We showcase the metal-shaping and coachbuilding skills of Rod Tempero Motor Body Builders Ltd from Oamaru in The Shed Issue No. 93. The company’s world-famous and internationally sought-after car-building talents make it one of this country’s finest coachbuilders. We head to the mainland to meet Rod and his team and do our best to dig out as many metal-shaping and car-building secrets as we can.
Many of the old crafts that had been around for centuries have been almost lost in our modern age. Among them are the crafts of those who used hand tools and tapped into centuries of passed-down knowledge, the blacksmith, the wheelwright and the coachbuilder.
Coachbuilding with wood has been around for more than 500 years. The restoration of vintage cars is helping keep this craft alive in New Zealand—just—and there are only a few people here who still have these skills. One is Neil Carter of Normanby in South Taranaki. He specialises in restoring veteran cars (made before the end of 1918). These vehicles had wooden frames and bodies made by coachbuilders in the days when the horse and carriage ruled the highways.
There’s a real treat for knife makers in the September/October Issue No. 92 of The Shed.
We head to the Auckland workshop of master knifemaker Brent Sandow to get insights into what makes him such a well-regarded exponent of the art. We watch and learn as he goes through the steps on how he makes a Springbok Hunter knife.
Get ready, secrets are shared.
The Shed magazine is eclectic, informed, and always fascinating. Aimed at those with a few tools and perhaps a few clues: this is the magazine for real sheddies.
Packed with ideas, projects, advice, and peeks into other people’s sheds providing inspiration, ideas, and techniques, or just for the sheer enjoyment of the sheddie’s endless inventiveness, The Shed is the project enthusiast’s bible.
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