PORC Series Trophies – Hows it’s Made

PORC Trophies

At the beginning of the race series, Mike asked if I was interested in making some trophies for the overall winners. This was something I was dead keen on so I began planning something that would be awesome, but simple to make….I couldn’t come up with anything that was going to be easy and time started to run out. So I had to do something awesome, but somewhat difficult to make, instead.

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Making the numbers was the first thing I took on. Brazing the 1s for a nice gold finish and stainless steel for the 2s. I drew the numbers using a stencil and cut the shapes with an angle grinder. Then did the final shaping with a linisher (basically a sanding belt)

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Making steel rusty, on purpose…

The 3’s would take longer. I wanted a rusty finish for the bronze effect, so I had to leave some steel outside in the rain. I added salt into the equation to try and speed things up a bit.

Tubes were the next things on the list, lucky we have a bit pile of offcuts to dig through!

Scrap Bin. Thats a pretty expensive pile of useless tubing. #offcuts
Scrap Bin. Thats a pretty expensive pile of useless tubing. #offcuts

3 stages of tube preparation

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From left to right:

Straight from the scrap bin, Notched and dirty, Finished tube with both the inside and outside polished before welding.

I used The Notchmaster, our homebrew tube notching machine, to create the shapes in the tube. And a sanding attachment for the drill to clean the scale out of the inside of the tubes

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These tubes were chewed up by the lathe 🙁

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All the tubes for the First place trophies ready to go. This took a long time…

Is it going to be an engine?
Is it going to be an engine?

All tacked together and ready for welding, First place trophies

Stacking Pennies
Stacking Pennies

I used a stainless steel filler rod during the welding process. This was to try and get a bit more colour into the weld and hopefully make the overall trophy look a little cooler. I’d say it’s worked pretty good here!

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Second place trophies finished welding. Need to figure out a cool place to connect the numbers and mount it to a base now…

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The steel had rusted enough and looked pretty good. I drilled holes and did the rest of the shaping with a dremel.

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Tacking the 3’s into place and welding on the pillar was the job undertaken the day before the race. Cutting it fine.

The finished article, about 4pm on Saturday afternoon.

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Time to pack the van and hit the road!

Keep ‘er Sideways

Burf

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