SHED RACING - Bugatti Type 35 Hollow Front Axle - The Forging Process
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- Опубликовано: 1 май 2024
- In the 1920s, Ettore Bugatti designed a hollow forged axle for his racing cars such as the Type 35 and Type 51. This enabled him to create lightweight cars but without compromising the strength.
Working on these cars 60 years later in the 1980s, Ivan Dutton noted that the axles on many cars had suffered considerable wear and tear and there was the need to replace these parts for safety. He set about producing accurate copies using traditional forging techniques.
He commissioned a firm in the Midlands to help him achieve this and in 1990, Frank Edwards one of the team, captured this on video, which we share with you now.
Thanks to Phill for making the old VHS into digital format www.avp.expert 
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Absolutely priceless video! Makes you weep when you think of the skills weve lost in this country
....in this world? Maybe they still know how to do this somewhere in Pakistan?
I work with some old guys, and know of many others, in about 10 about 95% of experience and skills will be lost due to people retiring. I'm lucky to have the job that I have, the other day I made a domed nut by using a bench grinder and file to do the hexagon, I often get odd one off jobs to do.
@@joejoejoejoejoejoe4391 Keep up the good work! 👍
I bet they can do it in Russia
yes and thatcher totaly finished off anything to do with the old journeyman apprentice system and gave us the six week wonders
generations of skills lost forever
"The Blokes weren't wearing Flip flops" hahahahaha, i did laugh
serious blokes.
Anyone who's ever stared at pictures of type 35s or 51s has wondered how this was done. I'm so glad to have seen this.
It shows me that I haven't begun to realize what even the simple tools in my own shop can be used for.
I love it
I grew up in Sheffield in the '50s where every other factory along the valley of the Don seemed to be forging, casting or turning and the back streets rang to the banging and hissing of heavy metalworking. Takes me back.
South Yorkshire had so much heavy industry. I started out in the pits. All gone now.
It's an absolute privilege to watch these highly skilled craftsmen create such marvelous parts.
As a child in the sixties i'd fall asleep on warm summer nights to the rhythmic sound of a huge forging hammer banging away in the Don valley. Sheffield was a dirty old place but produced masterpieces.
I did a semester of college in Sheffield in the late 90s. There were huge industrial areas of town abandoned we used to go explore. Was like a ghost town back then.
@@stuwhite2337that's why Yorkshire men were the absolute hardest men on the planet at the time !
(Especially Donny lol)
💥❤️👍🇬🇧
Thank you Ivan. That was amazing to see. Real craftsman at work. I hope we never completely lose our ability to forge parts the proper way. “You can never beat a man at his trade. “ my dad used to say.
Love Ivan's commentary, bosh,wallop😂😂poor show by the Bugatti owners club for not giving you the plans Ivan...keep up your excellent work....,
I remember hearing the drop forge hammering away at Garringtons Bromsgrove when I was at school nearly 60 years ago, loud wasn't the word!
bet it made your mothers tea cups rattle!
How Britain worked! …. amazing video worth at least 5 Oscars. Thanks again team.
I'll settle for a knighthood
if only hollywood could make films this interesting🙂 this channel should be shown in schools to show not everyone has to work in an office👍
British engineering at its best, from die/patern makers to forges machinist every part has virtually disappeared brilliant video give us an insight
Thank you Ivan for sharing this - some very impressive craftsmanship from the end of an era when Birmingham was the workshop of the world!
Or more likely, if it was heavy work, the Black Country.
Ivan, your enthusiasm is wonderful on this
Proper engineering
one of the greatest films, just pure brilliance
My brother in law worked at Garringtons Bromsgrove and I think a pal of mine did too, I will ask him if I remember!. Oldbury is around 8 miles from where I'm typing this. I used to work for a big foundry group at Smethwick which knocked out thousands of castings for the motor industry. When I think back to the companies that no longer exist, sometimes because of subsidised foreign companies, I could almost cry. One of the foundries I worked at, in the labs, now had a bloody chicken processing plant, or something stupid taking part of the site!
Astonishing, the crafts required and fortunately filmed for history, thank you Ivan.
Ivan that's Borax not sawdust. Great vintage video 👍
It's fantastic to see this level of skill in the UK. I think the powder being thrown on the work is borax/silica. This is to keep the surface clean by removing the oxide.
What a valuable historical record bringing together the design skills of Bugatti, the forging skills of the Midlands and the inspired drive and determination of Ivan Dutton. Absolutely wonderful and thoroughly enjoyable. Thank you.
100 % always appreciate yours and dads knowledge when it comes to bugattis thank you for making a film to make it a lasting memory 💚
What a rare privilege to be seeing this. I used to sneak a look into forge factories, and marvel at the operations.
