Not only had Green Valley, CA master metal fabricator Bob Foster aka The Alloy Cowboy never built a boat before, believe it or not, this was Bob’s first project involving woodworking, and he has no woodworking tools. He does have some metal working equipment…a bowling ball, a shotbag and a mallet he made about ten years ago. Bob, who once upon a time was an architect, a commercial pilot, and operated a resto shop specializing in 1955-57 Thunderbirds, now lives atop a 3,000 foot mountain. He has no neighbors, a good thing, since he’s constantly banging out vintage motorcycle and antique car and airplane parts.
Bob has a friend/customer named Les Gunnerson who collects 1930s motorcycles. Les also collects vintage outboard motors, something like 100 at last count. Les and his friends restore them and fire them up at rallies.
One day Bob said, “Les, what we need to do is build a sidecar for one of your bikes that’s actually a boat that we can hang one of your antique motors on.”
Les said, “can we do that?”
” Sure,” said Bob. “We can do anything.”
Les then found a 1960s Popular Mechanics that showed something called the Canterbury Bell made by a British company. It was basically a dingy with an inboard motor. Says Bob, “We decided to go ahead and do it, but I thought the design needed some tweaking for “character” and went for the old Chris Craft speedboat look.”
The boatcar’s dimensions are 8 feet 4-inches long and 38 inches wide. The steering wheel, which Bob made from wood he harvested from an old futon frame, moves the motor. The rest of its construction, including the entire deck, is all mahogany.
“We didn’t want to spend $10,000 on materials so it’s scrap wood we harvested from a friend’s woodshop.” The beautifully polished motor is a 1930 3.5 horsepower Elto-Fold Lite that as it name implies, folds up and down, up when in sidecar mode, down in boat mode.
The boatcar was then attached to one of Les’s bikes, a rare 1935 BSA making for a unique combination of land and water transportation.
Bob’s currently working on an inboard motor version of the boatcar for another customer, and that aluminum cowboy hat he’s been wanting to fabricate. Seems right for The Alloy Cowboy.
If you’ve got something unusual in mind, give Bob a call at 661-270-0100 or email him at the thealloycowboy@yahoo.com.
