Ok, don't kick me here, but seriously........I always thought it was a TYPE of aluminum. A search of jeeves ends in results claiming that it is a chunk of aluminum??? I saw somewhere, something about billet steel.....that's when I realized I don't know what it is.....since I always ***umed that billet=aluminum.... So, why don't we like billet? Don't get your ******* in a wad and don't start a fire storm..... Is it because of the process in which a chunk of metal is shaped (cnc??/m*** produced) rather than casting as in the days we try to replicate with our hot rods? Also, I know that through the 80's and 90's street rods turned into a large chunk of billet.....not traditional.........
It is a chunk of aluminum, but it gets milled into an expensive shiny part that is in turn purchased by a street rodder for instalation in his pink and teal fibergl*** '34 3 window.
i think you pretty much answered your own question. It's not traditional. the look of it. The only was I could see it being used is if you used it for something you hand made and polished. I believe there is a gentleman on here that made some cool tailight out of billet?
Yep....starts out a solid chunk of ________ metal (aluminum, steel, stainless, ***anium, whatever) and is milled into a part. I have made many billet pl;astic parts for model cars.
The term is "billet of aluminum" or "billet of steel." A longer piece of billet aluminum is called "billet log." A fairly descriptive term, but not as cool sounding as billet. Billet aluminum is cast then rolled. It has a definite grain structure which adds to it's strength when compared to a poured casting of aluminum. Part of the added strength is due to billet alloys are a little tougher than casting alloys and are tempered. Although you can toss billets into the melting pot when home shop casting. Manufacturers tend to use alloy specific aluminum for casting. The stamped on paint codes denote alloy and temper. Good alloys for machining are 6061 T6 and 7075 T6. The 4-digit number denotes alloy and the "T" denotes temper with 6 being the hardest available. Don't use an alloy such as 5054 T4 for machining. It machines poorly due to it's soft temper. Pure aluminum is even worse as far as machining goes. Most commonly available aluminum you buy is 6061 T6. It works well for machining and is also found in sheet. My experience with 6061 in sheet is that it doesn't bend well and will sometimes rupture along a sharp bend so you need a different alloy for sheet metal work that incorporates sharp bends. Any sheet metal shop can make a good recommendation. Aftermarket billet aluminum pieces have gotten their bad reputation from critics who don't care for the modern appearance of the piece nor it's lack of soul to their eyes. Too many sharp edges is the usual criticism and that's due to the CNC machines that knock it out. Regardless, it's a viable technique for parts manufacture and doesn't take too much rounding of the edges and sanding to make a modern billet piece look different to most and perhaps fit into the trad look that so many strive for. There's a small saying here on the HAMB that seems to fit. "It ain't billet if you made it yourself." Sorta fits I think....
Just to add a quick note since he brought up aluminum sheet, we use 5052-H32 here at work and it works great for making boxes, panels, etc. You can get your bends fairly tight and is weldable. Cleans up nice also and can be Engine turned, polished, whatever. I'm going to use this for some door panels and maybe even a custom dash in the future.
I remember machining parts out of aluminum with traditional machine tools when I was a teen. We used aluminum in shop cl*** primarily because it was easier to machine that steel. I made a cool drink holder for my 76' Camaro, it fit real nice on the console, and I still have the "br*** knuckel" shifter knob I made from aluminum for my F-1. We knew that making our own parts was cool. One thing though, nobody ever called it billet back then.
As others have mentioned a billet is just a big chunk of metal that is used as raw material for machining, extruding, forging, or other manufacturing processes. In addition to being a non-traditional method of making parts and the "1-800-HOT-RODS" aspect of building an entire car out of catalog parts, CNC-machined billet aluminum is closely ***ociated with the "smoothie" style of car that became popular in the late 1980's through the efforts of Boyd Coddington and others. Often these parts, commonly in a brushed finish, furnish the only visual highlights in a car that has had all of the hinges, louvers, brackets, and other things that give the car character removed. To people who like the smoothie look that cons***utes taking off all the "hiccups" to make the car more beautiful. To traditionalists that consitutes taking something interesting and turning it into a very expensive Prowler.
I agree wih the other guys here. I think the problem is not with the material but what happend historically. Billet stuff represents those rod owners who bought everything off the shelf,had someone else ***emble their rides with everything smoothed then called themselves hotrodders. If you take a piece of metal and whittle out your own parts,I have nothing but respect for you-because I can't do that very well. Sadly, the only,only way I could work out using the steering wheel I wanted with the steering column wanted,was to use a billet aluminum adapter. I will try to wrap a beer can around it to hide my shame,but I'll still know it's there. Also,I am ashamed to admit, it is a very nice piece of metal.
The way I remember it, Coddington and his ilk came along and capitalized on the ideas and style of the originator of billet, Lil John ****era. Mr. ****era built some really nice hot rods and when he needed a part that Henry Ford hadn't made, Lil John machined it out of billet aluminium. He completed beautiful machined parts that fit together as a whole. His cars were unique and beautiful. He started a whole style of cars that morphed into the billet mobiles/smoothies we see today. He's still around. Not too many people can say they started a movement in hot rodding. His wasn't the 1-800-Hotrod stuff. He designed the parts and machined them himself. He is a real craftsman. He inspired a lot of people to build really well-detailed cars. That's my nickle's worth.
It is a part that is not traditionaly used and not traditionaly paid for with traditional money so you charge it, they bill-et.