As a blacksmith, farrier and petrol head, lovely to see this video. So sad that the superb industrial blacksmithing of the UK has largely gone. I once had the privilege of doing some spring smithing for a Bugatti 44 owned by a pebble beach car show judge. Keep up the good work Ivan. I love your videos.
Thanks Ivan, that was amazing. I was brought up in Oldbury through the 50s and 60s and clearly remember the noise from the forge when I walked past it on the way to the railway station to travel to Snowhill Station to see the Castles and Kings.
Thank you for bringing light to this sir .
the cutaway axle was fantastic
Forge master is the bloke controlling the process. It took them years of experience to learn how to coordinate multiple smiths, the press operator and often crane drivers if the parts were too big for manual handling. All done with hand signals because it's too noisy for shouting.
My grandparents have a photo of my great grandfather (who was a smith at the Queensland railway workshops) directing several other men as they all manhandled an enormous block of red hot steel into a power hammer. They had a striker who controlled the hammer and the lead smith (great grandad) had to figure out a rhythm with the striker and coordinate the team of smiths to move the workpiece the right amount between each blow of the hammer. Skilled work. They all wore wool as it was the only fabric that wouldn't burn from the sparks, and I can't imagine the heat in those buildings wearing a full set of woolen clothes with all the furnaces and red hot metal going around.
The railway workshops also had a long tradition of 'foreigners' i.e. personal items made at work when the foreman wasn't looking. We've still got some knives that were made from old springs, with bits off offcut plastic stacked to form a patterned handle.
@@nerd1000ify My Grandpa run a metal casting and forging factory in Victoria during the war. Now it's a McDonalds.
Absolutely fantastic. Ivan's narration of this reminds me of Jack Hargreaves talking about the country side. Proper blokes doing proper work with commentry by a proper bloke. I have a couple of questions:- How many Bugatti axles are ever likely to be required? Where are all the dies etc now?
Pure gold - thanks for sharing !
Another great cult video. A big shout out to your camera and video production team, aka Suzie, for bringing all the content to us. Well done!
Wonderful. Thanks for showing how they were made.
Absolutely breath taking! And to think of that they would have been doing it in this style, back in the 1930's.....unbelivable skills!
Great stuff indeed, very much enjoyed and appreciated.
Great to finally understand how the hollow front axles are made. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you Ivan and company for sharing this.
Fascinating!! I'm a life long Bugatti enthusiast and consequently knew of this mythical manufacturing mystery!! So it's incredible to see it put to bed! We had a family business through the 80s and 90s based in Halesowen, which is part of the west midlands Black Country. Within a 5 mile radius of our location there were dozens of heavy engineering works which could handle work on a monumental scale. Forge works, section benders, turning, milling, casting, you name it. We supplied products to a number of such companies so I got to see some incerdible processes. There were also many tiny little works that made stuff for aerospace and F1, things so secret that I was never allowed to see, which was very frustrating. The scale of this has been vastly reduced now, but there are still companies in the area producing very large parts.
That was wonderful. I genuinely weep for the industry and innovation that we have thrown away. In my industry, aircraft, we used to lead the way.
Strange how the club didn't want you to build them. Likely jealous that you would diminish the rarity and value of their own cars. I always thought clubs were about preserving the marque. Or am I naive?
Best wishes, Dean.
Just when we thought we couldn’t learn anymore here we all are looking at some amazing skilled folk and a bygone age. Ivan is bang on who does that in Blighty now. Third world countries taking over the mantle. I live in the Caribbean and people fix and repair, weld and make stuff from absolute scratch, no throw away society of stuff here and yes no toe tecters so what live a little🏝️. I am not against or adverse to modern tech I love 3D printers but you have to admire pure hands on physical skilled workmanship.
Awesome videos love Ivan, Suzie and their passion, more please ❤
Well that was almost as historic as Ivan himself, was a fantastic watch, well done as always.
Great video of when England had loads of skilled workers...sadly a thing of the past
Brilliant! I thoroughly enjoyed the episode Ivan and Suzie. Being an old tool and die & manufacturing guy I really appreciated the hot forging video. It's amazing how those chaps worked in unison through the many processes to end up with the final forging. Very interesting and it makes you appreciate the skills used without a CMM machine for checking and CNC machining operations. Congratulations to you for fronting the tooling money to instigate this entire process. Cheers from Canada, Paul.😊
Ivan. I'm hooked on your RUclips channel. Your a very interesting man. You make us want to move to England. Your spread is beautiful. Reminds us how much the city stinks. Thanks for the entertainment.
Fantastic thanks ivan
That eas an amazing video to watch. All yhe work involved to get one axle done.
This was a real treat! We might not ever think about how these parts are made, but I was thinking ‘What if I had to figure out how to do this and in the end, it all fits?’ This is truly a work of art. Thanks this was something to see. And the play-by-play by Ivan was great as well!
