History What tools built the Traditional Cars back then?

Having a shop, I know what it takes in todays world to build a car. But what was available in the 30's 40's 50's and on to build with? Are any of you using old stuff? Besides the obvious Oxy acyelene torch and an old Sears 1/4 inch drill motor. Lets see pictures or hear stories. Did you use a jig saw to shop the top? A hack saw? What took the place of a cutoff wheel or a 4" angle grinder? Were there early tig welders in your build? I know machinery (lathes mills etc.) have not changed much over the years, but how about using a file to smooth a early boxed frame? Pictures!

 

Angle grinders have been around forever, I know that had them in the '50s.

Back when I was real young I saw roves cut off with a skill saw, a torch or hacksaw blades with friction tape wrapped around the end. Lots of hammer and dolly work many homemade dollies (I have a couple of those).

I don't know when the TIG welder was invented but it has been around for a long time. maybe in the '50s?

I have a whole stack of clutch alignment tools that the Ol' Man made from input shafts.

There are a couple of very old drill motors in my tool box, a very old Craftsman Auotmotive 1/2", a 3/8" and a 1/4". I don't know how old but old enough to be made from aluminim no plastic at all and completely rebuildable.

A large version of the bench grinder (12"-16" stones) was a staple in most better shops as well.

 

There was a ancient pic on hamb showing George Barris cutting the top of the rear deck quarter all the way to the back end with a huge pair of tin snips...the ones that look like scissors !

Some people do not have respect for a person that can and did work with those tools.

 

Same stuff I use, not for the sake of cool , but because I'm broke.
Hammers cutoff wheel, angle grinder, tin snips, a torch, a wirefeed welder, and a hunk of railroad track.

 

a half inch, a nine sixteens, 5/8 and a 11/16 boxed end and open end...screw driver, flat and phillips...bailing wire...ball peen hammer and a hack saw...sledge hammer. that's about it...LOL!

 

My dad was a body man from the 40's on up, and worked in a small town Chev dealer most of his adult life. I worked there after school too, and everyone had a limited supply of tools. Drill press, 7" grinder, 3/8 drill (maybe air), and a torch were the tools of choice, plus lots of hammers, dollies, and body files. Add to that a drawer full of hand made tools and that's what guys were using. Small air grinders came around in the 60's and were a hit with everyone. The boom in air tools seemed to come in the 70's, when cutoff wheels, die grinders, etc. were everywhere. I remember the guys saying that they would often judge the value of a prospective employee by the places he'd worked and the tools he brought-the fewer, and more hand-made, the better. There was the thought that more tools meant that the owner was trying to compensate for low skill by having more tools. Things were pretty easy then, too, as there were no electronics, bodies were steel, and the only "special" tools needed were for removing door lock rings or inside handle clips.

 

Don't forget the coat hangers.

 

The picture of the cave man comes close to my first build. My dad had one of the first electric drills Montgomery Ward sold(green hammer tone painted aluminum),only took 1/4" bits. We had a washing machine motor with a grinding wheel mounted on it. Another washing machine motor connected to a grinder head,with a 3" wheel,and a wire brush,(used the hell out of that brush). A hack saw,tin snips,and hammer and chisel,was how I cut metal. When I needed welding I had to tow or drive the car to a welding shop. I got a Burgess electric paint sprayer for Christmas in 1962, also had a spray gun that worked off of moms vacuum. Worked great for small parts. I remember cutting the bell housing portion of the oil pan off of my B motor,with a chisel,hammer, and hacksaw. To make a large hole,I would drill lots of 1/4" holes,in a circle, until the center dropped out(heater hole in Model A fire wall comes to mind).

 

Good portable power tools did not make a real presence until the early to mid fifties, my great grandfather was a Plumb, he had arms like a guy who could tear the head off an angry bull and I saw him when he was 85 or so. This old guy was pre hot rod, pre engine, he had a team of large jack asses that pulled his van as he called it, used it until 1918 or so when the city told him no more animals. He would spit fury at you over the auto mobile and truck. This guy was more than adamant about his old mode of transportation, he would have pulling contests out in front of his shop on Taylor street. He would hook his team to a truck of the day and they would pull it backwards down the street with him on the reins. Back in those days if you disagreed with a fella you wouldn't get too far along and bam there would be a crack of thunder. The guy was an excellent lead man, he could make anything out of lead, he would stamp his name on it, I have found his work still in service after 100 years, all done with hand tools and animal power and melted with a pound of coke.

