Composite Materials

Which means Jacki, our resident graphic artist, is out wandering the world someplace and pre-production on our next batch of books, like Composite Materials Book 2, has stopped entirely. So I’m left with time to wrap up a thousand small details at the bottom of the To-Do list. Items like finish and mail the author contracts, lock in some deals for books scheduled for late in 2011, and work with our web guru – Steve Delmont - on changes to the Wolfgang website (http://wolfpub.com). Once Steve finishes his tweak to the web site you will be able to buy Wolfgang books without registering and without a password. Just give us an address and a credit card number and buy the book. Waaaaay simpler and minimal BS.

Cutting an Ellipse
Saturday found me with a couple of hours to work on the Henry J, and mounting the steering column to the firewall is definitely Job Number One. Of course the column from Borgeson uses an outer tube made from Stainless, so I had to find a piece of stainless plate. Luckily, a friend by the name of Dave Spooner told me recently that he works near a couple of big fabrication shops in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, that use tons of stainless. I put in my order to Dave by phone, and he brought me a 6 X 8 inch piece of stainless, .050 inches thick, when he drove down for Back to the 50s.

If you push a round tube straight through a piece of metal or wood, you need a round hole. If you change the angle between the tube and the material, the resulting hole is no longer round. Drawing out the necessary hole on a piece of paper proved more work than I expected, but I did get it right the second time. And like most metal fab projects, once I created the paper template I could cut that shape from metal - stainless steel in this case.

[Image # 0306 Adjusted. Caption: One template and one un-finished mounting plate, the result of much careful cutting first with an X-Acto knife, then a Dremel tool and small cut off wheel.]

As I struggled to cut a hole of the right shape, I thought to my self, “I bet there’s a formula for this, or an easier way to do it, on the web.” But in typical bull-headed fashion I just forged ahead and got the job done. This morning I finally did a little research, and discovered two things: that an ellipse is definitely different from an oval, and that there are a couple of fairly easy methods for drawing a true ellipse.

All of which seems like a lot of words to describe a simple project – though maybe that’s OK as the project wasn’t quite as simple as I’d originally hoped.

Triumph Motorcycle Restoration Pre Unit and Composite Materias - Our 2 newest titles will be in stock at Wolfgang by June 7.

On The Road Again

This week finds me in upstate New York, home to TV’s favorite chopper builders, Orange County Choppers.

No, I don’t know senior, or junior for that matter. Luckily I do know Skeeter Todd, who works behind the scenes at OCC. Skeeter explained to me recently that OCC was using House of Kolor Paint. It just so happens that we have a new Jon Kosmoski Kustom Painting book coming out next year. So when Skeeter told me that OCC is now using Jon’s paint, and that he could get me into the shop to shoot some paint sequences, I immediately singed on for a three-day stay.

What I learned shortly after my arrival is the fact that there’s a whole lot more to OCC than what we see on TV every week.

For size and class, the new OCC building in Newburgh, NY puts a lot of Harley dealerships to shame.

As you might expect, there’s a giant sales floor, with everything from endless T-shirt racks, to branded OCC bikes. What you might not expect is the section dedicated to Ducati sales. This includes the full Ducati line, along with branded jackets and assorted products.

The show floor includes this group of OCC bikes scheduled to ship out to Canadian dealers.

Over in a different corner of the sales floor is an unusual addition to the rows of motorcycles and racks of leather jackets – a bandstand. Yup, OCC has their own Rock N Roll band, and in the afternoons they’re likely to crank it up for a practice session, meaning anyone shopping at that time gets the benefit of a free concert.

Every garage needs a Garage Band. At OCC they know how to have a hell of a good time building motorcycles.

It’s when you get off the sales floor though that things get really interesting. First, there’s the huge shop, complete with the lifts and equipment seen so often on TV. But wait, there’s more. Like a complete, and I mean complete, machine shop, with a row of CNC machines, and a five-axis water jet that’s handy for cutting cool shapes out of three-dimensional objects, like fenders.

