pur sang

I just stumbled across the company Pur Sang. They make handcrafted copies of Bugattis and Alphas using the same techniques as the original artisans. I really enjoying seeing the images from Speedhunters that include several foundry images. There is something incredibly appealing about the idea of building something such as this from scratch. It has me thinking about a conversation I had with Eric the other night about the purpose behind creating "things". The fact that al of these cars are built "in house" is impressive. Of course Argentina cannot import goods so this makes sense, but impressive nonetheless. I think the idea of being able to perform almost any kind of old world manufacturing process is one of the things that floats my boat. Panel beating, casting, machining, welding, etc. are all things that I want to be able to do in my shop. Building an open cockpit car similar to these is on my bucket list of things to do. I was going to use an existing inline engine and other running gear, but making the frame and body are definitely something I've thought about for quite some time. Seeing this raises the bar for certain. All the more reason to get a foundry set-up built at my shop. It looks like they're using resin bonded sand like we used in Milwaukee. I assume that the original Bugatti and Alpha shops would have used green sand casting.

images from Speedhunters and Petrolicious

notes to myself:

serious craftsmanship developed just out of that necessity

guys who become very innovative and resourceful because of the geographic isolation that they lived in

not having... any preconceived prejudices or any kind of notions about what it is they are doing and if nobody tells them its a really hard thing, they seem to just do it. They don’t make a big deal out of it. Whereas in Europe or in the United States, a guy who does panel beating is just always tip-toeing around the car. It’s this big deal and it’s really hard and everything is hard and everything takes a long time and these guys are real prima donnas and a total pain... because they know that they are doing something special

they just know they have a job to do and as a result of this sort of ingrained ingenuity, and resourcefulness and creativity of people