Customs fancy pants frenched aerials

It's been awhile since I've been on here, I'm still working on that 54 chevy which is getting real close to paint.


I've moved shops, and am doing work out of Eric Rowlands shop in N. Phx. This T-bird came in for some candy on the roof, and some frenched antenni. I was picturing something kinda vertical, I have some airfoil shaped tubing, like in the grille of the Matador, was thinking of that for a real exagerated opening. Then started thinking of what shapes I could make pretty easily, like if I quartered a pipe and welded it back together. I did some quick sketches and saw I'd need a much bigger diameter pipe, I had some stainless tubing left over from these guys for the van...

Did a quick mockup. Then I started thinking, what if you used stainless and polished the inside, when done it would look alot like chrome, which on this t-bird, would go really well with all the stock trim. Did another mockup to see how the welding would work out, if it could be polished afterward etc. Everything would have to be perfect, but it seemed do-able! Here is the rough sketch...



And here is the rough mock up...




Talked to Eric, and the owner, they were both cool with letting me run with it. I went ahead and fabbed up 4 of them, polishing the pieces before fusion welding them with TIG.






Looking through the tube...


It turned out to be way more work than I thought. Typically I can bang out dual antennas in 2 days tops, This ordeal turned out to be about double that. Way less room for error.







Here you can see the bungs for the drain tubes...


From these pics, I still had to true up some of the lines a bit more. I think the mid-century design transfered pretty well, Has a real 63-65 kinda vibe I think. Real primer tomorrow, can't wait to see the end result in the sun!

 

Please be sure to continue posting pics of this car.......the hook has been set. Centurion9

 

cool interesting ......ummm ive seen things that look REAL simular to those

good work

 

Like what? in what sense?

 

That looks insane, nice work!!

 

I've been doing, and have seen sunken antennas for 35+ years, and those are the coolest I've ever seen! Nice work!

 

Man, they are so far gone they're coming back again!
Stupendously cool.
Paul

 

Thanks! They were more work than bargained for, but we're pretty stoked with them!

 

those are bad ass. nice work.

 

i would have never in a million years thought to do them like that. excellent idea and work.

 

people think that looks good? not that you didn't do a good job on it... just frenched antennas in general, a modification that makes no sense to me. I can't think of any car where frenched antennas were an improvement.

 

Mike is the fanciest of fancy lads, I like his vision.

 

Fu, you changed the height placement front to back from your original tape layout. Just curious why ? They look great must have been fun keeping that panel from warping any tips on how you controlled the heat ?

 

Perfect for that car. I love it.

 

Then why the fuck did you even open this thread???? Morons make no sense to me.

Nice work, Mike.

 

Those look really good. Nice Job

 

Lot of work in these... Looks good,love over the top custom tricks.. Thanks for posting

 

Nice work. I like that

 

That's classy. I agree, it fits the cars era, nicely.

 

Like customizing a car makes sense. Let's take a perfectly good car and cut it up. Doesn't make sense but it fuckin' looks cool and that's why we do it.

 

those are the raddest antenna i have ever seen. i get so stoked when someone comes along and proves that there are still new ways to innovate in a traditional genre, Fu you are a master..........truly inspiring man!

 

Love the looks of them. I have thought of putting antenna's on my 59 still undecided though. But looking at those I can see some killer ideas.

 

Very cool!

 

Way cool.

 

When I first saw the rough I thought "Uhmm, that kind of looks like lady parts." Does he really want an antenna coming out of that? But when I see the finished product, it looks great and looks kind of like dual starbursts, which I assume was the design intent.

 

That's badass, we need more pics of this car

 

Im diggin the shit out of those! Nice work!

 

Man those are cool!

 

Great work on those. You are truly an innovator.

 

Nicely executed! Meh I'm not sure if I like them or not yet.