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Mold Making

News - Singer

Written by Administrator Friday, 20 January 2012 20:06

The Start and Choke knobs on my car had been replaced by some generic non-originals at some point, the two weren't even similar to each other. From the various pictures I have I saw that the original knobs are fairly simple in shape and have text Choke and Start in them. I also found out that reproductions are not available and on the other hand originals, even if found, typically have the cable stuck or broken.

Therefore I decided to try fabricate new knobs myself. First I considered turning them from solid plastic, like POM and paint them in to the correct color. But hot to produce the indented to them? Using etching to create a metal stamp to hot press the text shape in them? Maybe that would work.

But then it struck to me. I could use silicone a mold and pourable plastic molding technique. But how to produce the original, or even better, find an original knob to be used as a pattern. Once again, the help came from the NASOC forum, I got a very generous offer from Mike that he would lend me a pair of original knobs to be used as a pattern. Excellent! Of course I I was very happy about this.

After receiving the knobs from Mike it has took me sime while to get the required materials, learn the technique and eventually create the mold. At this point I have made the silicone mold, and some test castings out from that.

Sample casting of knobs from natural color resin

Currently I'm pretty confident of the outcome. More to come...

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Blackening the jack

News - Singer

Written by Administrator Monday, 26 December 2011 18:56

The jack screw was rusty all over so it needed some attention. I cleaned the screw and removed the rust with a rotary steel brush. I have understood that the original surface treatment on the jack screw has been blackening so I decided to try cold blackening it.

Cold blackening is widely used on guns and gun parts. It is simpler and easier to achieve than real blackening, since the traditional blackening requires heating the parts to high temperature and the use of hazardous chemicals. When cold blackening the parts need to be throughly cleande first and then heated with a heat gun. Then the blackening solution is applied evenly on the surface and left there for a while. After that a developer solution is applied on the surface. Finally the surfaces are thoroughly oiled with gun oil.

The result is an original looking surface. The surface treatment was straightforward, easy and does not require any special tools. The cold blackening chemicals are available at shops selling guns and hunting gear.

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Tyre Pump Restoration

News - Singer

Written by Administrator Monday, 05 September 2011 22:01

My car was lacking almost all the original tools, including the tyre pump. Luckily I managed to find one from the UK. That pump was complete but in somewhat deteriorated condition so a restoration was needed. I removed the paint from the barrel and cap and cleaned the inside that was in good shape, thanks to grease. There was some corroded spots on the outside that needed some putty. Then the barrel, cap and foot was finished with black paint. The original hose was deteriorated, especially the textile braiding. I found some new braided rubber hose and fabricated suitable compression sleeves for that and a simple tool to compress the sleeves in place.

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Fitting of the hood continues

News - Singer

Written by Administrator Thursday, 23 June 2011 20:11

I had to fabricate a new alumimium strip for fixing the erar end of the hood into the car body. I did have suitable D-shaped aluminium car body profile available. I also had the replaced original wooden part between the passenger compartment and the boot and it was fairly easy to use that as a pattern to shape the aluminum into correct curvature and shape.

Attaching the rear end of the hood with the aluminum strip was fairly easy when the strip was already bent to correct shape. Only the outer corners were little tricky to get the edge of the hood tightened properly. The hood is now fitted into the car and the result looks good (well, at least as good as it has originally looked :-) I still have to install the fastening hardware for the bottom of the rear side window flaps on the hood. Also the area below the hood rear end attachment strip needs to be covered.

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Fitting of the Hood

News - Singer

Written by Administrator Friday, 03 June 2011 00:00

I did not have a proper hood pattern that would have shown the original structure, only some badly made non original hood pieces. Fortunately I was able to purchase a ready made new hood for a Singer Roadster from England already a couple of years back. Now it is finally time to starte fitting the hood onto the car. The hood had small strips of material sewn inside of the hood on places where support arches go. I attached dorable dot fasteners on the strips so that they can be turned around the support arch and snapped together.

I started by just lifting the hood on top of the support arches and fastening it on them with the above mentioned strips. Then I pulled the front end of the hood on top of the windscreen and attached it temporarily to the correct position with spring clips. The rear end of the hood is attached to the rear end of the passenger compartment with an aluminium strip that is screwed on the wooden structure. The support arch hinge points are spring loaded so that they can move about 5 centimeters vertically. The purpose of this is to tighten the hood when it is raised.. I pulled and locked the support arch hinge pints to their lowest position and then pulled the rear end of the hood to its correct position and nailed it to the wooden structure to see how well the hood fits. It seems to fit very well, which is nice, since modifying the already sewn hood would have been quite tricky.