Eben built the 212 body from pictures, as you may know. His metal work and sculpture are fantastic – that’s why we insist on taking him away from his art – to work on ours. Here’s his website showing other projects he has been working on besides the damn Ferrari.

http://www.ebenmarkowski.com

Here are a few more panels that Homer worked on.

Clear coat tint

Tinted clear on aluminum

Last night a friend called me to take a look at his newest obsession, creating a water effect with sheet metal and paint. These panels are beautiful to see in person and I am impressed at how great they look in photographs. The technique for painting the fish is amazing.

Clear coat is not intended to go over bare metal, it typically needs primer or some sort of surface prep but the stuff is so high quality and hard, I have a feeling it will hold up great.

Fish in Clear

Water panel

I brought this up from Florida for a friend of a friend. Cool.

Alligator

After going through every last little part, we finished the Oliver 77 Diesel. This tractor was purchased new by the current owners father and when Henry passed away, we were asked to fully restore it. As we got to the end of this project it felt similar to completing a car restoration where every little screw, clip, fastener needed to be correct which means multiple runs to the hardware store, industrial catalogs and lathe!

Row Crop Diesel Oliver

Eben wanted to display his art work at a recent show in Burlington so decided to hammer out another Rhino. This time it took only a fraction of the time because the form in which it is hammered out on was sculpted and ready to go. To make the display at the show more dramatic, his wife painted the form orange to have hanging next to the completed copper sculpture.

In many areas on the finished piece, the copper has been stretched so much that it is thin as tissue paper, delicate enough to poke your finger through.

Rhino Mold painted in oil orange

Rhinocerous in 1/1 scale

The burning man Art Car works! My part of the development, the diesel engine, hydraulic pumps, motors and hoses actually made the thing self propelled and the carousel clockwork is smooth and silent. It would have been fun if it was noisy and scary but it moves with precision and ease!

The machine is in Nevada right now, hopefully it can be re-assembled after the breakdown to transport it 3000 miles.

Burning man complete

Hydraulic/Diesel

Here is a photo of Homer’s Ford Taurus Station wagon. It used to be his wifes car, now it is his to beat on!

Just dont get into a head on collision!

Ford Taurus Loaded up

Homer helped me finish up the disassemble of the Ford CL-35 Skid Steer Loader after work the other day and after a 6 pack of my favorite beer, Otter Creek Brewing Copper Ale, we yanked the hydraulic assembly out. I was not sure how to get these components out of the machine independently because you cannot get to the hose ends with a wrench so I decided to take the motors and the pump out as a unit.

We found that the RH drive sprocket had broken the key way on the motor and someone did a terrible job repairing the damage. They went through the effort to replace the key but did not tighten the large nut or the brake disc so to our advantage, that side came apart easily. The LH side was a different story. We grappled onto the 1-5/8 nut with a 3/4″ drive breaker bar and had to come up with a way to keep the motor from spinning. We could not do anything to keep the motor fixed so we let the compressor charge up the tank and used our biggest air-impact gun which got her loose. Next we had to remove the sprocket with our huge 3 jaw puller. We had tons of force on the puller and the sprocket would not budge. Now is time for the heat!

I managed to get the sprocket red hot and the puller maxed out and let me tell you, that sprocket popped like a canon when it let go. Thankfully it did not drop in the chain oil bath because it could have started a major fire.

The pump is EATON Cessna and the motors are EATON Char-Lyn. I have been looking up different hydraulic components and guess that EATON factories make the parts and the Char-Lyn is the town that the factory is in? Another EATON hydraulic division is Vickers, when I get a chance I want to look up the meaning of these names.

Ford CL-35 EATON Components

Eaton Cessna and EATON Char-Lyn Hydraulics