The Quest For the Authentic
THE QUEST FOR THE AUTHENTIC
TDC
IT'S CREATED, NOT BOUGHT
KEVIN CAMERON
Years ago, when mechanical-oscillator watches were made obsolete by the new electronic-oscillator type, a friend commented, “Now mechanical watches will become prestige items for the well-to-do.”
Why? Because the cheapness of electronic-oscillator watches allowed everyone to have one. When I ordered some machine-shop supplies once in 1985, in the shipping box with them, as my reward for spending $100 or more, came a $5 Hong Kong electric watch that I wore for five years. Worked great. Kept good time.
The same has happened with motorcycles. Anyone with the cash or credit can now buy a factory-made motorcycle that is far more capable than its buyer. That in itself is humiliating enough, yet trying to “soup up” such a motorcycle usually results in something worse than the original. Why? Factory R&D has the resources for development. You and I—and hand builders in general—do not.
Yet we still hanker for things in our lives that bear the stamp of human action—not just machine perfection. When I was a lad, I read about shotguns with “Damascus barrels.” Damascus steel is a fancy form of wrought iron, produced as a craftsperson hammers a glowing lump of iron-plus-slag, folding it over, hammering again, and gradually expelling from it most of the slag to result in something much more like steel than iron. Tales of legendary sword blades made in this same way appeal to us because they step away from the cold industrial world of automatic machine production, putting in its place a human skill learned over years as a result of unusual devotion.
Then, in a little shop in Ontario, Canada, came disillusion. I saw a Damascus-barrel shotgun whose owner
had mistakenly fired a modern magnum load in it. The barrel had swelled up and come apart in a complex filigree shape, related to the beautiful and mysterious swirling patterns visible on the surface of an intact example. How unromantic to realize that years of study with bearded wizards on some Kashmiri mountaintop could not produce strength comparable to that of run-of-the-mill 4340 bar stock.
Yet there are genuine wizards. Maybe not many, and maybe their numbers are shrinking. One of the 250 GP regulars took his brand-new RS250 Honda V-twin production racer to the late Helmut Fath in his wooded German hideaway. Two weeks later, it had 4 hp more than when it left the Honda factory. Fath clearly knew something that the universitytrained men producing the RS did not.
Another example. Racer Kenny Noyes sensed a glitch in the suspension of his new, trick Moto2 chassis. No one could figure it out until a wizard was summoned: experienced GP mechanic/ engineer George Vukmanovich. His wide experience in such matters gave him a clear picture of how the glitch could originate. He quickly identified an “incompatibility” in the suspension and eliminated it.
Other such wizards work at Pratt & Whitney and are called upon to discover the causes of problems not found on anyone’s drop-down menu. P&W jet engines are thoroughly engineered and are made on the best of production equipment, yet still, problems can arise, especially in development. Their solution requires the imagination and experience of wizards.
The term “custom motorcycle” used to mean a fancifully modified HarleyDavidson, but change has come. Harley customs are still being built, but the new development is the “hand-built motorcycle,” which typically begins
BY THE NUMBERS
ESTIMATED NUMBER OF PROFESSIONAL BLACKSMITHS WORKING IN THE US
140,000
TENSILE STRENGTH OF 4340 ALLOY BAR STOCK, MEASURED IN PSI (4340 IS C0MM0NLYUSED IN AIRCRAFT LANDING GEAR)
1925
YEAR THE PRATT & WHITNEY AIRCRAFT COMPANY WAS FORMED
with one of the less desired 20to 40-year-old used machines. It is then given a “patina of age,” square-edged Firestone tires with a 1940s tread pattern, and its exhaust pipes are wrapped with fiberglass tape to put a fabric texture in place of the usual shiny chrome. Parts without real function are removed. Small, artisanal carrier bags may be added. A few carefully handmade parts are often seen. As any apprentice machinist of 1900 knew, there is no limit to what you can make with just a hacksaw and a file. A milling machine and a lathe just speed up the process of converting ideas into objects. The idea’s the thing, not the method.
The result is usually low-key and as personal as old clothes. It radiates the feeling that this is a traveling companion, not a star in comparison with which you, the rider, are nothing but a roadie. It
says that the partnership and the journey are more important than the arrival.
Fashion is a process of creation of something newly attractive in one or a few places, followed by imitation in many places, usually with a strong commercial aspect. Fashion can be fun even if we don’t create it; otherwise it could not be everywhere we look. Yet we know only the original is authentic. Therefore, authentic cannot be bought, only created.
It is not a shirt we can put on or an entertainment channel we can click to. It can only come out of ourselves, out of our experiences and perceptions.
Most of us don’t build much of anything; there’s too much else going on, too much pressure to “get serious.” But it’s rewarding. We might actually finish a project, and taking up a new activity compels us to learn and
“YET WE STILL HANKER FORTHINCS IN OUR LIVES THAT BEAR THE STAMP OF HUMAN ACTIONNOTJUST MACHINE PERFECTION.”
then refine skills. In the process of building something, you learn so much and have so many more ideas that when you’re done, you can’t wait to start building something better. Each thing created thus potentially carries the seeds of further creation.
The human mind being the infinite box of tricks it is, everyone has ideas. Think how many kids we knew in school who whiled away the tedium of spelling and civics by drawing hot rods. The realities of life knock most of that out of us—we have to make a living, raise the kids, pay the mortgage. Yet this creativity is still there in all of us, dreaming away on its own, without our permission, playing with ideas, making combinations and permutations. Shapes? Nature provides them for free—in living things, in flowing water, in the clouds, in the flames of campfires. E1U
