I recently discovered a car restoration shop that is about an hour away from my home in NC. You can read about the kind of work that Automotive Metal Shaping in the NY Times. The way that this all came about if kind of interesting. The owner of Pettingell Machine Company had reached out to me after I commented on a post on his Instagram account and he asked if he could come visit my shop as he and his son were intrigued by the stuff on my Instagram account. I told him to come on by. When Hans arrived at my studio we chatted about learning and how the desire to learn new things was something we both shared. We talked about the hammers he has been building and we had a great visit. Hans then said I should come down and visit him sometime. A few weeks went by and I finally had some free time to go visit. I arrived at the shop where Hans works for Mike Kleeves and was greeted by Hans, an amazing shop, and a handful of super rare cars. They were working on the '32 Lincoln that was the one and only Indianapolis Pace Car in the same year. There was Mike's own Maserati Ghibli, a 1936 Lagonda that was built from scratch, a super rare Zagato Ferrari that was one of five ever made, a Porsche 550, and a Bugatti. As mentioned some of the cars were being built from scratch, others were in for repairs, and others were super involved restorations. One notable car that was there during my first visit was a Serenissima that had raced at Le Mans in 1966 and had just been sold at auction after sitting in Count Volpi's castle since 1966. I got to meet Mike and chat for a while and I ended up going out to lunch with Hans and staying at the shop most of an entire Friday. I even was provided the opportunity to try out a a large Pettingell hammer on a piece of aluminum sheet. I took home some brass and some vintage spotlight parts in order to make Hans some tooling for recreating the bezels.
Well needless to say I was in heaven!
Hans has been to my shop agin to pick up the tooling and I've now gone back down a couple times to visit and am now working on a project for AMS. I'm not able to post any pictures of the shop or the cars, but I've really enjoyed visiting and seeing these rolling works of art.
Needless to say I seem to be a lucky individual and I'm often reminded of how fortunate I have been in my life to be able to meet talented people that are willing to share information with me. Feeling grateful today.
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