My vote for best explanation so far . . . it'll be hard to top. Now that AZAV8 has stirred up the ol memory banks I remember ****era did about three DIY articles in - if I remember right - Hot Rod mag. They were well written and highly educational. Mr. ****era showed how you could make some interesting pieces with simple tools along with a whole lot of helpful hints to make the most of the tools you have. I always wondered why the series got tossed as there were more articles promised. Today, being less of an innocent than I useta wuz I figure the mag's advertiser's balked and complained and the DIY articles were cancelled. Too bad for sure, seemed like somewhere in there is when the mag started going downhill although I have hope for it. The last few issues have been good ones and I hope the quality stays up. One thing the mags ought to rethink vis a vis DIY stuff is that maybe one guy in a hundred - and it's probably closer to a thousand - reading the article actually goes out and makes the piece shown. That shouldn't be too much compe***ion for the aftermarket people. Even here on the HAMB where we're loaded down with DIY people, I don't think a very large percentage of HAMBrs actually make a lot of the stuff shown. It does appear that tech and outlined projects get saved for later use and that's a good thing.
I'll back that up on Lil John and I remember the articles in Hot Rod. In particular I remember him stating real clearly: do the best work you're capable of. If you're not happy with the part you made, make another. Everything you make will increase your skill level and everything you make going forward will be better as a result. Sounds like a REAL rodder, doesn't it?
Although some may think that billet is not tradional I suppose you have to ask the definition of tradional. Some of the early race cars used billet( I can trace it back definitely into the teens and I believe it was used probably around 1905). Some of the early steel and cast iron processes in the US were not quite as good as lets say some of the French, around 1904/1905. The cast iron often had too much porosity and proved to be too weak. If you really study someof the early racecars you will start to pick out things that probably were billet. I would bet that if we could ever find a complete 1916 Frontenac racer built by Louis Chevrolet you would find more than a couple pieces of especially billet aluminum and Miller played with hunks of metal as well, probably both steel and aluminum. The original differential in DePalma's Packard racer (1916) started out as a hunk of hard steel and they stated that to just make the differential housing cost them $1000, a pretty tidy sum back then. Billet today has turned from utilitarian to fashionable may be a better way to term it.- Jim
Here's his 1915 Indy car, appears to be a 'billet' crank handle. This car was loaded with interesting details, the leaf sprung independent suspension and chain driven steering showed a lot of innovation. CC
Recently when I removed my shoes, bowed and asked for the honor of entering the HAMB, I described the car I am building - which was found to be acceptable by my welcoming mentors. Only then did I admit to having already made several parts out of aluminum lumps and on a CNC mill and that I'd be making more of the parts I needed out of that same material and on that same CNC mill. Those aformentioned parts are know as billet, but since I'm the guy who designed and machined (OK, loaded the program and pushed the ****ons) them, I think I have forgone the slings and arrows of this lack of outrageous fortune that inspires my desire to build a low buck car..... When I think about it, I wonder if Boyd had included items like wipers, heater, heater hoses, A/C, comp., hoses, radio antenna, P/S pump and hoses and left the hinges exposed, would we be saying Boyd who?
I quess I could answer that a couple of ways but I'll try it this way to stay out of trouble, I hope. When it comes to this side of the pond versus the other,believe me you have to hit me without a lot of voltage to say that the French are better than we are when it comes to this stuff but when Packard was building their Grey Wolf back in 1903/04 they studied French castings to figure out how to better the "stuff" we were doing here. The OHC Peugeots and Ballots of the teens were pretty advanced stuff and sad to say we copied them and they are the basis of most sophisicated OHC cars today, no matter who builds them. I even have some other stuff the French did but I try not to talk about it too much because of my nationalistic pride. The Germans and French got a little bit of a jump on us in this metallurgy in the early part of the century but after Miller and the Duesy Bros started to build compe***ive stuff, Delage and Bugatti spent some time studying American racing iron to their advantage. Jim
That particular car is the Cornelian and if my memory serves me it was built by a couple of brothers (last name Blood, -I quess Blood bros) in Kalamazoo Michigan. I have photos of Louis and his riding mechanic, who I believe was Joe Boyer. Boyer was jockey size but not Louis and they filled that car out. Qualifying it was difficult with all the m*** in the ****pit so I imagine the race was a bunch of fun. The revolutionary thing about that car and I have photos of the sketches of the car is that it was probably the first monoque constructed racecar. It had a little 100 ci engine that you could probably put under your arm. Right after that race Louis opened a shop on Grand River in Detroit and built what I consider to be the finest American racing cars. They used aluminum more extensively than any racing car to date and he even experimented with running fuel loads low in the ch***is on both sides of the car for stability (something F1 figured out not that long ago). His cars were extremely fast but I do not believe anything of these cars survived. I ran an ad 20 some years ago looking for parts for them by running an ad in Hemmings. People called me off the hook asking me what I had and I told them nothing but I am looking. I found a guy that said he used a chunk of one of the valve/head sections as a parpework but he would not even sell me that. The second group of Frontenacs made their debut in 1920 and won Indy that year and in 1921. First American racecar to win it back to back. His cars were really something- I only wish some of it had been preserved. Jim
Actually, if you want to go far enough back in history, in the 20's and 30's these parts were made of billet aluminum or br***. then in the late 30's the kids that made these parts in shop cl*** in high school, figured out they could cast them cheaper, they learned that in shop cl*** too, than machining them. Yes the quality wasn't as good, but they served the purpose, and many of these kids became millionares selling this "junk". In the 80's, the billet look became the thing to have, so the parts were machined again, but a little known secret, casting technology has improved, so many of the "billet" parts you see, are now precision die cast, and the sellers are making millions off of them again.
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