Every year for the past five years or so at the NAMES show in Detroit and now Toledo, one of the first things many people who attend the show each year want to see is how Lou Chenot is coming along on the Duesenberg project. Most of us, therefore, see the project in one-year jumps with new major components showing up each time. But keep in mind it took a year of work on Lou's part to bring the car to the next stage. As the project continues to take shape with the engine near completion and the bodywork beginning to take shape, we thought it would be fun to bring the rest of you up to date on Lou's work and then to follow along as he completes this ambitious project. Like the other projects featured in the "Model Engineering Masterpieces" section, this is not just a model car, but rather a complete car in miniature. The engine will run and just about every feature that worked on the real car will work on the miniature version. A project like this requires the mastery of so many skills that we have created a special category for them. Take a look at what Lou has built so far and follow along as the project progresses to see what it takes to create a miniature masterpiece.
Lou Chenot is seen in his shop with the partially completed Duesenberg. (Click photo for larger image.)
(The following is from an article that appeared in the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Club Newsletter, Vol LIV, No. 10, 2006
by Louis Chenot, updated 6/07
When about five years old, I began building models and continued off and on all my life—cars, airplanes, boats, trains, finally learning about 25 years ago that people were building models that actually ran under their own power! Some simple models followed with steam power leading to an 1895 American-LaFrance fire engine, a 9-cylinder Bentley rotary aircraft engine and finally the Duesenberg, beginning about six years or 15,000 hours ago.
It was necessary to earn a living until retirement. The above early interests had led to a 40-year career in mechanical engineering, the last ten as Director of Engineering of the Leggett & Platt Corporation Automotive Group, then on to become a full-time model engineer.
J.L. Elbert’s “Duesenberg” book was purchased in 1955 followed by acquiring anything I could about the car. I was around them in the early 60's when we had a 1930 Cadillac convertible used in Grand Classic contesting (a seven-year restoration).
When the decision was reached to model the Duesenberg, June and I made a trip to the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Museum in Auburn, Indiana. Jon Bill helped me through the drawers of drawings, pulling about 60, which he had reproduced. They were the basis although about half weren’t applicable. When traveling to Auburn, stops at the restoration shop of Charles Glick in Paris, IL also proved very informative.
Upon learning about Brian Joseph’s Classic and Exotic Car Service in Troy, Michigan I telephoned and asked if I could visit. This was the first of twelve or so trips there with Brian allowing me to remove parts from inventory, photographing and measure them, and, of course, answering questions and later telling me the model was out of scale here or there. He was very much a mentor on this project, and it is difficult to thank him sufficiently for his time and consideration.
Visits were made to Randy Ema’s shop in Orange, California where he verified from record the last “J” number and frame number, hence my use of J-589 that is now the last operating Duesy built. He has an eight-branch exhaust manifold that I scaled and was able to note detail from a supercharged engine belonging to Jay Leno in Randy’s shop. Jay allowed photographing and detailing from his roadable chassis, an appreciated courtesy. Skip Marketti with the Nethercutt Museum helped on supercharged engines and answered questions during two visits there. He offered the compliment of exhibiting the model in the museum at some point.
Bill Miller has graciously permitted the measuring of body contour from his LaGrande dual cowl phaeton. A unique project does require research and help from many, doesn’t it?
Data from the research trips needed to be reduced to scale, sketched and dimensioned. I don’t formally draft any more than necessary and use CAD minimally. The sketches are scribbled all over during part production and finally corrected to what I actually did!
Following the research stage, much time was spent building tooling: jigs, fixtures, cutters, ad nauseum, to where typically more time is invested in preparation than in making parts. I often wondered if the engine really needed 32 valves, couldn’t 16 do? At some time in the future I wish to have a meeting with Fred and his designers and ask why it had to have all those parts.
These photos of the installed engine, dash and driveline were taken at the 2007 NAMES show. (Click on any photo to enlarge.)
