My next project "La Petite Chanteuse"

4 minute(s) of a 82 minute read

I really do not expect too many of you to even start to understand what is going on here. Basically I am "drawing" the body frame in three dimensions, free hand, using steel tube instead of a pencil. What you see here represents almost a week of concentrated work. Much of this time has been spent "thinking around the various problems as they present themselves". If you can understand that you are probably as mad as I am.

What you are looking at is the centre section of the body "tub" from the cowl back with the passenger (riding mechanic) seat staggered behind and to the side of the driver's seat. The two sides of the body are totally different to each other. I am just starting on the drivers (right) side.

Bj.

Really Pat 

Can't a boy have any secrets?

As you are probably aware I have a vast state of the art workshop fully equipped with all the latest sophisticated machinery, most fully computer controlled. I also have fresh carefully laundered white overalls each day and I always wear my baseball cap with the peak at a jaunty angle over my left ear on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and over my right ear on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. On Sundays I wear my WW1 leather pilots "flying helmet" with the ear-flaps turned up and buckled over the top of my head. My built in stereophonic sound system plays Thelonious Monk in the mornings and Charlie Parker in the afternoons interspersed by selected early Gerry Mulligan, in particular "Bernie's Tune" which incidentally, very few people are aware, was perhaps written especially for me. My large staff of highly skilled professional assistants all have university degrees in advanced engineering. There is absolutely no chance of my getting my hands dirty as I always wear two layers of surgical gloves. This really is over-kill as everything is sterilised in a huge autoclave before entering the premises.

Among my collection of quaint antique hand tools, usually tastefully displayed in sealed glass cases, is this one piece of equipment of unknown and obviously obscure origin that I believe may in an earlier age have been used by primitive pioneer restorers in an attempt to obtain bends of a uniform nature in steel tube of varying dimensions. I have especially taken it out of the display case and carefully dusted it off in order to photograph it for you. I trust that you find this informative and somewhat amusing. I have to admit I constructed this some 30 or 40 years ago when I first started to build tubular steel body frames. About that time 13 inch was a popular size tyre used on the more common make automobiles made for the mass market. It has proved to be durable, easily transportable and can be stored out in the open for long periods without any discernible damage. Even the most ham-fisted operator can achieve a reasonably acceptable bend. The one handicap is that it will only create the desired bend in one direction and only at one end or the other of a length of tube requiring frequent cutting and welding.

Bj

1918-2007 Almost every make worth owning.