Craftsmanship...who really cares?

I understand what you're saying about craftsmanship, watching and reading the HAMB has raised my personal level of expectation for quality and safety from myself, and it's carried over to my OT dayjob.

But HIGHLANDER, I don't understand what you'd expect to show up at your shop? If someone can do quality work or already has, why would they take it to your place?

 

Hi Paully! winner winner chicken dinner!!! you got my you tube rr find beat by a mile...
I wish I could find the HAMB thread this black car was featured in, the welds were soooo bad they looked like animal from the muppets caulked an old fridge from the landfill. I made this fake ad for the guy who posted the thread, he really dug it.


AWWWWWW Snap!

 

The only thing I get out of this is the variable definiton of quality and everyone is full of themselves...oh, and please don't talk about television as if it is real...

 

I've got to agree with you man. I'm no george barris when it comes to body work, but I at least try to make it look CLEAN. And ya, it doesn't take much longer to get it to look right, just a little more time and patience. It's all about looking clean to me. If you are proud of the finished product, that's all that matters. I always try to think what others will think of it when they see it. If they look at it and say, "damn, you did a pretty good job on that quarter panel," them I am happy. If they look at it and say, "jeezus man, did you try and mud this in the dark," then I feel shame and will do it again until it looks right. Just my opinion though..

 

You make a good point. It's easy to mix or misuse a process. Gas welding can be rough, and back then the vision and the desire to create it any way possible, man that's a different mindset. But to take a perfectly straight hood, and I mean perfect, and apply in excess of .080 material thickness thinking it's "the way it's done". It's not. We stripped that hood to bare metal and other than a 5min ding in the nose, we metalpreped, epoxied, light prime and paint, I can't understand the reason it was done the way it was. It's a far cry from Hines sculpting a trick headlight outta lead. So why was it worng? Well it lasted 2 short drives, maybe 60miles total before it peeled off like contact paper...too thick, lazy sanding. Engine heat. The metal is a bit over .045. Some of those old true "leadsleds" are still hangin tough. Even that old art form ahs a right way. Make sense?

 

Makes sense? Sure does.

I went to school for auto body 30 years ago and spent quite a large amount of time in the industry and there are a few things I learned from all my years in the field:

People don't want to pay shit for any kind of quality work but they expect to receive the highest quality work when they pick it up.

And...

The people who can afford to pay for the highest quality work are the cheapest fuckers on the planet.

I eventually left the trade because I couldn't stand the customers anymore. I love the auto body industry, absolutely love it, but the customers will drive you to suicide...or murder.

 

goin out on the limb that i am cutting while sitting on it here
hmmmmmmmmmmmmm
the lets drive em not look at em attitude has made it tougher to wait out all the details .. that make a car usable now i have a half dozen cars needing more work but by no means will they be so metal perfect that i won't move on to paint after some mud is slung heck i'm to old to get all of em done now and my money will be better spent on gas than labor costs

if we all just had near perfect cars to start with i could see some agreement but heck we live in the rusted part of the world just having a safe running / stopping older car is getting harder and harder to find .....and by " god forbid" ya buy a finished car that ain't hamb friendly sheesh

if i could have all my work done by guys of your calibre i would but i can't see it happening just yet .. believe i would truely love it but not right now..

personally i am blind in one eye i do own welders -tools and can do some metal work but choose to not take the chances with my remaining sight .. so extreme metal craftsman ship will not get done by me ... now i am one hell of a parts gatherer and can find stuff lotsa people envy..
shoddy work i hate but i have been involved in some nicely done cars and there is some times that the only fix (for totally obscure pieces) is to fake it.
in the mean time don't look under my rockers too close ..or take magnet to the big panels



hope to seeya on the road or maybe just along the side of it...

 

One calendar shoot, Two 12,000 mile trips to Bonn. Six 800+ mile trips to Fathersday Pamona, Two Goodguys Terrific "T" awards and the bondo is still there, while you are in your garage shrinking and ledding I'm out having fun. Who's right? Tell me where the bondo is.

 

Interesting read. I pretty much do most of my own work because I don't trust "professionals" to do a good job. I've received too much poor work over budget and late to keep paying people to do things for me. This goes for anything from home projects to car repairs. I care about what I do.

I definitely agree with the earlier statements that society as a whole doesn't care about anything. If you show up for work on time and basically do your job your a star employee anymore.

 

I couldn't find it but there is a terrific merc sled being built and published on the HAMB props to everyone involved but I was a bit annoyed at how the guy paying someone else to do the work spent half his time walking on all the previous work as if he was professor do-goody...

JesseJames on the Monster Garage episode where they built the steamboat was asked if he knew which guys knew what they were doing and which ones didn't. He said "It's easy, I ask them if they know what they're doing and if they say yes they don't and if they say no they do". I had something to add to that when I heard it. Anyone who claims there's only one way to do something right has missed alot of school. There's a million and one ways to do something right whatever the hell right is. like those headlight rings...
The PRIMAL reason bondo on thick is "wrong" is because thick bondo fails. Lead ain't bondo and if he would have handformed new rings to perfectly match the fender and leaded them in with a micron of lead someone who couldn't mud a fender if they drove drunk into the mississippi still would have come along and said Hey man..wtf like that dood didnt form that ring right into the fender look man he cheated and welded it.