With a 5-year history and perhaps 2 years to go it should be running by year’s end. That will be exciting or truly frightening. It has over 6000 parts (966 in the wheels and over 300 in the head, for example.) Most fasteners had to be made and all are stainless steel. It is very much built from raw materials. Unfortunately there is no 1/6 scale Duesenberg store to go to for shopping.
My basic drive seems to be learning how to make something where skills must be developed. This also indicates how large my development bin is. (Some use the vulgar word scrap, but even unusable Duesenberg parts are to be revered.) It doesn’t bother me a great deal to start again on something if it isn’t suitable—nine starts were made on the radiator shell!
After restoring our 1930 Cadillac (sold long ago) and supporting friends owning Packards and other large cars of that era, I am still amazed at how advanced Duesenberg’s engineering was for 1928.
Our experience with the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Club at the ACD Festival in Auburn, Indiana over Labor Day weekend was a trip June and I will remember. We weren’t certain how to exhibit the model or even if it would be welcome, but the members settled those issues quite quickly. I hope the model is a credit to their cars.
Lou's display at the April, 2007 NAMES (North American Model Engineering Society) Expo in Toledo, Ohio.
Here are some shots of Lou's well-organized shop featuring a lifetime collection of fine tools, a carpeted floor, heating, air conditioning and plenty of light.
Lou Chenot's shop is well equipped for model work including a 12-inch lathe that is 24 years old, modified in many ways, that is very accurate. A Bridgeport type mill is installed which friends think is silly because it runs 1/16" cutters very often. Many auxiliaries were built including a horizontal and vertical index table (4"), tube benders from 1/16 to 1/4 x 1/32", a Quorn tool and cutter grinder and a 1 x 42" belt sander that is used daily if not hourly. Other machines are there but rarely used, such as a 7" South Bend shaper and a 7-inch Atlas horizontal mill, but they are restored and look pretty! This shop area occupies about 800 square feet and is carpeted. It is nice to have built-in custodial service in the form of his wife, June, who also is the chief cook, gardener/landscaper, secretary/typist and finds time to enjoy her garden railroad and the little white American Eskimo dog they adopted from their son.
The back shop (dirty area) was designed for woodworking equipment, welding, investment casting, blasting, garden railroad work area and stores the lawn tractor in heated/air-conditioned comfort along with a full size Continental aircraft engine. It is about 1500 square feet.
You will find Lou in his shop seven days a week, 8-10 hours per day and looking forward to each and every one of them.
Lou Chenot accepts a Lifetime Achievement award from the Foundation's Craig Libuse at the 2009 North American Model Engineering Society Expo in Toledo, OH April 18, 2009. The award includes a check for $500.00. Lou's Duesenberg was also the featured project at this years NAMES show. (Click on photo to view a larger image).)
Captions provided by Lou (Click photos for larger images.)
The Duesenberg Project |
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3/4 view of the chassis, 1/6 scale so it is about 38 in. long and weighs 40 lb. This scale results in an engine of about 2 cu. in displacement. Square and cubic laws change things dramatically. 6 cubed is 216 and divided into 420 in (full size) is about 2 cu. in. Frictions are much higher than full size, but somewhat compensated by lower inertia. |
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Engine exhaust side with its beautiful 8 branch manifold. Carburetors have barrel throttles, the front one has a small Venturi for idling, and the rear most a much larger one progressively linked. The barrels move outward when rotated to open their jets farther for acceleration. The intended fuel is propane. (Non-scale fuel lines can be seen leading off the engine.) |
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Engine (seen from intake side) shows features such as the Y branch intakes—chosen simply because they look nice. Ignition points are in the generator to keep the distributor within scale. Its block started as a 38 lb. chunk of grey iron—it weighs 4 lbs. now. |
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Underside—I like this photo. |
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Trial assembly, fitting on frame front is attachment for a rotary fixture. |
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Me in my shop. |
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The block after 4-5 weeks of attention. Most components in the model are of the same material existing in the prototype, hence cast iron here. It was decided to fit cylinder liners in order to cut water passages. Liners were turned from Cummins diesel engine valve guides, a very tough grey iron. Piston rings are also from Cummins valve guides. Two compression rings (.025 thick) and one oil ring (.040 thick) were made. |
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Internal components for the block. Its crankshaft is 4130 steel; a drive extension is installed to run in bearings which are .010 silver, also used in connecting rod big ends. Bronze bushes are fitted to the pin. |
