The grill on my FHC was in real bad shape with some ribs missing, and the rest in bad shape, so decided to do a manufacturing project to restore it. Thought some might be interested in seeing the result.
I did make one change from the stock assembly as I have had ribs break loose from the frame, so I drilled 1/16 inch holes in the frame and inserted pins in to form a mechanical mount to each rib. The pins were covered with the solder.
Finished assembly after chrome![Grill-Finish%20Chrome|690x460]
(upload://c7jy5tP6il6YUPfpQeW9z3yaKkv.JPG)
Want to give a special thanks to the folks at Custom Chrome Plating in Grafton OH. This project involved shipping components back and forth to be polished and pre-plated and they did a magnificent job. Would highly recommend them to anyone needing professional plating.
That is fantastic! I stand in awe of folks who possess skills sooooooo far above my own. For my couple of loose ribs I resorted to epoxy–crude but effective! Congratulations.
Dang! That’s impressive. I’m interested in more details of your process if you don’t mind sharing. Like how you produced the V-shaped stock, what your press jig looks like, how you managed to press the curve while preserving the V, and what process you used to machine the final rib shapes. They were able to chrome and polish after soldering?
Awesome work and the finished product looks phenomenal. I’m with Ron and would like to see some more detail regarding how the press was used to form the ribs. Did you fabricate the frame also, or is that just your old one after all the plating had been removed?
Not to state the obvious, but now that you have put the skill and effort into making the jig and proven that it works, you should make some more ribs and sell them to restoration shops. I don’t believe anyone else sells individual ribs.
Fifteen years ago I had a need for working clocks in my cars, so I figured out a way to do it, and, like you, mentioned it on this list. Since then I have upgraded thousands of Smiths clocks from every inhabited continent on earth. You never know where something like this is going to lead you.
Have had some questions about the project so thought I’d answer them here.
It was a multi step process to make the blank ribs. I used .025 polished brass stock with protective plastic sheeting on both sides. The plastic helped with scratching during forming. The first step was to cut a proper width strip and then form a straight rib with the radiused nose. Rather than machining the radius on the edge of the form, I just welded a 1/8" dia rod to the edge. My understanding is that this form was used in the later model 120’s and that the earlier ones had an additional small raised rib on the edge. If I was going to duplicate the early model I imagine I could fabricate a male and female roller for use in a bead roller tool and add it. Here is a picture of the straight forming step.
After forming I needed to machine the shape on the ends of the ribs. I fabricated a fixture to use on my CNC mill to machine both the straight and curved shapes.
Another question asked was if I also fabricated the frame, and I did not. I had three of the frames, and picked the best one to use. Was interesting that there was about 3/8" difference in the length between the three.
I sent the bare frame to Custom Chrome and they stripped it and then re-plated it with copper. I also sent them the formed ribs to polish before I soldered them in. I soldered the ribs in before plating even though I have been told the factory did it after plating. I just have never heard of soldering over chrome, so went the way I knew would work, and Custom did a beautiful job of plating. The ribs look just like they had been plated first. I would have liked to silver solder them in, but was afraid of the high temperature damaging the copper plating, so used a 2% silver solder that has a higher strength than standard solder but didn’t need as high a temperature as pure silver.
The soldering fixture is not as precise as most of the rest of the tooling as I just kind of welded pieces together to get something that would hold the frame in place while I soldered. Here is a picture of the fixture.
This was a fun project as I’m doing sheet metal work on my FHC, and I hate doing sheet metal work. Would much rather be machining something. Got this done though, and now have to go back to the sheet metal.
Beautiful, very talented, great craftsmanship.
So now, here’s the question all of us have in the back of our minds: would you be willing to produce any more?
Now that you’ve done one, it won’t be easy, but it certainly would be easier than any of us trying to start de novo again. Very likely, quite a few of us would be willing to pay for quality workmanship.
No pressure… Just throwing this out there to gauge your response.
Thanks for all the kind comments. I always enjoy this type of project. I probably won’t do much more with it right now, as I need to get back to the body work on my FHC. I think that when I finish the car I might go back and do some more with the grill stuff. I’ve got two more frames, but my concern with actually building another one is getting the shape right. Using the welding fixture I was able to tweak the frame shape to fit my hood(bonnet). I do have a new grill that I bought a number of years ago from Jorge in Mexico, and while it looks pretty, it’s shape is quite a bit different. Would hate to build another one and find out it’s shape is wrong. There probably is a market for the ribs alone, although I do think there is a source in England for them. The one’s I’ve seen are full ribs, would still have to be finished for length and end shape. This step is pretty critical as the ledge for welding is pretty narrow, and the ribs need to be very accurate in length to maximize the welding area.
If I was 20 years younger I might consider a new business opportunity, but I’m enjoying retirement and just doing what I want to do and not what my customers want me to do
Absolutely magical process! Thanks for sharing. I’m amazed at the way a U shaped piece of stock can be both formed and then later bent into a curve without showing any stress, tears, or distortion. Did you anneal the stock before working it this hard, or is it just that workable?
I’ve many times wished I had the skills to do this. I almost never receive new chrome pieces that fit, and worse, they always come chromed which I don’t understand at all because it’s then impossible to bend the part to fit without first paying to have it stripped.
Wiggles,
I understand your comment about Jorge. I bought a number of sheet metal pieces from him for my OTS, and generally found the quality to be adequate, but know quite a few people that had problems. I see his stuff still advertised on Ebay, but under a different name. I know he was going to get out of the business and wondering if he sold it.
Erica,
I did not have to do any annealing of the brass stock. It doesn’t show up in the photos, but here was a small amount of rippling of the stock along the open edge, probably .005 deep. I would have had to make the process much more complicated to completely eliminate those ripples. I felt that they wouldn’t show up too bad after plating, but I was really pleased as the chrome shop was able to completely eliminate them in the pre-plating polishing.
Phil,
Yes, I started my career many years ago as a tool and die maker. Haven’t done that work for a living for 40 years, but had a large tool room in my manufacturing company and used it frequently for my projects. After I sold the company I built a shop at my home that is pretty well equipped.