For designing the fenders, and the bikes, and their own wheels, there’s a design center with powerful computer, talented operator and a 3-D printer. What this means is that you can design a wheel, or a tank or a complete bike, and the little box to the right of the computer will “print” a 3-D version of that object – in a reduced size of course.

There’s also a huge press, which means the OCC crew can stamp out their own parts, after first designing the plug on the computer and having it cut on one of the CNC machines.

There isn’t a hell of a lot that they can’t manufacture in house at OCC. And when it’s time for paint, well there are three talented painters in-house who can handle everything from basecoat/clearcoat to elaborate airbrushed designs.

If the crew at OCC wants to know what a certain design actually looks like in three dimensions they just create the image on the screen and then hit “print.”

Maybe that’s the really interesting part of the story. That in addition to the talent seen on TV, there’s another whole level of talent. The mostly unseen crew who toil away quietly making fenders, molding welds and painting motorcycles.

At OCC it’s all about teamwork. Combining the talent with the talent to create some pretty cool motorcycles.

The huge show room is ringed by many of the theme bikes created for the TV.

We departed from our typical category range again with a new Spring book titled Composite Materials. Author John Wanberg takes the reader through the basics of composites, what they are and why they’re useful. Like any good how-to book, this one provides a number of start-to-finish sequences that show real people building a variety of projects from this sexy new material. If you’re looking to fabricate some very light and very strong components for that favorite two or four-wheeled hot rod, then this is the book you need.

Local Hot Rods

The opposite of light carbon fiber might be heavy, 14 gauge steel – like the metal used to build a 1948 pickup truck. Not too many street rod builders would take on such a project, but then Jon Kosmoski, founder of House of Kolor Paint, is not your average builder.

I received a call the other day from Jon, asking if I would take some photos of the new truck before it goes to Las Vegas. You can see a few photos nearby, and the entire truck if you’re luck enough to attend this year’s SEMA show.

In typical Jon fashion, the truck is massaged to within an inch of its life. All the sheet metal parts are FLAT, when viewed in any light and from any angle. The three paint colors are all custom mixed kandies. Little features abound - like the re-chromed International logos on the tailgate and hood, along with the very truckish grille. The spring-loaded pins that hold the tailgate up are handmade items.

One of Jon’s in-house fabricators created these simple and elegant spring loaded pins that keep the tail gate closed.

The chassis is entirely modern, including the Heidts-Mustang front end and Ford 9-inch rearend. The engine is a brand new Pontiac mill that sat in Jon’s basement for over 30 years before being set between the rails of this old Binder.

During the shooting of the truck I spent time walking through the shop and can only say it’s hard to tell that Jon is retired. Everywhere you look there’s a half assembled hot rod with an engine on a stand parked nearby. With at least two craftsmen working on the projects the payroll must rival the early days of House of Kolor.

Rather than try to modernize the old International, Jon chose to keep the trademark grille and abundant chrome.

Even the stain used on the wood is a custom Jon-Kos mix designed to enhance the natural color and grain.

The J Bird

Speaking of hot rods, the trees here are turning red and orange, a sure sign of snow to follow. Which means all the summer-season toys can be put away to make room and energy for a certain neglected old hot rod.

I finally found all the pieces needed to install the shortened driveshaft. When I worked as a mechanic about a hundred years ago it would have taken about ten minutes to slip the shaft into place. But in those days I didn’t have to go find the u-bolts, chase the threads, do a test fit, and finally chase the threads on the studs coming out of the emergency brake drum on the rear of the old Torqueflite transmission. It finally got so late the other night that I left the parts in a neat pile and hope to actually install the shaft tonight.

So it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about the publishing business, or a rusty old car – hope does spring eternal.

The front of the driveshaft on an old Mopar bolts to the E-Brake drum located on the output shaft – which explains the funny looking driveshaft.