Perhaps the greatest legacy of the nostalgia rod movement is the torrent of creativity it unleashed upon hot rodding as well as the urge among hot rodders to learn how to cut, shape and weld metal to push the envelope of hot rod styling.
Enter Walt Scadden, a New England hot rodder for 50 years and a metal working instructor. Walt has combined the two passions into a very unique book, “Vintage Hot Rod Metal Work,” which highlights the techniques and tips that go into fabricating a hot rod from bare steel, including gas welding, engine turning, using an English wheel, hammer welding, leading and top chopping.
The most prominent feature of the book is the hinged and louvered aluminum hard cover, a novel idea for such a book, and one fabricated entirely by Scadden himself (the inside front cover still features pencil marks showing Scadden’s work). The book itself is brief, at just 58 pages, and the longest chapter stretches just 10 pages. However, Scadden covers a lot of ground quickly, and as he notes in his introduction, “The techniques shown here are not difficult, (but) they do require patience and practice. Reading a book will not make you a master.” It doesn’t get much more honest than that.
“Vintage Hot Rod Metal Work” costs $65, and can be purchased through Coastal 181.