English Wheel

[Al Coutts]

Hi all,

I'm looking for a Ranalan or Edwards English wheel with good condition top wheel and anvils.

All leads gratefully received.

Thanks,


Al

[Stephen Blakey]

Hi Al,

Good luck with that. Watch out for wear in the saddles. In fact wear generally. Many are worn out. There's a chap on ebay who will make you a set of anvils.

I bought a large Chinese wheel which will need a bit of tweaking to remove some of the play from the adjuster. I'm hoping it will be a better wheeler than I am.

I have done a lot of work on the Contour Autocraft English wheel which isn't exactly cheap but they're jolly good and made by people who use them regularly, so they should know what's what. It's not too far for you to go and visit, and have a play with one.

[Al Coutts]

Thank you Stephen - I'm on a week's residential wheeling course in Cornwall and am pretty set on an old cast-iron framed English made tool to go with Edwards guillotine and Keetona folder.

Al

[Al Coutts]

The beauty about the Ranalan is that the anvil cradle is set in lead - so when excessive wear is apparent, one sets it in the desired position and melts the lead. It is then good for n more Bentley Specials!

[Stephen Blakey]

Hi Al,

I went round the full loop of going after a cast iron one, deciding to make my own then realising I don't have time for another project so bought a cheap one to get some experience of home-wheeling with view to designing my own later on. This is what I ended up with, sadly without the tiled floor or potted plant;


The Ranalan and Edwards do crop up on ebay occasionally but may prove to be one of those items where the supply dries up when you decide you want one.

If you've got the space, and the patience to source it and get it going again, you can't beat the proper industrial kit. I've got an Edwards folder which copes with 2.5mm sheet to make up new channel sections for the chassis. Try doing that on one from Machine Mart! Michael Forrest painted all his machines the same colour which I thought was a nice touch. As I remember it, they rather clashed with the carpet though.

You will note I am being rather cagey about actual home-wheeling experience. That's because I am still struggling with surface-modelling the bodywork. A pal kindly offered to do it for me and we got about 90% finished. His band commitments have rather taken over. Part of the problem was the fact that I kept changing my mind, but that is largely the point of doing the modelling in the first place. I am now teaching myself Rhino which is undoubtedly the way to go (Contour Autocraft use it, for example). Experience thus far is that the dimensions are critical and that a couple of inches makes a huge difference to the aesthetics. I would have no faith in the cardboard mock-up route.

Does your course include bucks and jigs?

[Paul Spencer]

Wow! I am impressed by both of you for even trying this! I thought I was going over the top when I bought a couple of band-saws so I could rebuild the front half of the wooden body on my AC (which I still haven't done). I have CAD drawings taken from another car, but I still haven't decided how far back to go to remove previous poor repairs.

[Stephen Blakey]

Paul,

You haven't seen the results yet. They might be awful!

Having said that, as G K Chesterton wrote so prophetically in his book 'What's Wrong With the World'; “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” This is often misquoted as a joke but there is a serious point here that if a thing is worth doing, then it's worth doing even if you're not very good at it. Chesterton consistently defended the amateur against the professional, or the “generalist” against the specialist, especially when it came to “the things worth doing.”

One of the many joys of Bentley specials is that there is a range of standards but they are are all loved by their owners. This seems to me to resonate with the historical values of the club.

As one of the very few people who gave up their time to assist with the membership renewal mailout this year, I was dismayed to be presented my morning cuppa in the current club mug which proclaims that the club is now for poseurs, elitists, connoisseurs, perfectionists, OCD sufferers, narcissists and sociopaths (I may not have remembered that entirely correctly. That does seem a lot of words to go round a mug. Perhaps it doesn't include perfectionists? A psychologist friend recently dropped into the conversation that she looks out for perfectionism in her clients as it is a, "symptom of low self-esteem"). Maybe the club's resolution for 2017 should be to loosen up a bit and get back to celebrating diversity?

Whoops this seems to have turned into an annual address.

Merry Christmas!

Stephen

[Christopher Carnley]

"Quivis recte factum........"
Do your best, and sod the writers of ephemera and the psychobabblists.

[Al Coutts]

I spent a week with Geoff and James at MPH in Liskeard the week before Christmas and had an intensive 5 days on producing panels using an English wheel.
Day 1 was theory then practicals - day 2 was more advanced practicals.

Day three - 5 hours and I'd knocked out this quite acceptable E-Type front wing blank

[Christopher Carnley]

I am most envious of the skill involved.

[John Murch]

Brilliant!

[Al Coutts]

They were good instructors! I started with a 12" square of half hard aluminium and wheeled it into a "shape" - a slight dome. I then had to wheel it back to flat. That was hard. In fact I performed that entire operation, three more times - it was a bit tedious but essential to understanding what the wheel does. It also improved tracking skills.

The next day using the same piece of ally - I made a fruit bowl. More wheeling then beating it in a concaved tree stump, then wheeling again.

Day three - use those skills to make the Jag panel fit the pattern.

Day four - ally butt-welding with oxy/acetylene & wired edges

Day Five - consolidation

The course was about £680 inc VAT and I'd highly recommend it if anyone is interested in making panels.

The downside - it's in Liskeard, nothing wrong with the place but it's a long way from Norwich! And I bonged a speed camera on my way home - 3 points and £100. My first points in over 20 years.

Here's what they make when not running courses - it was beautiful!

[Christopher Carnley]

Why does it remind me of the best film ever made, "Jaws" I wonder?