22 Jan 2018

Life imitates art



Four cylinder Briggs and Stratton by 805ROADKING



I've often thought, the majority of art production, particularly sculpture and in relation to its construction, is fundamentally a series of problem solving exercises. For someone who is concerned with the human condition this is consistently entertaining. The manual tasks and their similes are surprisingly often synonymous with the finished work if one was to offer an accompanying anecdote. Of course this is not always the case but for a lonely artisan working away accompanied only by YouTube or the occasional blast beat, this joyful synchronicity has a tendency to speak volumes well above any neighbour offending speakers leaving one happily oblivious to the outside world and public relations. I also know many craftsman and tradies who enjoy these same reflections. My Father, an accomplished sheet metal engineer (this term fails completely to describe his skill set), and I, often talked about this or used the comparisons much to each other's amusement. In fact the title of this post's origins is one I'm particularly fond of and find poignant in this respect.

It is for these reasons and plenty more only relevant to me that I often watch content on YouTube. I find watching people enjoying their craft enthralling but most of all it feeds my want to create. Typically I'll start the day by checking my regular haunts for a new vid and by 2 minutes in I'm already covered in clay. The rest of the day is a blur. Some of the most interesting things I find are backyard engineers, home gunsmiths, toy collectors and restorers, car projects, I could go on for quite a while but there is one I wanted to recommend here. It's not for everybody and probably few who choose to read this blog will find as much in it I suspect but if you like the idea of working on problems, finding solutions, building things just to see if they'll work and thinking outside the box then I recommend to you 805ROADKING. I'd like to tell you a little about the guys behind 805 but if you watch some of their videos you'll see almost immediately that "they" are just not what their channel is about. They're a group of guys who get together to build things they find interesting, spend quality time together in a positive way and work for the benefit of the project. No egos, no drama and the only one in charge is the goal. If you are a first timer, I humbly suggest checking out the clear cylinder head build but if you'd like something a little more intense, try the homemade four cylinder Briggs or water cooled Briggs series. I'm looking forward to more on the overhead valve build myself. I'll pop the play lists to each series I've mentioned below but I'm sure if this is your bag, you wont stop there. Get busy









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