Loved the video, loved the commentary.
Brilliant video! Thanks for sharing. It makes me feel like we have lost a lot of the "Art" necessary for building things!
That’s outstanding, hope you still have the dies and templates
The skill and courage of each man was amazing no wonder Germany didn't beat England in the second WW those Merlin Engines and those Bombers were all built by such Men and Woman ,Thank you Ivan another first from Team Shed Racing
the shmitt engine was way ahead of the merlin
@@eweunkettles8207 the fuel injection was. They were both very good designs.
Die Briten haben sich nach dem Ende des 2. Weltkriegs leider selbst besiegt. Aus der einstigen Großmacht ist ein ziemlich zerstörtes Land geworden. Das ist sehr traurig. Deutschland ist auch gerade dabei, sich selbst zu ruinieren. Grüße aus Deutschland!
@@tturtle1659
dont mention miss schillings orifice
@@tturtle1659
the packard built ones were probably the best of them all
better than them Allison boat anchors
Fascinating Ivan. Twelve grand back in 1990 was not an inconsiderable sum of money! Theme's were the days when we still could make things before Maggie buggered British Industry
Inflation calculator showing 28k£ in today's money. Considering he said it didn't even cover the whole process it probably cost twice that at least.
There's a video floating around from Chevrolet produced in the 30's showing you their Production Facilities from 1936, and they show you the Straight 6 engine Crankshafts being finished, and they have several huge presses with different jigs in them to knock out each side of the red hot crank with one bloke grabbing the crank with big tongs from press to press while another bloke keeps it hot enough with a blow torch. Can you imagine trying to employ someone to do that today? OH&S would have a field day!
Would that film be "Master Hands"? It's here on RUclips.
Wonderful video. My dad worked at Garringtons Bromsgrove. He was a motor mechanic and worked in the garage maintaining the bosses jags etc.
Just brilliant, thank you Ivan and Suzy. The number of trades involved, the skills required. Always enjoy your videos👍
Such an impressive piece of work. So glad you had the video as I still can’t quite believe the difficulty of the process and the accuracy achieved. In the ‘70s I worked in the forge at Fords in Dagenham and the Sterling Rifle company was just down the road. All those skills now gone.
Seriously interesting, Ivan. I’ve long been fascinated by that axle design… Bugatti engineering in general, for that matter. So it was a real treat so see how these axles were crafted. I’m still amazed that those tiny little kingpins can withstand the loads put upon them.
I am very familiar with this as my cousin had a similar Bugatti 37 axle forged in the 1960s. Excellent engineering skills.
Unfortunately I get so spellbound over these processes I’ll end up working these into my designs😮 can’t help myself. Gotta keep the fundamental’s alive.
I think the wood shavings the gov throws under the stamping hammer is to add carbon to the outer thickness but keeps the central part less tensile. This forming process off hammering also densifies that important part, should have a ring to it I suspect.
Wonderful Ta for that vid.
Fantastic to see thiswork being carried out.
Watching a second time I must say forging this axel is artistry on par with mid evil sword Smith's metal work 👍
Absolutely fantastic. Great foresight to have it videoed at the time
talk about battling the establishment , i am so full of admiration for what you do now and things like this are incredible getting stuff reproduced , thanks for sharing
Thanks Ivan ,two mysteries removed from my mind. The Bugatti roller bearing crank and the absolute master piece of the type35 front axle
Hi Ivan I have always wondered how they did that ,and you worked it out and did it,you are a amazing clever gentleman and you should be very proud of what you have achieved,and like you say you wanted to reproduce the type 35 and the Bugatti museum wouldn’t give you the drawings for the axle and would not let you build the car ,but mr persang has done it in Argentina it’s not fair,but remember you were there first with the idea ,I know this much Ivan I personally think you are an inspiration,amazing fantastic bloke
Mike Davis
Where have all those skills gone?! The midlands used to be so good at engineering.
Is the sawdust used to try and reduce the amount of ‘sticking’ to the die?
Brilliant video, thanks for posting it you lovely people 😊
THANKS IVAN MUCH APPRECIATED AS ALWAYS .
Where have all those skills now gone?
Like you say Ivan, one would have to go to India or Pakistan to see that type of thing done now. Another great presentation from 'Shed Racing', thankyou.
That was amazing and very interesting to see. I hope these skills aren't disappearing.
Amazing.
One day there will be the equivalent of TV programs wondering how past civilizations, us, had the technology to make them
That's beautiful to see how the axles are being made .
Ivan... you should have built complete bugattis at that time regardless of what the bugatti club said about it.
Now replicas are being made in argentina and im not saying that these people aren't capable of building a good car ... but they should have been made in england.
What a missed opportunity all because of the bugatti club 😭.
