it all looks very nice, but actually the nearside doesn't really mean anything. The car will look very, very bare when most of the wire comes off, but in fact, we won't have any fewer 'real' references than we do now.

Anyway, enough of the car, now for a bit more on the real project ( ).

My lovely lovely Hoosier anvils have arrived from the States, and very nice they are too. They were well packaged, very well in fact, but not in an easy-access way. They needed a box, a home, and indeed a presentation case. I thought it would be nice to have all of the wheeling stuff in one place, so WD40 (anti-rust when you leave the wheel), wet-n-dry (for polishing off any blemishes), and finally some nice soft dusters (for keeping the wheel, anvils and work clean during wheeling).







All for now, thanks for reading .

[Barry]

BTW, you will have noticed the gaps between the front-to-rear stations and the front hammerform in the pictures.

The whole assembly is becoming quite unwieldy now, and it's only just being held together in these shots.

Once mounted to the car, we should be able to tie everything in much better, and get the whole thing much more solid. Everything does in fact fit together quite well (time will tell as to how well it actually fits the car itself of course).

If nothing else, it'll be great to get everything on the car, as we'll have a much tidier workshop, and rather than knowing a load of jig is about to be removed, we can look forward to every new bit of eggcrate buck going on the car gets us a step closer to signing phase one off.

[sladey]

Fascinating Barry - do you make kitchen worktops too?

It really is fascinating to see all the stages you're going through

[johnM]

Barry looks fantastic. Steve I bet you are getting really excited, the best part is coming soon. It's amazing to see the amount of work that's involved before you even wheel your first piece of aluminium. Keep the updates coming. Best ever DDK thread I think.

[steve wright]

yes it's all getting quite exciting now, although we had a minor incident last weekend when I took the kids up to the workshop. My back was only turned for 30 seconds (you can tell where this is going right... ) and I suddenly realised there was the sound of three very industrious children busy with saws and hammers up the other end of the workshop.... I turned around to see them busy cutting up their fourth piece of curved MDF with writing on it. you can imagine my relief when I realised they were offcuts, but Barry and I have now agreed that only the pile in the bin are surplus to needs...