Her Majesty's DBS Progress: Metal Forming the Sharknose
Gebruder Gumbold
San FranciscoPosts: 541MI6 Agent
Hello Everyone!
Watching all of the entertaining videos fro the N. Peal launch while working on Her Majesty's DBS.
Now that the wooden buck for the front Sharknose panel is complete, the front grille and buck go to my coachbuilder in order to form the pieces that will later be welded on to the car, and shaped into the front wings:
The Series 2 lower front piece is cut away, and a wooden buck formed from templates off of the ex Grace Slick DBS. All of the David Brown Aston Martin cars were hand made, so, naturally, old Gracie's DBS was 3/4" wider than my car. The stations on the buck are adjustable, and I had to compensate for the width difference. Shape of the wheel wells also differs! Width of the grille, and fit of the grille are also different, as are the side shape of the "cheeks." Loads of hours went into this stage.
From the fitment buck, a hammer form is made to get a nice, sharp radius of the sharkmouth opening. It is made of solid aluminum, and the .060" ally is formed over it using various hammers, and sand bags. The tooling alone just to make one piece is where all the money goes...
Here is how you get the curve: Another hammer form is made of steel with wood backing. Insert the aluminum, and hammer away. A planishing hammer is also used, and an English wheel on the larger curved sections.
Here, we are test fitting against the buck- the piece just formed in the photo above. The aluminum piece will ignore minor imperfections, and a few low of high spots in my buck. I really thought it was perfect, but the aluminum sheet says otherwise. No buck is perfect, just a guide for the metal former. As you can see, this is not all a 1 piece, stamped out, mass produced unit.
Sorry for the blurry photo, my phone is acting up. This shows yet another hammer form for the larger radius piece. Fit beautifully on the buck, an area I did get right.
Ready to be tacked together!
Probably the most complicated piece. I spent weeks just to get the two corners of the sharkmouth to "smile" properly. Had to go back from side to side and keep changing the curves to either match the other side, or flow with the rest of the opening. It is all about averaging errors in pattern making.
Here is our donor car. Turns out that it was crashed rather famously by a compromised Grace Slick whilst racing her lover/manager across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The new owner replaced the entire front nose, which had 1/2" of filler from the body repairs done in the seventies. Thanks to James Moore (great Bond name) for lending to me his DBS for all of those months.
Will keep everyone posted on the progress.
For further photos and some videos, please visit my site: http://www.ohmssdbs.com/restoration/second-restoration-2016-2019/
Cheers, Tom
Watching all of the entertaining videos fro the N. Peal launch while working on Her Majesty's DBS.
Now that the wooden buck for the front Sharknose panel is complete, the front grille and buck go to my coachbuilder in order to form the pieces that will later be welded on to the car, and shaped into the front wings:
The Series 2 lower front piece is cut away, and a wooden buck formed from templates off of the ex Grace Slick DBS. All of the David Brown Aston Martin cars were hand made, so, naturally, old Gracie's DBS was 3/4" wider than my car. The stations on the buck are adjustable, and I had to compensate for the width difference. Shape of the wheel wells also differs! Width of the grille, and fit of the grille are also different, as are the side shape of the "cheeks." Loads of hours went into this stage.
From the fitment buck, a hammer form is made to get a nice, sharp radius of the sharkmouth opening. It is made of solid aluminum, and the .060" ally is formed over it using various hammers, and sand bags. The tooling alone just to make one piece is where all the money goes...
Here is how you get the curve: Another hammer form is made of steel with wood backing. Insert the aluminum, and hammer away. A planishing hammer is also used, and an English wheel on the larger curved sections.
Here, we are test fitting against the buck- the piece just formed in the photo above. The aluminum piece will ignore minor imperfections, and a few low of high spots in my buck. I really thought it was perfect, but the aluminum sheet says otherwise. No buck is perfect, just a guide for the metal former. As you can see, this is not all a 1 piece, stamped out, mass produced unit.
Sorry for the blurry photo, my phone is acting up. This shows yet another hammer form for the larger radius piece. Fit beautifully on the buck, an area I did get right.
Ready to be tacked together!
Probably the most complicated piece. I spent weeks just to get the two corners of the sharkmouth to "smile" properly. Had to go back from side to side and keep changing the curves to either match the other side, or flow with the rest of the opening. It is all about averaging errors in pattern making.
Here is our donor car. Turns out that it was crashed rather famously by a compromised Grace Slick whilst racing her lover/manager across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The new owner replaced the entire front nose, which had 1/2" of filler from the body repairs done in the seventies. Thanks to James Moore (great Bond name) for lending to me his DBS for all of those months.
Will keep everyone posted on the progress.
For further photos and some videos, please visit my site: http://www.ohmssdbs.com/restoration/second-restoration-2016-2019/
Cheers, Tom
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