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Piston assemblies. |
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Bottom of block -- main and con rod big end bearings are silver; crank is 4130 steel. |
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A highly ventilated lump of cast iron, 338 holes and milling operations, plus lapping cam bearings and all those valve seats! The spark plugs are from stainless steel with a corian insulator. |
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32 Cam followers, 32 "C" clips, 32 keepers, 32 springs, etc. etc., etc. -- I think I'm going to cry. |
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Rear axle with components. The differential contains 4 bevel gears which are hidden inside their cage. Many trials were required to cut the ring and pinion. Hypoid gear cutting requires solving equations for 13 degrees of freedom if a Gleason machine is available (a little one)! Only trial and error and finally filing tooth entry profiles could be used in my shop. The banjo housing is cut from 1 piece of steel. |
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A T-72 Warner transmission in 1/6 scale. Designing such an assembly is a good example of nature not being very scalable. Dividing full size bearings by 6 doesn't agree with any listing of miniature bearings, therefore bores and shaft diameters are changed as necessary. This cannot be allowed to interfere with the gears kept to 1/6 scale exactly so the centers and ratios are correct. Full size diametrical pitches are multiplied by 6 from which the small gears are calculated. Special cutters had to be made at 60 Dp and 48 Dp along with a shaving tool for the compound set of internal gears used in the second gear position. |
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While many parts appear to be castings, none are; the differential housing is a typical build-up from pieces silver brazed together. Castellated nuts were machined and polished and are fitted with .015 dia. cotter pins. |
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Instrument panel, damascened, or engine turned stainless steel. Not particularly difficult but about 5 hours with the milling machine and its digital read-outs. Steering wheel controls do work. |
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Clutch components. |
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Rough fan sketch (drawing) background—no formal drawings exist; layouts such as this are drawn if complicated, but mostly freehand sketches. |
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Steering box and levers for throttle, spark retarding and lights, altogether 42 parts in the steering column. Also visible is the left side front engine mount, a highly contoured part made from solid steel then bolted and riveted to the frame. |
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Servo valve and brake master cylinder. Very modern design especially if compared to Rolls-Royce contemporary use of a very complex mechanical servo. |
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Electric fuel pumps backed up the engine's mechanical one. |
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Bumpers required about a week, half of which time was to prepare stainless steel and make bending jigs, forms and a fixture to keep the bolt centers exact. All bending was at red heat and even then, stainless will still have springback to complicate the issue. |
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Radiator shell from brass sheet. Bent over a cherrywood buck, or form, with a rawhide mallet, then a plannishing hammer, filed, sanded and polished, then chromed. Not being experienced in this skill, I ruined 8 blanks before finishing this one. Hopefully the fenders will not require the same experience! |
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Radiator shell and tools, cherrywood buck, punch and die for neck, .015 brass. |
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Fuel pump/Chassis pump with full size components. |
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Firewall being machined, 40 hours or so. |
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Cam grinding lash up. |
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Pan, machined. |
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Oil pump—gears are 13 teeth 1/4 diameter; it pumps 8 psi and will be relieved to 3 - 4. |
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Lapping—Cams, garnet compound because it doesn't imbed. Cams are from tool steel, drilled 1/8 dia. through (7 in.). Four sets—attempts due to set up trials and foolishness. |
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Exhaust system, stainless steel. |
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Operator and over-center linkage for the supercharged car exhaust cut-out. |
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Intake manifold -- parts, copper, 9 parts each. |
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Intake manifold mounted for fitting on engine. |
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All manifold and exhaust parts; 4 special tube benders were made; exhaust is stainless steel; water manifold is chromed brass; intake pieces are copper. |
