Dave Tanner Pattern Maker Extraordinare
Diane Knaus
911info.net
There was a truck once upon a time
that was driven from Windsor to Vancouver in 1917, a "Model T" to
get orders for the Champion Spark Plug company by President Charlie Speers,
and Cal Evans. A year ago, Dave Tanner was talking about the truck and the
idea to rebuild the entire truck was born, so he was asked by members of his
car club, the Canadian Transportation Museum to rebuild it.
To start from scratch was a challenge
indeed, as Dave had to cut individual pieces to create the spine of the car,
the mould so to speak. In his garage, designed and equipped to make almost anything,
Dave constructed the car right here in Windsor. Most of the pieces were glued then screwed into place as Dave
began fulfilling the original creation of the Champion Spark Plug Truck . Using
the space between the wheelbase of 100" as a beginning for the pattern,
he built it to its original specifications. The
whole process took about a year to complete the truck during his spare time.
Today, the truck runs, and is
shown at the Canadian Transportation Museum in Essex County.
The trip taken by Charlie Speers and Cal
Evans is thought to be the first cross country tour for a car. Some
of the tour was taken with the truck on the flatbed of a train. Then when Charlie and Cal got to individual towns, they would
take the car off of the train and go conduct their sales for the spark plugs
which the company manufactured.
As a trained pattern maker, after Dave moved
to Windsor in 1965 with his family, he teamed up with a few fellows to start
a company here. The company
called TEAM was made up of himself, Dave Tanner, Ellis, Anderson, and
Mullindorf, and they did pattern making in Windsor. As
he became interested in antique cars and vehicles, he began to make model
cars, only life size. One of
his creations that produced a lot of buzz on the car circuit was the
"Model T Depot Hack." Someone
gave him a radiator cap and he began talking about it and talked himself
right into building it when his fellow car enthusiasts asked him to actually
do it. The car was called a
Depot Hack because it was used to pick up people from the train station and
take them to the hotels or resorts, thus the "Depot Hack " was
born. His reputation as a
perfectionist took off. He has
been known to take something apart as many as three times to get it just
right. The rebuilding of this car the Model T Depot Hack was the
catalyst that actually led to the creation of the Champion Spark Plug Truck
last year because Dave had done such a remarkable job on the Model T Depot
Hack.
Dave Tanner is originally from Lutterworth,
England. He was trained because his uncle in England wanted to give him
a chance to earn his own way. Dave
was an indentured apprentice as a teen at the age of 15 until he reached 21
years of age, and became a pattern maker at that time. Dave says " it was really a term for slavery at the
time". Pattern makers then
were trained to make wooden molds that created molds for the foundry
industry. These wooden molds
were used to cast metal parts, like a cylinder head or bolt. As
Dave says "technology has changed that method now." He
describes his rebuilding of antique vehicles as a "Labor of Love."
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