Our friend Theo is restoring a Harley Davidson W from 1919, this has a rather rare boxer engine. The engine is already rebuilt (see movie below) but the tank was missing, so we will be making a new tank from skratch.

PART 1

Theo took measurents from another tank and made a fullsize foam model. He covered the whole tank with a special tape with lengthwise glassfiber strands in it. This tape will not stretch in the length direction, and we had Theo cover the whole tank in 2 directions. The tape will be the template for the new pieces.

We decided to put the welds in the small radius and made a set of wheels for the beadroller so that the edges of the sheetmetal pieces could be easily formed.

It took a few hours to make the tools but this will save a lot of time later. We tested the beadroller on some pieces of scrap metal and it works beautifully. Aad machined a matching die for the planishing hammer so that after spotwelding the seam can be quickly cleaned up. Now we are ready to start on the new tank, to be continued!