 

One VERY big change is in the relative cost of shop tools versus the cost of skilled labor.
Now you can buy a welder for less than one moderately complicated pro weld, grinders can be had at nearly disposable prices, and drill motors cost less than their bits.
In the olde days, power stuff was waaay more expensive in relation to incomes, and skilled people could and would do jobs as they came up for small amounts of money.
Relatively far fewer rodders of the '50's and '60's had welders (especially the multiple kinds needed to do everything well), power tools beyond the 1/4" drill, etc.
It was much easier for most to cough up the occasional $5 for a quick weld or milling operation than to own a full array of gear.

 

Did they have duct tape back then?

 

I started playing with cars in the early 60s. Closest I came to buiding a hotrod from the frame-up was building a hot 53 Merc flathead and putting it in my 41 ford..
My dad was a mechanic so he had the know-how to teach me [and I took 3 years school shop class] but all his tools were at work except for his "home tools"...a 1/4 inch drill, some rusty hand tools and a torch set...that thing helped a lot! I also drilled a series of holes to make a big hole and used a half-round file to clean up the edges. ONly grinder we had was a worn bench grinder with no wire brush...had to use a hand-brush. It took a lot longer to do a job than it does now with our modern tools but we and our friends appreciated the results of those tough jobs a lot more.

 

Awesome thread.

I have always wanted to put down my fancy angle grinder and mig welder and build a car with the tools that would match the era of the car.

I think the tools we have today have dulled the required skills to recreate the accomplishments of the past.

Yeah, some of the old stuff was crude, and maybe even unsafe, but with the tools available then, I bet some people couldn't even achieve that.

Men were men, and the cars they built were hot rods.

 

Cool stuff, anyone have pics of the old tools? I know my dad had this weird torch that had some sort of pellet you lit on fire and placed in a canister, it made a gas that you then lit and you brazed with it. I chopped my first car with a hacksaw, and that weird pellet torch thing. Made a mess of that VW bug! I remember trying to sand the braze with an antique wood belt sander. I remember the smell of those brushes arcing and melting. Felt like we were really doing something.

 

Badshifter, that was a carbide torch! The pellets, (or 'rocks' as you could find locally) were submersed in water and the gas created was similar to acetalene.
A similar technology of the day was the old carbide lamps miners used, sometimes attached to their hard-hat. I think OSHA would have something to say about a flamable gas generator attached to your head nowadays! Ha

Dan Stevens
dba, Steelsmith

 

I watched and helped my dear departed Dad build racecars and hotods since I was 7 or 8 yrs old. His favorites were his torch and arc welder. he had tin snips, big metal cased grinders and polishers, both of which still work and I use em today. He would innovate. He took a masonary saw blade and stuck it in a Skil saw to cut tubing smoother than the torch and had the foresight to wrap the cooling holes with a rag to avoid grindings getting on the magnets. He started his working life as a carpenter and applied that knowledge whenever it was appropriate. Of course sprayguns and such were also involved for finish. I remember being amazed that an episode of the Three Stooges has Curly painting a lady's nails with a professional spray gun that looked just like Dad's. Until the advent of gravity and HVLPs they didn't change much for over 40 yrs. I still use his dolly blocks and hammers to this day. Everyone around the shop knows that permanent physical damage will follow abuse or loss of them and they seem to respect them as much as I do. Maybe in a few day when I go back I'll take some pics. You could be somewhat right about talent today but not really. Imagination, creativity, and being resouceful seem to be more rare than talent. I've known some talented guys that not only have the inability to "see" what to do, they wonder why someone would bother to do it. "Just buy it..." is more common.

 

A guy had to have a couple vixen files so's to work the lead he laid down. And a couple holders for such, both flat & curved.

 

Not real nice calling the builders from 'back then' tool's!

