Modelling in scrap metal Pt2

Drugs are a curse on modern society!!! But back in the gentler days of the 1920's & 30's they must have been snorting some pretty heavy stuff too. As evidence, I give you..........the fish tail motorcycle muffler.
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The question has to be asked...why??!!! Oh the humanity Now the original 1941 BSA had a normal hot dog style muffler but for some reason, on this particular bike, someone had, probably for a joke, replaced it with a fish tail muffler from a much earlier model and so this is how I had to represent it. Actually, to tell you a secret I actually love the look and style of these old mufflers but they're such a pain to make, so lets take a box full of panadol and a hand full of tranquilisers and begin shall we. I started with two pieces of 1mm sheet cut to the general shape. I then beat the hell out of them with the rounded end of a ball peen hammer to give them dimention. The two halves were then welded together. For those of you with weak stomachs, look away now.





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Don't say I didn't warn you. Not a pretty site is it but after a long time grinding, sanding, rewelding, grinding, sanding, rewelding...er..well you get the idea, this is what I was finished with.
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So here's where we're up to, it's starting to look like a motorcycle.
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You can see in the background several of the reference photo's. Note particularly the picture with all the writing on it. This was the returned e-mail from the owner with comments of special points about his particular bike for me to incorporate.

Next are the mudguards. These are made out of...you guessed it....all together now.."1mm sheet metal". The piece is cut to about 120x25mm. Quite some time ago I made my own mould for making these using my 6 ton bench press. I reckon the photo's can tell the story.
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Next came the fuel tank which is basically made the same way as the muffler but the rounded shape is formed using auto panel beating bog shaped over a squarish metal box.
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You can see in these photo's the mudguard stays which are made of very thin rod approx 2mm but I have used old coat hanger wire before.

Just to finish off this second part of the story, here's a couple of photo's showing the headlight and handlebar fitted. The handlebars are made of long nails heated and bent to shape. The switch blocks are much larger rod cut very short (about 4mm) drilled in the middle and then welded in the appropriate position. Brake and clutch levers are small bullet head nails welded to the switch block and bent to suit. The headlight is part of a towel rail bracket. These are ideal as they come in two different sizes, are exactly the right shape and if wanted, they're already chromed. Just cut the stalk off and drill out two small bolt holes and weld it on.
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Well thats it for this episode children. Next time I'll show you how I finished it off, how it ended up and all about the pitfalls of trying to spray paint cold metal, on a cold day, in a cold shed.

Bye for now

Pete that's a great build but U haven't said wot scale it is or have I missed that somewhere in the build story, hope u are going to tell the end of this fab bike build.

That's some nice craftsmanship! Thanks for the Demo's. Hmmmmm wonder how hard it would be to make a 1/25 real steel 32 Ford!!!

Just remember Paul, when working in steel.....bog is your friend and a die grinder your right hand.