As kids, my brothers and I were amazed to find that the Chinese had actually invented gunpowder, to our collective disappointment.. Our suburban neighborhood windows resounded with the pulses of  shock waves, and more often were pierced by BB's, arrows, and other launched projectiles.
 Naturally, the first instinct, and order of business when learning to operate a lathe was to turn out a cannon!.
 Fortunately, these loud beginnings were tempered in time.. John is now a craftsman and general contractor at Ananda near Grass Valley, CA where his skills as an inventor makes him the "go-to" person for all that makes  shelter more comfortable. and meet code.

 Look closely at the gold lines in this cast iron piece.  Click on the photo to enlarge it. These are the bronze allow brazed fusion lines that remain after machining the surfaces back to original dimensions. I used special  cast iron brazing alloy from Muggy Weld .com in this repair. Click on photos below to see the various stages of repair. There was no need to replace the broken out original cast iron piece pictured below. Substituting it with a larger steel piece made more structural sense.

These Stainless Steel glove box tabs were stamped from dies made from steel and epoxy resin. The cost of these dies is reasonable compared to the cost of having steel dies cut from solid steel that would otherwise break a deal for such a short production run.
 Photos below show that the more complex positive and negative shapes we CAST from the original sample part in high compression resistant iron filled epoxy resin. The material held up well enough to stamp several hundred more stainless steel shapes.

This valve functions the same as a radiator cap on Rolls Royce vehicles built in the late 50's and 60's.. Leave it to Rolls Royce to invent their own solution to to maintaining coolant pressure and venting excessive steam over a conventional radiator cap. These early units fit inside a remote reservoir tank, and  are discontinued from Rolls Royce.  This opened an opportunity to be remake these steam valves as a needed aftermarket replacement item.
   We made all the metal stamping dies to recreate these valves, and went a few steps better.  The inner valve is now a more positive proven design, and the  valve body is made of pure copper.

The coil in the foreground is functional copy of the original 1937 Alfa Romero BOSCH coil (on the right). I have  adapted the new coil to run using a  magnetic electronic ignition hidden under the original breaker plate in the distributor.
 We made the various components from available shapes and compatible materials as can be seen in the photos below- from concept to illustrations, to final part.. I tested the final unit on my 51 ford pickup truck that is running the same Pertronix ignition system before shipping the coil off to my customer.

This is a case of  "SHRINKING PLASTIC" that I deal with on so many components where the original design relies on the integrity of plastic that deteriorates over time.
 Specifically, here you see the GREEN VINYL COUPLING that I made to replace the original white plastic broken fingers and circular tension band that  are below in pieces on the table.
  Basically, the movement of the seat- forward and back- is transferred to this rheostat through gears driven by a "slip coupling" that allows the rheostat to "self calibrate" as the "slip" of the gear driven pinion maxes out the variable resistor  when seat travel reaches its limit.
The problem is that the fingers of the original white plastic ball "Palm" loose their grip as they break off at their "Knuckles". A simple piece of easily obtainable green vinyl fuel line holds fast to the square nubs of the original "broken wrist" YET, has the correct slipping tension when pushed over the coupler's driven ball. SEE the video operating my

MMR (Motor Sports Marketing Resource)  caught up with Mike and I at Automobilia in Monterey, CA and gave us each an interview.

These NLS flapper doors were originally made of plastic. After several thousand open and closing cycles in the extreme hot and cold temperature blowing air, the plastic deterioration actually crumpled the original doors into pieces that sucked into the fan blower motor jamming it.
  These new doors fashioned from aluminium ride on bronze sleeve bearings. The new stainless steel axis pins will not corrode.   

For added sound control, I sprayed the doors with a sound deadening thick polymer plastic coating. This added weight as well, because the doors close by gravity, and air pressure. A Velour-backed vinyl made a noiseless gasket that the doors slam and seal  against.