0-01
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The Hilborn car -- part of the inspiration behind Jim Pendleton's lakester -- the subject of our Texfest. CLICK ANY OF THE PHOTOS FOR AN ENLARGED VIEW.

0-02
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The first thing we did was to cut out a place in the buck for the grille to fit in -- so we could get a true picture of the actual contour of the area matching up to the edge of the grille. Jim on the left and Paul Neece on the right.

0-03
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Locating the grille, deciding how to attach it, and getting the buck to conform to the grille was probably more difficult than making the panels.

0-03a
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We positioned our pattern paper where it layed flat on the center of the panel -- so as we determined the amount of metal that needed shrinking -- we would split it on either side

0-03b
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We cut out the rough shape and the sliced the edges to conform to the shape. The amount of overlap of the slits gave us a clue about how much we would have to shrink.

0-03c
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Next we made a profile gauge by shrinking one side of an aluminum strip -- which showed us that the buck needed to be built up in some areas. We used "bondo" for the build-up.

0-03d
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We got the buck a little closer (far from perfect) -- but close enough for us. This gauge was also used to check the profile of the panel.

0-03e
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This is our first panel. The blue mark is how deeply we will shrink into the panel. We could have stretched in the middle and did a little less shrinking, but we chose not to.

0-03f
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Loren Richard's thumbnail shrinking dies made the shrinking process fairly easy -- even for the first timers.

0-04
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The upper nose pieces looked real good until Mike Fritz made the sides. When Don compared the sides to the tops, he saw that we had way too much crown in the upper piece.

0-04a
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Although the buck wasn't built as a hammerform -- there are no rules that say you can't use it as such -- at least a little!

0-05
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The lower edge of the top portion of the nose curved back in too far to make a smooth transition into the next panel. It would have looked great if we would have re-desigend the car and widened it (smile)

0-05a
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Don watched Terry start to take some crown out of a top nose part, and Terry then handed it to Don and put Don to work on that task.

0-06
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So since Don found the problem -- he got to fix it!

0-07
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By hammering the crown down (and creating some inward lumps) then wheeling with very light pressure, Don was able to shrink the crown down to fit the lower panel contour.

0-10
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This is the bottom half of the nose -- or sort of a front axle cover.

0-15
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Mike Fritz wheeling the bottom portion of the nose.

0-16 -- Photos 16-20 By Don Ross
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I made it over to Terry's shop for half a day. I met Jim Pendleton, who is building a streetster similar to Stew Hillborn's old lakester of the 40's. The first shot shows Jim shrinking the edge of the nose.

0-17
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The buck and the two top nose parts.

0-18
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Coming together

0-19
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Jim's Friend and cohort Mike Fritz.

0-20
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For the first part of the morning I just watched Jim Shrink and wheel on one quarter of the front frame horn cover.

MVC-014aF
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Jim getting the hang of the Pullmax. Jim, Mike and Paul all did a remarkable job of forming their panels. They took to the machines like duck to water!! Don has his own Pullmax. His job was to fix our mistakes.(smile)