Hot Rods Engine turning or Damascening

You know, maybe it was just corrosion? Awful weird, though... I'll have to look closer when I can get to them. Don't do well at posting pics.Wasn't slamming them, I *like* the '55 Speedster dashes. .
;( . Marcus...

 

Here is mine. 1/4" aluminum a friend cut out on his plasma table. Used a 7/8 dia. alum impregnated rubber tool on a 5/16" grid on my drill press.

Edit:I made a grid of 5/16" squares on a piece of 3/4" plywood, (think graph paper) and mounted it to my drill press table. Mounted the gauge panel to a rectangle piece of 3/4" plywood so I could follow the grid. Started on the left side of the panel. pull the tool down hold for a few seconds, move a square, repeat Do a line, go back to start square, move down a square, repeat.

 

Thanks for the tip on carbide provider, David. This dash is terrific! I like the blue indicators.

 

Might be a stupid question but how do you keep it all straight

Use an x-y vise?
Blueing lines?




Sucks but I know it’s neither of these

 

I clamped a long rectangle wood “table” to my drill press surface. I would reposition a long backstop every time I finished a row. I clocked each dowel half’ish move by hand and good ol’eyeball as I slid the entire stainless sheet to the left. My drill press doesn’t have enough reach for the whole piece I did. So I had to flip after so many rows and do it in the opposite direction to keep the pattern going.


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Well, I seriously hosed that one up... (face-palm...). Found one of the 2 loose dashes I had, + checked the 2 in the cars, aww...shucks. I don't know what the hell I was remembering, but the full swirl pattern was easily visable on the '55speedster & the '58 GH dash. Even though they are a bit rough. What I remembered was the swirls were almost gone, & the little triangles 'twixt the rounds were kinda dark n slightly deep, giving the look of round circles spaced properly. Now I wonder where I saw that. Maybe on one or another dash panel that was very corroded. I did have a '56GH that the AL was very dull & not right, & a '61 that was even worse. All of the dashes I have/had were OEM, so now I don't know what/where I saw htat. Sorry for the mis-remembering. Some thing about CRS, or maybe my toys-to-be have been hidden/covered up just too long. ;( . David in post#57 pics are absolutely correct.
Marcus...

 

I made an extended table for my drill press. Figured out where to start, and drew a baseline there on both the X an Y axis. I clamped my metal yardstick on the baseline, using its measurements for each horizontal pass. I measured and moved the yardstick for each row, changing the offset from the center point to alternate where each row started.



The first few rows are slow going. After a while you get in to a rhythm and it picks up speed. Move piece, pull handle, hold for a two count, move piece, repeat. Move yardstick. Repeat.

A real XY table would be nice. I don’t have one.



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Gramps said he used to use a cork with lapping compound in a drill press back in the 40's. Not sure if this was on stainless or aluminum or nickel?

 

I
I marked where my gauges would go to save a little time an a lot of trouble. The lapping compound will also scratch the hell out of the work if you handle the piece a lot. I went through quite a bit of blue shop towels wiping off excess as I went along. This scuffing wasn’t a problem for me cause I am going for a aged “patina” finish. But it’s not SEMA quality for sure.



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I thought about doing that, but didn’t have a good way to mark the circles. I did mark the gauge locations by drilling 1/16” holes for the centers.



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While searching for something else completely unrelated I found these pictures. Acres of engine turning on the dash panels of these Chrysler Imperials from 1932, or thereabout. But then check out the contrasting finish on the panels just around the the gauge cluster. Anyone familiar with what that finish is called, or how to duplicate it?

That should keep somebody busy experimenting out in their shop.

 

^^^^^Wow! Beautiful!^^^^

 

The back of my SS license plate backer I made.

You cant see them once it was mounted but I know they're there.

 

And now we do too!!

 

here is a firewall I did for a gents Ford truck. I used a 11/2 diameter to do it,

 

It does make your eyes feel good just lookin' at it, don't it? And those are some mighty purdy gauges too!

 

Hello,

We were introduced to this circle turned look at the various car shows we went to in the early years. We never had a drill press, so we tried steel wool on aluminum plates, using our fingers for the turned look. As long as we kept a straight line pattern, it looked OK. Obviously, not show quality, but, we had fun doing that steel wool/fine sandpaper turning on various metal surfaces.

By the time we were in high school metal shop with all of the proper machinery, we were able to make some small coasters or plates for photo mounting with the now, machine turned pattern on the whole surface. It was in a straight line and looked like a professional did the work.

It was a good thing the aluminum plates and coasters were not big, as the mistakes happened and a new sheet was put into play. We could not picture ourselves doing something like this on various hot rod/custom car parts. We were satisfied that we learned something from our experimental days.

It was not Damascening, as machine turning is another completely different process.

Jnaki

Several years ago, I found a small aluminum plate. I got out the steel wool and did some finger turning. It looked good, but raw. So I turned the plate over and used wet/dry sandpaper in the turning, circular pattern. That looked better than the steel wool. It was like I was back in the high school metal shop class, experimenting with those techniques.

When my brother and I started our engine building /speed parts business in 1959-60, we went to a printer and wanted him to make us some cards imprinted with the engine turned look. I even had sheets of thin aluminum from the Douglas Aircraft Surplus Yard all ready. He said that it was an impossibility to have that look, screened on aluminum.

But, he did have a sheet of card stock that looked pretty much the same. So, I designed the printing areas and he ran off several hundred cards for our small engine building/speed shop parts business. They were well received and kept us supplied with some extra money.

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum...und-in-an-old-car.26438/page-32#post-12501966