Remember, it was a worthless turd before I cobbled it up all the wrong way and you fell in love with it.

all in good fun, I aint got a clue

 

e-z
monkey see---- monkey do...

 

Union labor in the building trades are the most highly trained and knowlegeable craftsmen around.
Could you put together a multi story highrise building with all the working mechanical systems?

 

i love shitty work, it put my sport coupe in my garage. someone bought it for way to much, saw what had to be done and sold it to me for a good price. it was a start, yea alot has to be done but i can afford everything im doing and time is not an issue. the car will get done the way i want and to the standard i hold my self to. will it be perfect, no(unless my dad starts messing with a true craftsman) but it will be safe, relable, and i wont have to worry about a big chunk of plastic falling off if the body moves a little. im young yes, but i do know whats rite and wrong

 

The 30 years you spent in the autobody industry should have taught you to put masking tape over your soda pop can, so that while your detailing the cars the painters don't sprinkle bondo dust in your drink......Maybe that high from the synthetic plastics makes you the authority on the various degrees of working in lead?

I admire your headlight customization on your avatar

I have a ruler handy,, and this is the finished result of the headlight frenching we, (MASTERSON KUSTOMS) did for ROD&CUSTOM...
First of all,
the Tech article was to show readers that the restyling can be done with a minimal amount of tools and just a basic knowledge of working with lead........We usually do headlights frenched and leaded filed and primed for $1,000 dollars with a one day turn around.

No complaints so far.

60 years from now I imagine the headlights will still look as good as they did the day they were completed................ why even bullshit each other ,,
Gas welding and lead paddling are tools that generations to come will be enlightened by, once learned and used...............

Maybe you can come by the shop and take a look at several projects we have going where the metal work is quite tedious, and in its bareness your "quick skim of plastic filler" would seem sac-religious ..............

xoxoxoxox
Germ

 

It's probably all over your car, if you think shit work is cool go for it, but some of us care about things being done right, if you knew how to actually do metal work,not just slap on the bondo, you would realize it doesn't take that much longer, give me a break. maby you should change your name to bondo rebel. filler is for finishing off metal work, it's not supposed to be the work. Soem people don't like my car because it's not traditional and it's made by a foreign maker, but there is barely a trace of filler anywhere on it. and it went through a hail storm. I think you are a good example for this thread. I wasn't good at metal work,so i went back to school and learned it, Had a great old school teacher who hated plastic as much as I did. You can frost it like a cake all you want but it's not steel unless you take the time to do it right. Work not shortcuts.

 

My model a ford is a piece of of junk. I built it myself and did a terrible job on the body and I had no excuse because I know better but felt that my sheet metal was to beat to make nice. Im diving back into the car to correct the problems and I gotta tell you there's nothing like a nice metal repair/mod done correctly that you did in shiny bare metal. Its so satisfying. I really wish I had done it right from the start. Wow, I feel like I just went to confess my auto sins

 

yea didn't mean to go off, but someone acting like their car full of Bondo is somehow superior to someones car where they put all the hours into metal work, really pisses me off, it's an insult to anyone who has spent hours banging metal to get it just right. somehow implying that metal work is a waste of time is crap!! I don't care how many trophys something won, A lot of Boyds cars won trophys and were in magazines, but the work underneath was crap, Saw some of the epiasodes where they looked like they were frosting a birthday cake. Just because you were on TV doesn't make it any better. Whatever happened to the idea of using as little filler as posssible? I would rather have a dent or an imperfect area then have a car with ten pounds of bondo in it.

 

I carry a magnet where ever I go.

 

thats great, i dont care where its gone, where its going to go, or how many magazines it gets the cover on or if it wins the fucking ridler. ITS STILL NOT RIGHT. just because you can drive it doesnt make it right or cool. You can drive a Prius, but its still a fucking prius.....


..... plus who said i wasnt having fun in the garage.... or rather the dirt lot, shrinking, stretching, and welding. I think thats as much fun as driving the finished product.

 

Germ.

Please go back and read my post again and find where I said the lead work done by Mr. Masterson(you maybe?), Barris or Hines was hack. Quite the opposite in fact. I think the execution of the entire frenching job in the article was terrific and came out great and that was exactly my point. Lead and plastic filler, when applied correctly, will last for decades.

Don't flip out so quick... I agree with you.

 

AHHHH you guys got it easy.
Unbelievable how much hand sanded bondo must have been used in this car
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But really, What if the HAMB vendors sponsored this guy and gave him whatever tools they needed???

 

well he shouldn't have to worry much about the bondo falling off since they can't drive much more then a few miles an hour due to the traffic and cows in the road.

 

Wow. I hadn't visited this old shit for a while since it turned into a 'bondo vs whatever' discussion. That final statement kinda nails it bro. You get it or you don't. Apply that thinking to wiring, suspension, frame mods, that's the foundation of a great car that anyone, builder or owner or both can be proud of. That's the point. It ain't profit margins or who'll pay what. 1st class work brings 1st class $$$$$ and 1st class friends and customers...that last for 60 years+