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Paper pattern for front fenders. (Ya gotta start somewhere!) |
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Cherry wood forming bucks were bandsawn to shape. |
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First fender bashing—the ugly stage! |
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Initial sheet metal fitting to chassis. |
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Lou Chenot and Joe Martin talk at the end of the 2007 NAMES show in Toledo. Lou was loading up the Duesenberg to head home and had stopped to talk to Joe as they both watched Pierre Scerri's Ferrari model being photographed for an upcoming magazine article. |
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As of February, 2008 the bodywork is coming along nicely. This level of progress represents almost a year of work since the NAMES show last April. Top bows and irons were made in a single plane study, adjusting hinge points until folding could be accomplished. They were then copied in stainless steel. Technically speaking, the mechanism is a triple set of unequal arm 4-bar linkages. |
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The windshield is made from 11 individual components. It will contain glass that is .8 mm thick. Fitting hinges, windshield, etc. to the body contours was a time consuming process. The doors now make the proper "click" when closed and the vents work. |
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Running boards are cherry wood to simulate English walnut...another example of nature not being scaleable at times. Installed in the wood are chrome strips with rubber inserts. |
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Leather upholstery consists of one entire goatskin sewn as per full scale. In making the interior parts, allowances had to be made for the thickness of the upholstery. The body is still in primer and will have to be completely disassembled for painting later in the year. Some parts still remain to be chromed. |
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These photos were taken in April, 2009 at the NAMES show in Toledo, OH. The bodywork is almost complete and is now primered and ready for paint. Lou has since removed the engine and it is back on the test stand with the final modifications to be made to get it running. Once the engine is running and ready for re-installation the final two-tone blue paint job will be done. Lou is waiting for the last minute to minimize the chance of scratching the paint during the labor-intensive engine installation process. |
1/6 scale 1895 American LaFrance Fire Engine Project |
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The fire engine was built over a 25-year period and finished in the first year of retirement. It probably required 4000 to 5000 hours. Initially a set of plans from Cole's was purchased along with engine and pump castings. Charlie Cole's drawings were not very well scaled but are a facsimile of an American LaFrance 1895 pumper, which he points out in his description. However, books on such machines, photographs and the fact that the original exists in the company museum allowed it to be built more nearly accurate. Also, the castings at that time were not very good. Porosity caused most of the connecting engine links to be scrapped. I decided to build with original materials, so that the wheels are cherry wood (constructed as would a wheelwright) and the frames are steel with working leaf springs. The engine/pump was run on air for several hours and the boiler was hydrostatically tested to 100 psi. It has not been run after assembly. It is very difficult to clean, and so resides in a glass case. It is also heavy, about 60 lb. and has become difficult to show. Incidentally, it is about 30" long. The fire engine model was recently sold at auction at the Cabin Fever model engineering show in York, PA. |
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1/6 scale Bentley Rotary Aircraft Engine Project |
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W.O. Bentley is well known for his racing automobiles, but he was a very good engineer in other efforts such as this 1918 9-cylinder rotary engine. The crankshaft is bolted to the aircraft frame, a Sopwith "Snipe" of which approximately 5000 were built, consequently cylinders rotate with the prop. Seems strange now, but it cooled the engine. The design was very modern for its time and produced 240 HP. A model in 1/6 scale seemed appropriate to me. Even so it swings an 18-inch propeller. Another 4000 hours went into this project that incorporated learning something about investment casting for the intake elbows. The prototype crankcase pieces were steel, but being concerned with rust, I chose to use stainless steel everywhere except for aluminum finned barrels which are authentic. |
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If you have additional information on a project or builder shown on this site that your would like to contribute, please e-mail craig@CraftsmanshipMuseum.com. We also welcome new contributions. Please see our page at www.CraftsmanshipMuseum.com/newsubmit.htm for a submission form and guidelines for submitting descriptive copy and photos for a new project.
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