Thanks again ivan for a great video and your wonderful explanation 👍
Wonderful film Ivan, my first job when I left school in 1952 age fifteen was at Garrington Drop Forging, Darlaston Green. On my first day I was told to switch off the overhead lights in the forging shop, as a trainee electrician. The heat, noise, and white hot metal being flung about frightened the life out of me. I lasted just two weeks....then handed my notice in.
Interesting and can relate to your comment - Kind Regards
Thank You so much! Amazing work what an education!
Fantastic. And Suzie, you were right, it helped me early on to see the axle on a car. I agree with others, the skills to do anything like this are long gone, except overseas. I suspect even China, does not even do it anymore. If anyone "says" 3D printing, I will scream.
Really good, thanks
was fascinating watching this at boiler shop fodens commercial vehicles, this strengthen the steel structure
Strewth,there are real fair dinkum mechanics/technicians that still exist. This bloke is the real deal, a fair dinkum bloke that understands metals and the art of fabrication. Amazing intricate understanding of how pure metals and alloys perform. Blokes like this fella are fading from existence. Incredible knowledge, probably no "formal" qualifications, but an intricate and incredible understanding of how metals interact and work together. Sadly these blokes are leaving our knowledge base of metal work faster than they are replaced. Not many kids these days want to reach this blokes level of understanding of how different metals interact and how to achieve results as required by their orders..
This bloke is an actual jewel!
Excellent video, really interesting :)
Hi Ivan what a fantastic video thank you for letting us know how you went about restoring Bugatti’s
One of the best video and telling us about how the roller cranks are built
13:15 I'm impressed by the fellow in the left of frame. He's lifting that weight by pulling the string and he's not even sweating!
Thanks guys, fantastic footage!
Wow. Very skilled work. Thank you for sharing
They're fire-welding the ends closed I think when Ivan says squeezing
Forge welding.
Fantastic workmanship, thanks for sharing.
Fascinating! Thank you.
First to comment! I really need to sleep, but i have to watch this until the end!
And another fascinating insight into Bugatti design and craftsmanship. More, please!
Here here!
@@STANLIZ4 I can't help but grin when you can clearly see a Bugatti front axle from what was just a red hot lump of metal before...
Fascinating Ivan, I always wondered!
Such excellent craftsmanship ! 🧐
Real work hand, eye, intuition and experience.
Yep old lost arts , people don't understand metal and heat treatment goes into such parts , I've had to replace four Chinese wheel bearings , why not properly heat treated , I had to find second hand skf genuine bearings , now fitted perfectly,
Amazing skills lost !
That's brilliant Ivan. Thanks for shearing.
Paul. In Thailand. I'm a retired engineer and loved this.
That’s really cool.. you really did get a screaming deal, that’s some amazing work.. It’s a shame that level of skill is a thing of the past.
There are more than 30 forging companies in the CONFEDERATION OF BRITISH METAL FORMING.
Only one word! Brilliant 👍👍
That kind of talent and skill I think no longer exsists !
Marvelous
Superb video, thanks for showing it ,I am a blacksmith and the skill involved in making those axles is immense, if the Smith hammers the steel too much it would stretch too far then the position of the king pin holes would be too long and the piece would be scrap ,and all done by eye .Great to see
❤ 1. as a former chief engineer on barents sea im tremendous impressed with "those guys in flip flops",if you understand what they accomplish with nothing,and have to work under terrible circumstances.
2. I think it would be easier to build the front axle of a high quality thick walled hydraulic pipe and two pieces of low carbon square pipes/bulbs??!!
3. But the iron workers/black smiths are impressive and you are right, it's a lost knowledge in most of Europe.
Thanks for your reporting and sharing your knowledge, you're a real professional!! Scandinavian Vikings/Sweden
When they wanted an axle for the Napier Railton that still holds the Brooklands outer circuit record, they forged it from a quarter ton billet of metal for Robinhood Engineering Works which was owned by Kenelm Lee Guinness who owned and designed KLG sparking plugs. The axle was finished by hand filing some of which was done and under control of my uncle Harry Luff. I don’t know if that axle was hollow or solid but in my youth I recall the car coming to Snetterton and visiting the paddock and examining the axle. The owner or driver was quite cross to see a teenager inspecting his car so closely but was a little less cursory when I explained why!
There still seems to be plenty of forging companies in Willenhall and Halesowen, so I wouldn't panic too much about lost arts. Hopefully the health and safety of the lads doing the work gets a bit more respect these days, although obviously still none of them would be able to afford to buy a Bugatti. Nice video though
You wouldn’t wanna wrist wrestle with that bloke. Strong as the steel he’s forging.
Thank you I really enjoying watching that. It is so sad that all the skill is lost😢 but these old boys back in the day probably making steam engines. But when you're doing fabrication like this and casting it comes natural it's like the steel is talking to you.