As part of this long-term motorcycle customization project I’m in the middle of (the early middle… in fact, let’s just call it the start) I’ve been doing a lot of fabrication research lately.
I was reading a write-up of a custom Suzuki in an issue of the British motorcycle magazine Back Street Heroes (a good magazine, despite how terrible their website is) and came across this paragraph:
Unsurprisingly, it’s of completely one-off construction, hand-built using the traditional method of sand filling the tubes and capping the ends before bending them into the required shape (I refer you to a fine article called “What You Can Do With Sand” in the December 1934 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine. Honest.)
That’s all they mentioned about the process and so, wanting to find out more about this mysterious sand technique I Googled the magazine name, article title and date and seconds later, on page 941, was reading the exact article they were referring to.
From said article:
You will find frequent use for a small quantity of clean, dry sand in your workshop. For example, it may be necessary to make a uniform bend in a length of small pipe or tubing. If you fill the pipe or tubing with dry sand and cork the ends, the pipe may be bent easily without any danger of collapsing at the bend.
Ta-dah.
The internet isn’t all that new at this point, but it still blows my mind that at a moments notice I can find and freely read an article that appeared during the golden age of radio, when my Grandfather was still a teenager. All the Popular Mechanics back issues are organized by decade and all seem to be fully searchable.
Pretty awesome.
If you’re into that kind of stuff the blog Knucklebuster Inc. posts modern and vintage technical articles on a pretty regular basis. A great collection of wisdom from the ancients.
If you’re into that kind of stuff.