 

Im pretty sure they had TIG in the 40's. i used to know an old timer in Santa Monica and he was showing me his TIG welder. He said it was used during ww2 to build planes at the douglas plant.

 

Post #11 by Bruce Lancaster has hit it right on the button.

 

In the '60's no one I knew had much more than a ox-ac torch set, a few hand tools and a belt-driven bench grinder, maybe a 30 pound 9" body grinder. A few rich guys actually had arc welders. (6013 rod was exotic stuff!) Amazing what was built and the quality of work that was done. Tops were chopped w/ a hack saw and files. Chassis' were built by bolting together or maybe gas welding using coat hangers for filler. Body work was a lot of hand sanding w/ wet & dry. We assembled engines on the garage floor. (no engine stands) We borrowed or rented things like air compressors, torque wrenches, and other exotic tools. Good times.

 

In my neighborhood, growing up in the '70s it was still unusal to see a compressor in a home shop environment. Pretty hi-dollar stuff there! Beam-type torque wrenches were the norm. Still lots of torches and hammer/dolly work. Bondo was getting to be way too popular!

Dan Stevens
dba, Steelsmith

 

I have/and use many vintage tools. My shop would be pretty high tech for 1948! Old overhead belt driven cogged drill press. A 7" Sioux Grinder from that era. Many hand files for cleaning up edges. Brace and bit set for wood working.

I prefer the files for cleaning up brackets since it is awefull easy to get carried away with grinders and sanders.

Old PM and Mechanics Ill mags are great snapshots of shop life in past decades.

 

When I started I had some hardware store hand tools. If I needed air I had a old freon jug that was made into an air tank. I remember going to the local Chevrolet garage and looking at the stuff in the back, pin reamer machines, brake rivet and arching machines, huge drill press that was run of a pulley to a shaft in the rafters that was spun by a huge electric motor. It was sad all these machines sat with a inch of dust on them, the mechanics took the time to tell me how they worked, what they did and how they didn't have a use for them anymore. They had a set of torches, they used a air gun to take wheels off and I think that the greaser was air powered. My Dads shop had a big heavy angle grinder I could use, also had a set of torches on a cart, a gas engine powered arc welder. I finally did get to learn how to use the torches and arc welder but it was as much a lesson in patience to get the engine started on the welder as it was to use it. As been said the surge of fancy tools hit in the 70's and 80's and the tool trucks just loved the "tool wars". The tool boxes have gotten as big as a truck. The old timers that I knew and know either had their tools on the bench, on a peg board or in a simple carry around tool box. Don

 

Im assuming there were some good tools around at least because they had to build those planes/tanks etc from wwI and II. I know my grandfather had some aircraft tools from his time in WWII, which reminds me I need to find those things cause I didn't know what they were when I was a kid.

 

I am alway watching ebay for old body tools, the old stuff is a lot different than the new stuff, dollies especially. The big problem is that the older body tools are in such high demand that the prices are outragous, I guess you get what you pay for tho...

 

i've heard about these metal shaping discs before, if they had a defect they would go off like a grenade. anyone have anymore input on this?years used?

 

An old timer I know said that he and his friends all shared a barn where they worked on eachothers cars in the mid 50's when they were in high school. Each guy worked part time and they each bought a particular type of tool and kept it at the barn for all to use. The guy I knew had the O/A torch for use as a cutter/welder/bender. Another guy had a big drill, another with a set of wrenches and sockets, another with body hammers and dollies, and so on. They all customized their cars and built hot rods with the shared tools and skills. At the end of high school, they were just getting into drag racing at the local track and formed a car club when they all decided to build a dragster. This dragster was built from junkyard parts and went on to be a serious contender in the late 50's before the guys all went off to college. Only two of them kept racing and turned their hobby into careers in fuel dragsters and funny cars in the 60's & 70's and each owning their own automotive businesses, which they both still own today. He told me they built their stuff with more inginuity than tools back then and now they have the tools and they don't have to think so much.

That story helps inspire me because I can't afford the fancy stuff, but I have more tools and equipment than they ever had. Now I just need the time to use it all!

 

My basic tools in the 60's was the hammer, hacksaw and two files. A flat file and a round bastard.